Individual Matters
Offices in Japan have seen a revolution over the past two years or so, with the pandemic having ushered in the need for remote work. as living with Covid-19 has become standard, many businesses have back-pedaled or adapted their approach as they navigate a return to the office. Others have come to see the new normal as an opportunity to reflect on where, when, and how employees work, to foster greater productivity, and expand their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
Companies put diversity, equity, and inclusion at the center of return-to-office policies
Offices in Japan have seen a revolution over the past two years or so, with the pandemic having ushered in the need for remote work. Despite being largely unfamiliar with the practice, companies across the country stepped up to the challenge. But, as living with Covid-19 has become standard, many businesses have back-pedaled or adapted their approach as they navigate a return to the office. Others have come to see the new normal as an opportunity to reflect on where, when, and how employees work, to foster greater productivity, and expand their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts.
The ACCJ Journal spoke with leading companies in various industries to explore the lessons they have learned from the pandemic vis-à-vis work and what the future might hold for employees in Japan.
Starting from Behind
When Japanese enterprises were slow to respond to the government’s request, in February 2020, to allow 70 percent of employees to telework to help contain Covid-19, they came under fire. Critics said companies’ working cultures were outdated and being held back by a focus on presenteeism and physical administration tools such as hanko (seals).
A study by Tokyo-based brand consultancy Riskybrand Inc., however, shows that Japan was simply behind the curve. Only five percent of the country’s workforce was practicing telework pre-pandemic (compared with 32 percent in the United States and 27 percent in the United Kingdom), making remote work an abrupt switch for Japanese companies.
Still, many were able to implement the recommendation quickly. According to a Riskybrand survey of some 1,700 businesspeople in Japan, in May 2020 almost 40 percent were working remotely at least three days a week, of whom 20 percent were doing so daily. The larger the company, the more extensive the implementation, with 30 percent of large organizations (those with more than 3,000 staff) offering telework compared with 14 percent of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), defined here as having fewer than 50 employees.
Managed talent services provider MESHD, a brand of Tokyo-based HCCR, was among those to respond swiftly. On the declaration of Covid-19 being a pandemic, the enterprise shifted from office-based work to a compulsory work-from-home model across its Japan and India offices.
“On the whole, the company responded positively to the changes, and we saw no visible dips in performance and limited impact on team dynamics,” said Chief Executive Officer Sean Travers. “We felt the team was working as effectively remotely as they [had been] from the office.”
“Covid-19 and the workstyles adopted to mitigate it have boosted understanding of, and a desire for, greater DEI in business.”
Following the government’s first state of emergency declaration, healthcare company Novartis Pharma also introduced remote work for all staff, unless it was absolutely necessary for them to go to the office or attend critical customer visits. To support employees affected by the closure of schools and childcare centers, Novartis provided additional childcare services until the end of 2020.
Coca-Cola (Japan) Co., Ltd., meanwhile, encouraged employees to work remotely in the early days of the pandemic, before closing its office for a time in March 2020 and asking all staff to telework. On reopening, the organization capped office attendance at 25 percent to ensure employees were allowed to access the office for critical work of specific needs.
From those early days, the uptake of remote work by companies with white-collar workers has continued to rise—and increasingly so with the emergence of the highly contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus. By fall 2021, 52 percent of enterprises in Japan were offering telework, according to statistics portal Statista.
Office Allure
With Japan now well into the third year of the pandemic, many companies are returning to the former status quo.
In a survey of 6,500 companies by Tokyo Shoko Research, Ltd., 27 percent of those offering telework during the height of the pandemic had stopped doing so as of June, up from 21 percent in October 2021. Only 29 percent of those surveyed now offer the option of remote work, down from 37 percent in October 2021. Large enterprises were more flexible (57 percent offered telework) compared with 24 percent of SMEs.
And it is not only companies that are trying to go back to the former normal. About one-quarter of those offering teleworking said only 10 percent of their staff were using the option as of June 2022.
The reasons for this are unclear, especially as 80 percent of employees surveyed by Teikoku Databank Ltd. in February 2022 said they wanted to continue teleworking, citing reasons such as saving time on commuting, having freedom to care for family members, or gaining greater work–life balance.
But the past two years have shown that teleworking can pose difficulties for some groups, including those without an adequate office setup or a conducive working environment at home, which may make returning to the office appealing.
From the early days of the pandemic, EY Japan recognized that not everyone would have the ideal environment for telework and supported staff financially by purchasing display monitors, microphones, and other equipment for their use at home.
