• Home Page
• My Work Style
• Our Suggstions

Our Suggestions

We have looked over about labor from four viewpoints: "Law Encyclopedia", "Labor Nowadays", "Change for the future", and "My Work Style". First, in "Law Encyclopedia", we explained about some laws and pick up several characteristics and the connection with the current situation in Japan. In "Changes for the future", we explained about problems related to labor and some labor systems in Japan.

In addition to that, we have discussed what we noticed during the research. I have considered some questions related to labor in many aspects.

Impact of Traditional Japanese Employment

In Japan today, many companies apply lifetime employment and the seniority system. We discussed the pros and cons of them and considered the impact on the current state of labor in Japan.

Merits

The advantages for companies to apply lifetime employment is that it can enable employers to evaluate the workers easily and educate new employees effectively. The job-change rate is highest at 15 ~ 24 years old, which is over 10%, and the rate tends to decrease with age. Therefore, the rate of turnover is considered to be low in companies that apply these systems because the stability of working in one place is highly assured. Therefore, the company as a whole can be expected to develop by increasing the number of employees who can be useful by developing human resources over a long period of time.

On the workers' side, if they work in the same office from the beginning to the end of your career, you will be guaranteed a stable income for several decades.

In other words, it can be said that lifetime employment is beneficial for both companies and workers because of their stability.

Demerits

On the other hand, there are some disadvantages. First, the motivation of workers to take on new challenges may decrease, making it difficult to come up with groundbreaking business ideas. Under the lifetime employment system, once you are employed, most of the workers continue to work for the same company until you retire, so the workers' minimum income is guaranteed even if they do not achieve much. Therefore, it is not unusual for some workers to find no value in actively engaging in their work.

In addition, under the seniority system, workers worry about what their superiors think, and especially when young workers are suffering from harassment, we may not be able to easily consult with those around us maybe be mentally driven into a corner.

Originally, organizations such as the "Human Rights Consultation Office" and labor unions, which were introduced in the interview, exist to protect the rights of workers in the company. However, in a situation where the adverse effects of the seniority system, there may be situations in which it is impossible to accuse their boss to ask him or her to stop the harassment.

Taking into account the merits and demerits mentioned above, we believe that the lifetime employment system and the seniority system should be revised. As an alternative to lifetime employment and the seniority system, we thought it would be a good idea to introduce the performance-based system, which is widely used in Europe and the United States.

However, in Japan today, there are many people who have worked under the lifetime employment system, so even if we try to change from the lifetime employment system to other systems such as the performance-based system, it is unlikely that the introduction will proceed smoothly. On the other hand, in Japan, the Confucian concept of placing importance on hierarchical relationships, which has been prevalent throughout Japan since ancient times, such as the lifetime employment system, has influenced the way people work, but in recent years the view of religion has been fading.

Therefore, it is difficult to drastically change the whole lifetime employment system, but it is possible to gradually change part of the system.

According to the survey, seniority system is widely used, only 3.6% of workers think that promotion should be evaluated only by the number of years of continuous employment, and only 25.8% think that work performance should be added to the number of years of continuous employment.

In other words, many Japanese workers, who have adapted to the lifetime employment system with the spread of Confucianism, believe that personnel evaluation should not be based on lifetime employment or the seniority system.

Therefore, it is expected to be difficult to fundamentally improve the lifetime employment system and the seniority system, which are based on Confucian thought, in Japan today. However, we believe that it is possible to implement partial reforms, such as replacing some of the existing systems that emphasize superior-inferior relationships with systems that emphasize performance rather than the length of service, such as the performance-based system.

Also, if you want to change the current working style, such as lifelong employment or the seniority system, I think it would be a shortcut to realizing this by actively speaking up in cooperation with other workers.

On the Effects of Work Style Reform

In April 2019, a reform of Work Style Reform was implemented, and some companies are promoting the introduction of this system. In this site, we discussed the effects of the changes in working styles that we have introduced on this website and the systems that have been established in line with these changes.

As we mentioned in the interview with a certified social insurance labor consultant, the purpose of the work style reform is to reduce long working hours and to lessen the wage gap between regular and non-regular employees (equal pay for equal work)".

In addition, by eliminating long working hours and wage differentials, Japan aims to achieve a balance between life and work and to slow the declining birthrate, which is one of the most serious social problems in modern Japan.

