Blogs and Articles from Third Way Forum Membrs
Jun 23, 2022
Discussion#1 The Tenkin (The Relocation Practice in Japan)
Blogs from The Third Way Working Group
- A physical relocation of an employee to a different location could arise from different needs including staffing, employee development, fraud prevention, knowledge transfer, and change of leadership etc.
- In the international business, international expat assignments have been common. And the expat package which often includes housing support and child education support is often seen as the ultimate attraction and benefit for the assignees. Now many global companies are scaling down their expat assignments due to pandemic and remote working practice, but it is still seen as a great opportunity to develop one’s own market value and save a lot of money by many global professionals.
- One of the major difference between international assignments of global companies and the relocation practice of Japanese companies is about the room for discussion and mutual agreement. In global companies, assignments that require physical relocation are based on mutual agreement. Companies and affected employees discuss and try to agree before the final decision is made. However, it has been much more one-sidedly decided in Japan. Companies decide and employees hardly have a say and just follow the decision.
- This one-sided practice has been possible in Japan because the fundamental assumption was that companies were going to take care of their employees throughout their career.
- The question is who exactly are deciding who goes where and when in Japanese companies? It is usually a handful people who are in HR or in senior management team who are supposed to know a lot about individual employees. But it is obviously very difficult for just 4 or 5 people to decide the right next step of thousands of individual employees. So for some people, the company decisions may work very well and support their career, but for others the company decisions may not work well and cause a lot of misery.
- As Japanese companies have developed their employees as generalist rather than specialist, it is very difficult for companies to explain why a certain person is assigned to a certain position. Why is this generalist better than that generalist? Why is one generalist working in the HQs in Tokyo while another generalist is working at a factory in a remote area? If the company side can not explain why he/she is assigned to a remote place with logical reasons with certain career benefits , all the relocation and people assignment decisions from the company seem just arbitrary.
- Therefore, it is essential for the company to explain why this move is good for the person’s career when it is relocating someone.
- Given the scarcity of young talent, young people are becoming much more picky about selecting companies and thinking more seriously about “what’s in it for me?”. Also, the technology is allowing people to work from home now. The government is also promoting company employees to spend more time with their families or to start a family to tackle the very low birth rate issue in Japan. So the physical relocation which often makes the assignees business bachelors and divide families sounds contradicting to the curret social trend. Also, the increasing awareness of human rights does not support the one-sided relocation decision by the company without giving employees any room for discussion.
- That’s why more and more Japanese are also questioning about the relevancy of this traditional Tenkin practice.
- However, there are still many old fashioned Japanese business leaders, many generalists and also many new grads who just joined companies without any idea what they really want to do. These people are still the majority of employees in Japan and they could create a big peer pressure for others to behave in the same way, i.e. just follow the order and go anywhere. With the increasing number of foreign national employees in Japan, it could be potentially a big problem as foreign employees can be compared with the Japanese employees and they may be ordered to go somewhere far away and expected to obey without any discussion/negation opportunity (human rights?).
- There is a kind of caste system in many Japanese companies. When they hire employees, they hire them either as “generalist employee with open locations” or “generalist employee with limited area”. If you are hired as open location employee, you are seen and treated as main steam employees. If you are hired as limited area employee, you are seen and treated as lower ranked country-side employees. However, in today’s remote working era, this status segregation also seems odd and irrelevant. Even discriminatory.
- The company still needs to assign staff in all the business locations. If they are operating in remote rural areas and they can not hire enough local employees, they need to send someone there. But less and less people are willing to go to a remote place away from their hometown and away from their families. It looks like that more and more companies will be forced to pull out of the rural locations in the near future due to the lack of customers as well as lack of workers who are willing to go and stay there.
- In the international business, international expat assignments have been common. And the expat package which often includes housing support and child education support is often seen as the ultimate attraction and benefit for the assignees. Now many global companies are scaling down their expat assignments due to pandemic and remote working practice, but it is still seen as a great opportunity to develop one’s own market value and save a lot of money by many global professionals.
- One of the major difference between international assignments of global companies and the relocation practice of Japanese companies is about the room for discussion and mutual agreement. In global companies, assignments that require physical relocation are based on mutual agreement. Companies and affected employees discuss and try to agree before the final decision is made. However, it has been much more one-sidedly decided in Japan. Companies decide and employees hardly have a say and just follow the decision.
- This one-sided practice has been possible in Japan because the fundamental assumption was that companies were going to take care of their employees throughout their career.
- The question is who exactly are deciding who goes where and when in Japanese companies? It is usually a handful people who are in HR or in senior management team who are supposed to know a lot about individual employees. But it is obviously very difficult for just 4 or 5 people to decide the right next step of thousands of individual employees. So for some people, the company decisions may work very well and support their career, but for others the company decisions may not work well and cause a lot of misery.
- As Japanese companies have developed their employees as generalist rather than specialist, it is very difficult for companies to explain why a certain person is assigned to a certain position. Why is this generalist better than that generalist? Why is one generalist working in the HQs in Tokyo while another generalist is working at a factory in a remote area? If the company side can not explain why he/she is assigned to a remote place with logical reasons with certain career benefits , all the relocation and people assignment decisions from the company seem just arbitrary.
- Therefore, it is essential for the company to explain why this move is good for the person’s career when it is relocating someone.
- Given the scarcity of young talent, young people are becoming much more picky about selecting companies and thinking more seriously about “what’s in it for me?”. Also, the technology is allowing people to work from home now. The government is also promoting company employees to spend more time with their families or to start a family to tackle the very low birth rate issue in Japan. So the physical relocation which often makes the assignees business bachelors and divide families sounds contradicting to the curret social trend. Also, the increasing awareness of human rights does not support the one-sided relocation decision by the company without giving employees any room for discussion.
- That’s why more and more Japanese are also questioning about the relevancy of this traditional Tenkin practice.
- However, there are still many old fashioned Japanese business leaders, many generalists and also many new grads who just joined companies without any idea what they really want to do. These people are still the majority of employees in Japan and they could create a big peer pressure for others to behave in the same way, i.e. just follow the order and go anywhere. With the increasing number of foreign national employees in Japan, it could be potentially a big problem as foreign employees can be compared with the Japanese employees and they may be ordered to go somewhere far away and expected to obey without any discussion/negation opportunity (human rights?).
- There is a kind of caste system in many Japanese companies. When they hire employees, they hire them either as “generalist employee with open locations” or “generalist employee with limited area”. If you are hired as open location employee, you are seen and treated as main steam employees. If you are hired as limited area employee, you are seen and treated as lower ranked country-side employees. However, in today’s remote working era, this status segregation also seems odd and irrelevant. Even discriminatory.
- The company still needs to assign staff in all the business locations. If they are operating in remote rural areas and they can not hire enough local employees, they need to send someone there. But less and less people are willing to go to a remote place away from their hometown and away from their families. It looks like that more and more companies will be forced to pull out of the rural locations in the near future due to the lack of customers as well as lack of workers who are willing to go and stay there.
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