Blogs and Articles from Third Way Forum Membrs

・ Japanese people’s attitude toward switching jobs have changed and become much more open. It has been encouraged by a lot of recruitment services available and heavily promoted by the media.

・ There has been a big difference of attitude between older and younger Japanese. While younger Japanese tend to be more open, older Japanese find it still risky to go to a different company even if a better package is offered or there is a big frustration at the current company.

・ Even young Japanese people are often hindered by making a move by their spouse, which is known as the spouse block “嫁ブロック” . The spouse often opposes the idea of switching the job due to uncertainty and hope for stability. Especially when the brand of the company is less prestigious or the company is still at the start-up stage, the spouse block often happens in Japan (but not only in Japan) and the person ends up staying at the current company.

・ The influence of the spouse could work in the opposite direction as well. If the amount of complains the person brings home increases, you may get kicked by your spouse to change the job asap.

・ Many Japanese employees keep their cards very close to their chest until the very last moment and do not show any frustration until the day they submit their resignation. So quite often companies have no chance to make any counter offer to retain them.

・ A person’s open-mindedness toward job switching is often determined by whether the person perceives his current employment as stability or stagnation. While younger Japanese tend to see their employment more as stagnation and are more open-minded, they have never experienced any economic growth over the past 30 years in Japan so they have difficulty to imagine their positive future even if they switch jobs. Some pessimism seems to be the norm among young people regarding their corporate career.

・ Whether a person has transferrable skills or not also determines the degree of willingness to switch jobs. So called generalists tend to hesitate to switch jobs while people who have their own professional field are willing to the same or similar job cross-company or even cross-industry.

・ The openness to change the company also depend on the lines of businesses. In companies with defined roles the sales and revenue generating employees are more open for changes, while employees in supporting or operations roles tend to stay in their positions.

・ Some big Japanese company has struggled to manage both the Japanese and international businesses by the parallel usage of two HR systems. One for the domestic Japanese people and the other one for international people. But now the company is trying to consolidate the two systems to create something new.

・ Many Japanese companies had a seniority-based compensation scheme for a long time and did not have any clearly defined pay schemed based on “pay for the job” and “pay for performance”. One the other hand, the strength of the Japanese people system has been flexibility of people assignment and development of well-rounded leaders. If we could find a way to address the payment scheme issues while maintaining the flexible people assignment and well-rounded leadership development in a modern way, it could be a great Third Way solution.

・ The Labor market liquidity is increasing in Japan especially among young people. However, what is noticeable is that more and more young Japanese people do not quit to join competitors. They quit to do something totally different such as being a YouTuber, starting their own business or joining a completely different industry.