However, it cannot be said that the work style reform is effective for the measures against the declining birth rate.

First of all, as you can see from the graph above, the marriage rate in Japan has been declining for several 10 years, and the unmarried rate is on the rise.

Under these circumstances, if the wage gap between regular and non-regular employees is narrowed as a result of the promotion of reform of working styles, the number of workers who do not feel the need to get married and who build single-person households may increase.

It can be seen that there are many people in every age group, 18~24, 25~34, and 35~39, who say "not feel the need yet" or "I want to concentrate on my work." as the reason for staying single (the reason why they do not marry).

These results suggest that young workers who originally did not want to marry in Japan do not feel the need to support their spouses in maintaining their household budgets. In other words, if the same wage for the same work is achieved and non-regular workers receive wages that are not much different from regular workers, the need for economic assistance from their spouses will decrease, and the number of young people who remain unmarried may increase.

As the number of unmarried women increases, it will eventually lead to a decline in the number of births, making it difficult to stop the declining birthrate.

In addition, as mentioned on the discretionary work system page of this website, there are some systems in which the treatment of workers may deteriorate, such as the chronic long working hours and the inability to pay wages commensurate with the results of the company's reckless application of the discretionary work system.

However, we can expect to see improvements in the working conditions of non-regular workers and other differences among workers.

Response to the Labor Population Problem

In Japan, it is essential to take measures against the labor shortage caused by the declining birthrate and the aging of society, as mentioned in the section on the reform of working styles on this website. As a result, Japan needs to achieve more with less labor, but Japan's labor productivity remains at a low level, ranking 20th among the 36 OECD countries.

In order to fundamentally solve the problem of the working population, it is necessary to raise the birth rate first, but it is very difficult to do so immediately. For this reason, as I mentioned on the "foreign worker" page, there has been a growing trend to employ foreign workers in recent years.

However, the number of industries in which foreign workers are allowed to work is limited, and there are concerns about language barriers and other issues. For this reason, I think it is important for companies to make efforts to improve productivity.

More specifically, by promoting innovation such as the introduction of AI into some operations, and by allowing workers to work flexibly in accordance with their individual circumstances, such as telework, we can expect to improve productivity and encourage more human resources to work.

As mentioned above, the lifetime employment and seniority system may cause some workers to be unwilling to work and to engage in work, which may result in lower productivity. Therefore, it might be a good idea to consider introducing a part of the performance-based system that we proposed above.

Furthermore, in Japan, "hanko" is required when checking contracts and documents. However, there are times when you have to stop work in order to get your boss to stamp your seal, and this can lead to reduced work efficiency. Therefore, in order to simplify procedures such as document verification, companies may take measures such as digitizing some of the procedures, which may lead to increased productivity.

In addition, in the course of our research, we found that there are a certain number of systems that guarantee the rights of workers and the people involved in them in Japan today. On the other hand, as I mentioned in "current state of labor" various labor problems are still unsolved in Japan.

In order to change this reality, it may be necessary to improve the awareness that Japanese society as a whole is only following what is stipulated in laws and systems, and to encourage workers to take action to protect their positions.

In Japan, laws are revised regularly including the reform of working styles. However, it is also true that there are systems, such as the discretionary working system, that could be abused by companies and lead to a worsening of the working environment. I think there are cases where individuals can respond to such cases if they have accurate knowledge.

For example, if you know that it is possible for you to resign immediately if your working conditions differ from the actual situation, you can protect yourself even if you are treated unfairly by the employer.

Furthermore, in a survey on part-time work for high school students, respondents answered that it would be possible to achieve a balance between study and part-time work as long as workers independently understand their own abilities and the current situation surrounding them.

Based on this opinion, I believe that each worker's efforts to improve his or her own abilities will increase the efficiency of his or her work, which may lead to solutions to problems such as death from overwork and overtime work.

Therefore, in order to improve the working environment and find a way of working that is suitable for each worker, it is essential for each worker to make efforts to improve his or her own abilities and to acquire knowledge about labor issues, as a prerequisite for the development of laws and support by the government.

I hope that this article will help you gain a better understanding of work. In addition, we believe that it is possible for workers to find ways of working that are suited to their individual needs by independently thinking about the current situation surrounding labor based on their own knowledge. We have prepared the following discussion materials to help workers think about their own work, so we hope they will make effective use of them.