The company’s DEI leader, Megumi Umeda, said the move acknowledged the potential of remote work to “enhance the workforce by welcoming working mothers, people with disabilities, and others who have limitations on their workplace and working hours.”
Patrick Jordan, vice president of human resources for Coca-Cola Japan & Korea at The Coca-Cola Company, also found that not all staff were equipped—physically, mentally, or emotionally—to work from home, noting that the company’s implementation of telework was “a great learning experience” regarding employee needs.
“While we wanted to ensure the safety of our employees from Covid, we also recognized we have to ensure their safety in many other ways, such as mental health,” said Jordan, adding that staff with medical concerns or who were uncomfortable working at home were allowed to return to the office, while undertaking thorough infection control measures.
For MESHD’s Travers, only a few months of telework brought to light issues for new hires. “New joiners were really struggling with their onboarding,” he said, noting that he “underestimated the impact of them not being in the same room as senior members” who could guide them in phone interactions, exchanges with fellow employees, day-to-day queries, and so on.
Learning Lessons
As the advantages and disadvantages of telework have become more apparent, so too have some successful approaches to future workstyles. Many companies have been finding out more about what employees want and giving them the choice to work in ways that suit them, all the while offering a hybrid work model.
Coca-Cola removed the office’s staff capacity rate of 25 percent in June and monitored attendance to see if there were any changes. When the number of staff working in the office didn’t rise, leaders had a sense of validation, believing that staff “didn’t want to return, didn’t see value in returning, or were not sure how to return,” explained Jordan.
However, the subsequent introduction of flex guidelines, to enable teams to choose how to work virtually, has resulted in an organic increase in attendance to 30 percent capacity. This shows that “clearer instructions are needed to help people settle into a more balanced hybrid way of working,” he added.
He also pointed out that survey data is critical for gaining better understanding of the desirable elements of hybrid working, as well as people’s concerns about working at the office or at home.
Flexibility is also key at Novartis. The company offers a framework called Choice with Responsibility, which was implemented in July 2020 in the belief that the pandemic would last longer than the world anticipated.
“This evolving framework asks employees and leaders to continue redesigning the way we work and make the best choices for high-impact hybrid work—not just for the individual but also for the team,” explained Chanel Leitch, country head of people and organization for Japan at Novartis.
Novartis has a new space for individual work which can be easily converted for small group discussions or medium-sized group short meetings.
While the company continues to restrict the number of staff working at headquarters to 50 percent of each division at any one time, other limitations, such as the number of face-to-face attendees in meetings, have been relaxed to give staff autonomy over their workstyle. As a result, “each employee is now used to making sound decisions as to how they can best produce outcomes as an individual and a team in a hybrid working environment,” said Leitch, adding that the approach is “a key driver of engagement and continued retention.”
Similarly, EY Japan’s recent people survey also shows that continuing to offer telework options has resulted in improved engagement and inclusivity.
Since introducing this workstyle in 2018, the company launched its Flex and Remote Program in 2020 as a commitment to employees. EY Japan has promised to continue offering staff flexibility regarding where and when they work, regardless of the Covid-19 situation.
“Each person’s schedule is unique, considering the needs of the individual, the project they are working on, and the needs of the client and the team,” and therefore requires flexibility, Umeda said.
A new volunteer program was implemented to provide financial support to employees who wanted to move outside central Tokyo and work remotely from the suburbs. This supports employees desire to live outside Tokyo and contributes to the larger community.
Big Picture Thinking
Looking ahead, the future of work is likely to focus on how and why people work, as much as where and when they work. For many companies, the pandemic has shone a light on what work traditionally has been and has prompted or accelerated discussion on what work could be after some out-of-the-box thinking.
“As an organization, we need to think about the reasons we want our team to spend time together in the office,” said Travers. “It needs to go beyond just working at your desk.”
Indeed, with staff now able to conduct meetings online and do “deep work” and other individual-based tasks remotely, companies are keen for office-based time to focus on interactive activities, such as mind mapping and team building.
Coca-Cola has redesigned one floor of its headquarters as the Coke Collaboration Center, an experimental initiative to encourage teamwork via hot desks, lockers, meeting spots for different groups, and phone booths for individual or remote meeting participation.
EY Japan’s Umeda agrees that the role of the office has changed, noting that it should “become a collaboration space for colleagues, clients, and business partners, not a workspace.”
