Growing rift between companies and employees over telework

While the Japanese government continues to promote teleworking and employees show a growing inclination to work from home, Japanese companies are reluctant to loosen their reins.

It seems to be a classic trust issue. I find it a bit surprising, as companies had two years to look for feasible long-term strategies.

The discrepancy comes despite the Japanese government's continued promotion of teleworking as an important way to cut down on COVID-19 cases. And researchers warn that companies may find themselves increasingly under pressure to address the strong desire among employees for the ability to work from home. The polling shows that a large majority of those working from home want to continue doing so, but companies remain lukewarm about teleworking--particularly with no state of emergency in place over the novel coronavirus and pre-emergency measures lifted. Company officials told opinion researchers that teleworking comes with several disadvantages. For example, it can hamper employee communication and make it difficult to assess how much work progress is being made from home.

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The rift hardly surprises me with my experience of being micromanaged and treated like a child in a Japanese office. I now get my work done when I feel like and am more productive while also contributing more to running the household and supporting the ever-overworked Mrs Lothor.

I've also recently started working part time for a Dutch company (remotely alas!) and spent three hours attending various Zoom meetings yesterday with about 30 other people. Most of the people work remotely, and I haven't seen such happy looking staff in decades!

I think the internal pressure on Japanese companies to allow employees to work remotely will increase once their financial departments realise how much they can save on transportation, office rental, car parks, cafeterias, etc. And how much more efficient and productive satisfied teleworkers are.

In most cases, it's simply unnecessary to meet clients or staff members face to face. My wife has to go to the office once in two months, and she feels that's more than enough.

I find Japanese open office noise and distracting and yes having the boss watch you and micromanage is big. I thought this article was interesting Why Do Japanese Like Open Plan Offices? | MANABINK

On saving money I know that is happening here in the west. I was personally invovled in closing several offices the past two years. We are combining a couple more in the coming months leaving us with less desks than people so when we want to go in we "hot desk" basically checking out a desk online and we would not be able to come in every day. Management is unsure yet on weather we will need to come in a couple days a week or not. The savings is significant. Working remote is great I can hop on my bike trainer or lift dumbbells between meetings, I can work from the auto shop when I get new tires it sure makes me a lot more satisfied.
The minus which is fine for me is you never really leave work so one works more hours but they are more pleasant hours.

I know that I have a different opinion than many on this. I have come into the office during the entire pandemic. It has just been myself and a few others. What I have noticed is that the normal conversations, cross team discussions, and improvements have been impacted in a very drastic way. I work in IT and a lot of those so called "water cooler/coffee machine" discussions result in a lot of unique improvements and solutions. So many of these discussions just don't happen, at least not to the same extent, over chat. You can't walk by someone's cube and hear them trying to figure out an issue and stop and say, "Well actually have you considered X?", because you don't even know the discussion is happening.

I also prefer the clear separation of home and work and the lack of distractions at the office.

What I do like is the ability to work remotely when I need to, it provides some flexibility that just wasn't there before.

Because of bad weather here in Maine during the winter , it became popular. The price of gas and long commutes to work here have made people not want to go back to the office at all or just a few days a week. Zoom meetings for almost everything are real popular here. I used to have a 45 minute drive to work and home everyday on the Turnpike and am very glad to be retired.

Uncle Frank said:

Because of bad weather here in Maine during the winter , it became popular. The price of gas and long commutes to work here have made people not want to go back to the office at all or just a few days a week. Zoom meetings for almost everything are real popular here. I used to have a 45 minute drive to work and home everyday on the Turnpike and am very glad to be retired.

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There defiantly are benefits to it, its just not a no-impact trade off in my view.

Petaris said:

What I do like is the ability to work remotely when I need to, it provides some flexibility that just wasn't there before.

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Excellent point. That's what it boils down to: give your staff the freedom and the flexibility to decide where they want to work, depending on their job requirements and preferences.

There's no chance there won't be a heavy regression back to people be forced into the office. Its never been about productivity, especially in a country where management has much more power than shareholders and where the startup scene is far smaller. Even in western countries the managers, who like everywhere are disproportionately power-tripping self-indulgent psychos, can't stomach it and are trying to wind it back as hard as they can. Its about social hierarchy, domination and control, the status quo, and being a stick in the mud. How can I enjoy wasting my employees time in hours of pointless meetings, and eyeballing and micromanaging them and pushing them around for my own pleasure, if I can't see and control their bodies directly?

The thing I've always been most confused at with Japan though, is that in a country with such a tight labor pool, and with such expensive corporate real estate, how is management able to get away with it? Perhaps someone with better insight than me can explain it.

Either way the best solution remains either running your own shop, or working remotely for foreign companies and/or those run by non-fossils.

HanSolo said:

The thing I've always been most confused at with Japan though, is that in a country with such a tight labor pool, and with such expensive corporate real estate, how is management able to get away with it? Perhaps someone with better insight than me can explain it.

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It's a tight labor pool but for the most part still not very mobile as there is some stigma in job hopping. This is less true than it used to be but workers still are, for the most part, sucking it up.