Blogs and Articles from Third Way Forum Membrs

・In Europe it is normal to have more than 30 days of entitled holidays and people usually consume them all.

・In Japan, people find it very difficult to tell customers that they are unavailable because of their vacation. They are afraid that it is insinuating “my vacation is more important than customers”.

・Also, the Japanese people are afraid to be seen lazy and self-centered when everybody else is working long hours to achieve their targets. They don’t want to be blamed later for taking a long vacation if they or their company do not meet the targets.

・Many Japanese people have more than 20 days accumulated as their paid holidays, but most people consume half or even less. The max number of days they take consecutively is usually 3-5.

・In Japan, because of the generalist culture without any specific job description, when you are off, your work goes to someone else. In the West, someone will cover you when you are off but basically your job is going to be handled by you when you come back. You know what your job is so you can manage your client and work load by selecting the right timing of vacation and setting up some back up in place. On the other hand, in Japan, as people work as a group, one person’s absence burdens the whole team. Because of this sense of guilt and peer pressure, the Japanese hesitate to take a long vacation even if they want to.

・The concept about the contract is playing a big role here. In the Western world, the contract is sacred. If it is written there that you are entitled to take a certain number of vacation days, it’s your right to take them. As long as you manage your work, you have no need to hesitate to take your vacation. In Japan, however, most people don’t have any employment contract. The vacation days are just specified in the work rules if the company. As nobody consumes all entitled days ever, the company is sending an indirect message to employees “Don’t take so many days off!”.

・About an expat taking her entitled 6 week holidays, many foreigners who are in Japan for a short time say “of course, take it. It’s your entitlement.” But many foreigners who have lived long in Japan tend to say “First, build relationship with people before taking such a long vacation.”

・Financial institutions have the concept of block leave and for a compliance reason, every employee has to take a 5-10days off consecutively. Many other industries could copy the same practice if employees do not voluntarily take holidays.

・Although the Japanese don’t take their paid holidays, Japan has many more national holidays than any other countries. Also, the Japanese workers often manage to sleep during the working hours at the lobby, on the train and in the car etc. Many Japanese want to believe that they are diligent and hard-working because they don’t take long holidays. But if we pay attention to how they work on a daily basis, their productivity is highly questionable.

・In today’s pandemic era, taking a long vacation to go somewhere far is less relevant, and managing oneself on and off everyday seems to be more relevant for work/life integration.

・As long as the Japanese employees have a strong sense of guilt to take vacations and the company is indirectly sending a message to discourage them to take vacations, the situation will never improve. In some countries, unconsumed holidays have to be accrued as a financial liability in the company finance. If such an accounting practice becomes mandatory in Japan as well, then Japanese companies will end up having so much financial damage if most of their employees continue to keep their entitled holidays unconsumed. Only then, Japanese companies will probably start sending a very strong message encouraging employees to consume all entitled vacation days.