And, given that online employee social events “could never really be a substitute for an in-person, on-premises event,” office time should also be used for staff to spend time together and build relationships with each other, said Travers. For MESHD, a key reason for the hybrid work model is to forge a strong company culture and sense of community via employees’ in-office time.
Jordan agrees, noting that “the need for social interaction is very important.”
To encourage it, Coca-Cola has begun offering events at the office such as free lunches in the cafeteria, a summer festival that includes employees’ family members, and a bar serving alcoholic beverages.
“Each employee is now used to making sound decisions as to how they can best produce outcomes as an individual and a team in a hybrid working environment … the approach is a key driver of engagement and continued retention.”
Most important though, Covid-19 and the workstyles adopted to mitigate it have boosted understanding of, and a desire for, greater DEI in business.
EY Japan’s Umeda said people’s own challenges during the pandemic had made them “recognize the importance of inclusiveness, equity, and respect for others.”
The Novartis Choice with Responsibility framework has enabled the company to further embrace diverse needs and “look for ways to progress in building an inclusive environment,” said Leitch.
And at Coca-Cola, the hybrid work model is fostering inclusivity. “Returning to the office is all about inclusion,” said Jordan. “Each [employee] has developed personal habits which interact with their professional habits … so we need to be mindful of each individual’s needs and not treat everyone the same.”
MESHD’s Travers also has staff front of mind. The pandemic has enabled him to “come to the realization that it’s the employees who will dictate the future of work, irrespective of companies establishing regulations,” he said.
Indeed, the pandemic has increased employees’ willingness to change employers if they are not satisfied with their workstyle. In June, the JLL Workforce Preferences Barometer found three out of four of the 4,000 office workers surveyed would reconsider their involvement with their company if they wanted greater work flexibility.
Setting up suitable work models and fostering DEI has, therefore, never been so important for recruitment and retention.
Certainly, Travers notes, companies investing “time, money, and resources into their employees’ skills, emotional wellbeing, and job satisfaction will reap the rewards in the future.”
Life Beyond Covid-19
Since the first case of Covid-19 was confirmed in Japan in January 2020, the world as we know it has changed in many ways—not least of which has been a transformation in how we study, work, and socialize. In light of this, The ACCJ Journal spoke to professionals in business and education, as well as soon-to-be-graduates, to learn about the challenges they’ve faced—and the solutions they’ve implemented—in a period defined by the pandemic.
Professionals, graduates, and new hires share how workplace expectations have changed
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Since the first case of Covid-19 was confirmed in Japan in January 2020, the world as we know it has changed in many ways—not least of which has been a transformation in how we study, work, and socialize.
In light of this, The ACCJ Journal spoke to professionals in business and education, as well as soon-to-be-graduates, to learn about the challenges they’ve faced—and the solutions they’ve implemented—in a period defined by the pandemic.
They said work and study will not return to pre-pandemic methods, and agreed that employees and students in the so-called new normal era have different expectations than before about the future of work and education.
Flexibility Is Expected
For universities, the pandemic has led to changes in how they deliver courses and engage with students.
Matthew Wilson, dean of Temple University, Japan Campus, said that before the pandemic “remote work was not an option,” because all instruction was carried out in person. That has changed. Nationwide, social distancing rules encourage online instruction. In some cases, at Temple, teaching has been conducted from offices repurposed for remote lecturing, with some students—especially those overseas—being restricted to remote participation.
How has the university implemented the new rules? They began by identifying which departments could work remotely and which were better suited to on-campus work.
They settled on a hybrid strategic plan according to which some staff and faculty work from home while others remain on campus, depending on the needs of particular departments. Students have been studying exclusively from home, while others have been in the classroom.
Remote study, Wilson added, has been particularly challenging for the 1,400 students on the campus, all of whom suddenly were faced—for the first time—with having to learn online.
Looking back, he acknowledges that things will not completely return to pre-Covid-19 ways. “We realized how, in this environment, stability is key, and flexibility has almost become an expectation.”
Foreign Engagement
Like Wilson, Stephen Zurcher, dean of the Asian studies program at Kansai Gaidai University, faced severe challenges when Covid-19 hit. In his case, that meant facilitating hundreds of study-abroad students at the university on semester- or year-long programs.
Following a schedule common at institutions outside Japan, Kansai Gaidai University had started its winter semester when nationwide calls for remote work and teaching began in early 2020.
At that time, the university had only a handful of days to transition to online—and mostly remote—instruction, Zurcher recalled. By the next semester, when their foreign students had left Japan, instruction became fully remote.
One challenge was how to instruct students who were living across different time zones. To this end, some courses were delivered in real time while others were pre-recorded and made available on demand.
In hindsight, Kansai Gaidai University was ahead of the online learning curve: before the pandemic, they had incorporated remote instruction and study in collaboration with partner universities under a program called Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), a cross-border learning initiative involving institutions, faculty, and students.
“I don’t know how, but in the end, it all worked out,” Zurcher said. “We did a mid-semester survey of the students and, to my great surprise, the ratings of the classes and their interactions with the professors had jumped 15 points.”
While students, naturally, would have preferred in-person classes on campus, by some measures, student engagement with instructors had increased, he added, as had their level of satisfaction with remote learning.
Serving the Underserved
Zurcher’s experience is largely shared by Tom Mason, executive director of the United States–Japan Bridging Foundation (USJBF), a non-profit that provides sponsorship to underrepresented students so that they can study in Japan for a semester or a year.
Due to pandemic-related international travel restrictions, the USJBF exchange program was put on hold for about two years. But, rather than end it, the organization began online training programs, and these became a hit with students.
“We ran a webinar series called ‘How to find Japan-related careers.’ The purpose of that was to connect students to people who not only have found jobs in Japan, but also Japan-related jobs in the United States,” Mason explained.
Between 200 and 300 undergraduates participated in each seminar, suggesting that interest in Japan had not waned, despite the pandemic and restrictions on international travel.
However, Mason admits that most participants would have preferred in-person events. And industry experts acknowledge that, although remote learning—including interactive webinars and COIL—has expanded, it can neither fully replicate nor totally replace in-person cultural exchange.
“A lot of language learning is done by observing how people speak in real life,” he said. “And then there are the accidental interactions, which don’t really occur online.”
As the pandemic abates and international travel restrictions are set to be relaxed, the USJBF has launched online recruitment initiatives for its next batch of candidates.
“In the past, what we did was send them the finances and send them abroad. But now, we are able to run pre-departure orientations, as well as networking and mentorship opportunities, online.
“And, when they are in Japan, we can deliver supplemental infrastructure programs in person. Our students are based across Japan, from Hokkaido to Okinawa, so they’ll have networking programs in major cities—and we’re able to build that out because of remote working technologies.”
University Challenge
For students, the Covid-19 pandemic upended studying in ways previously unimagined. That was the case for Toshimasa Hatori, a fourth-year international business student and former student government vice-president at Temple University, Japan Campus.
Luckily for Hatori, he entered the university in fall 2019, just before the pandemic spread to Japan, and thus was able to enjoy some on-campus life, if only briefly.
Were there challenges when remote learning began? There were many. One was adjusting to online classes.
“Another was test-taking: the professors were concerned about plagiarism, which is a valid concern,” he explained.
And students were not really able to enjoy life on the university’s new campus, which had opened in August 2019, or use its facilities. “I was playing basketball, and I was the captain, but we couldn’t use our brand-new gym.”
Hatori recalled being a freshman. “Social gatherings were constrained; I couldn’t go to regular restaurants, nor could I hang out with my friends at a house party. We couldn’t even go to a supermarket at the outset of the pandemic.”
Without the opportunity to socialize in person, students chose, instead, to maintain friendships online via video platforms such as Zoom and the messaging app LINE.
However, this way of socializing has come at a cost. Jun Ikeda (not his real name), a fourth-year student based in Tokyo, said: “All conversations are now online, making it difficult to feel the other person’s emotions. This is especially true for people you meet for the first time.”
New Generation at Work
The so-called new normal has altered Hatori and Ikeda’s expectations of the workplace. When they start their jobs later this year, both expect hybrid options to be the norm, a change from their pre-pandemic expectations.
“Many friends of mine want a hybrid work experience,” Ikeda shared.
Despite the disruption that many students have faced during this period, some have found a silver lining in the Covid-19 cloud.
Miku Hashimoto (not her real name), a fourth-year student, told The ACCJ Journal: “I stayed in my hometown for a year with my family, thanks to the pandemic, and found that I like living in the country, where I can enjoy my hobbies and be close to family.”
Mark Davidson, director of government and external affairs at Amway Japan G.K., is sympathetic to the experience of students such as Hatori, Ikeda, and Hashimoto. Davidson’s own daughter had to navigate her university career during the pandemic.
“I have a daughter who is a university student. She did an internship in New York last summer, and it wound up being—except for two days—all online. That was not the best experience for her.”
A co-chair of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (ACCJ) Education Committee, Davidson believes that first-time hires will be challenged in new ways in a post-pandemic world. To succeed, they’ll need a diverse set of skills.
“More than ever, students will need a broad-based liberal arts background,” he predicted. “While they’ll need technical skills, more than anything else, they’ll need resilience and an analytical mindset to figure out problems—especially in this remote environment—that they may not have seen before.”
Young Professionals
But it’s not only students who have been challenged during the pandemic. Young professionals, too, have faced difficulties.
John W. Carlson III, for instance, transitioned to a new role at Novartis Japan in the summer of 2021, when the pandemic was raging. Carlson is co-chair of the ACCJ’s Young Professionals Forum (YPF) and the Healthcare Committee.
He is the new commercial partnerships lead and a senior strategic assistant at healthcare company Novartis Japan, where most of his work has been remote.
For new transplants like him, the early days in a company can be the most challenging. “Orientation is actually the hardest part, because you have to get people engaged with the company,” he explained.
“And the big challenge is not working within a department, but working collaboratively with colleagues—whom you would have met if you were working in the office—in other departments.”
Due to the pandemic, Novartis Japan began a redesign of the office, complete with remote-work technology which facilitates hybrid workstyles, according to Carlson.
“Essentially, employees get to choose which workstyle or format they wish to use.”
While the final redesign is yet to be seen, the expectation is that employees will split their work between office and remote locations.
“The office has become a place for collaboration, which requires more in-person work, while individual tasks, such as writing and analysis, lend themselves very well to remote work,” Carlson added.
In-Person, Remote, Hybrid
Despite the advent of new workstyles, challenges remain for young professionals. As many of them do not have a developed social network, feelings of isolation are common, as was the case with the students above.
“Mid-career professionals tend to have a house, children, family, and are more engaged with the business community, whereas young professionals are cut off from their university and have a relatively narrow network,” Carlson explained.
As a result, some young professionals in the YPF have had their health—in particular their mental health—adversely affected. It is a goal of the YPF to mitigate such isolation via in-person or hybrid networking events.
That said, Carlson recognizes that some young professionals have thrived under the prevailing online networking events held by the YPF.
Co-chair Anna Kimuro agrees.
Speaking personally, Kimuro, who is a client leader at IBM Japan, noted that remote work has allowed more young professionals than before to join online YPF events. One reason for the increase is that being remote negates the need to commute to a physical venue, leading to more time—and more opportunity—to participate remotely.
In a recent online event, members discussed how to expand their network informally within the ACCJ. One suggestion was to hold speed dating-style networking games where committee members meet chamber leaders.
But with the pandemic potentially waning, there has been a growing clamor for in-person events—or, at least, multichannel, hybrid ones—Kimuro added.
The New Normal
For companies, the pandemic caused major changes to internal and external processes. At Amway Japan, for example, all recruitment shifted to online-only processes from around March 2020, explained Hiroyo Aihara, the company’s human resources director.
“Everything changed: candidate meetings, job interviews, actual onboarding, orientation meetings with division heads, even how we present our company to candidates. All went online,” Aihara said.
The transition to digital-only was not easy for staff and new hires. In-person onboarding, for instance, became a singular affair conducted during a one-off visit to the office to receive key items, such as a work computer. And even then, the visit was socially distanced.
What’s more, there was a sharp learning curve to be navigated by staff, especially mid-career professionals experiencing remote work for the first time, Aihara admitted.
Which is not to say that remote work has been a cakewalk for recruits; it has not. That’s because many of Amway Japan’s new hires are returnee Japanese, or Korean and Chinese graduates settling in Japan from overseas.
For them, remote work was a double blow. “They usually live alone and need to find an apartment in Japan,” she explained. “But then, once they were ready for work, we had to tell them, ‘Please work from home.’”
That said, the transition to remote work was made easier because, even before the pandemic began, the company already had in place flexible workstyles, including some remote work.
“We were already allowing some employees to work two days per week from home, and we had initiatives such as dress-your-own-way,” Aihara added.
Her colleague, Davidson, who is also chair of the ACCJ’s Government Relations Committee, agrees. In the future, he said, companies will have to ensure that remote work feels personalized.
A version of the proverbial water cooler—the glue that holds companies and society together—will be required to garner comradeship among colleagues and students, whether that’s in person, online, or via hybrid solutions, Davidson concluded.