Japan’s Stagnating Work-Life Balance

Japan has come back to life since pandemic restrictions were lifted in May. Summer festivals have returned in full force, as has the number of foreign tourists.

One return to the status quo ante, however, is less welcome. The pandemic was expected to permanently shift working patterns, but after three years, corporate Japan is eager to return to a pre-pandemic life. Companies across the country are ditching remote work and calling for employees to again commute into the office.

The Japan Productivity Center revealed that the rate of teleworking among company employees as of August fell to 15.5 percent – the lowest since the pandemic began. When the survey was first conducted in May 2020, the rate stood at 31.5 percent. The decline has been most noticeable among large companies, which saw a fall by 10 percentage points compared to six months ago.

The concept of work-life balance was proposed in the Japanese Diet back in 2007. It was pitched as a solution to Japan’s labor shortage and falling population; the idea was to facilitate corporate flexibility and improve labor force participation rates among women. Another selling point was avoiding Tokyo’s infamous morning commuting rush. However, flexible working conditions, including telework, weren’t widely adopted by companies until it became a mandatory measure as a part of curbing the spread of COVID-19.

During the height of the pandemic the Japanese government pushed companies to reduce the number of employees commuting to work by 70 percent. Medium- to large-sized companies were thrust into managing staff virtually without prior experience. The initial telework transition period was an infrastructure nightmare amid the introduction to new online meeting platforms, limits on internet bandwidth at home, and cybersecurity issues. There were also administrative challenges in terms of getting decisions and contracts formally approved without Japan’s traditional hand stamp, known as a hanko.

Japan’s global reputation as a technological innovator and high-tech society was rudely exposed in 2021 after foreign media reported that the daily nationwide COVID-19 tally was calculated via fax machine. But there were earlier signs of Japan’s digital lag. In May 2020 then-Prime Minister Abe Shinzo was praised for unexpectedly ordering the closure of all public schools after an outbreak of COVID-19. This led to parents scrambling to find childcare in a matter of days and bargaining with employers to be allowed to work from home at a time when telework was unheard of.

Japan’s organizational culture is a major factor behind the limited embrace of teleworking. Japanese workers have a strong sense of corporate belonging known as in-group collectivism. The GLOBE project survey of global leadership traits suggests that Japanese companies are performance-oriented, but the emphasis is put on working together to achieve a goal over individual goals. An ordinary Japanese company employee is said to lack confidence working alone and prefers team work.

Then there are the practical career benefits of meeting face-to-face at the office. Gathering together in an office gives employees a chance to show they are working hard and gives managers a chance to monitor employees and track their progress. That is why physical attendance in the office is part of the traditional criteria for a hard-working employee.

A remote work survey by Hitotsubashi University between 2020 to 2021 found that productivity among telecommuters in Japan was on average 20 percent lower compared to being in the office. But there is a strong disconnect between what employees think of this change versus what their employers think. According to the survey, 60 percent of respondents hoped to continue working at the same pace after the pandemic is resolved, but 80 percent of firms hoped to return to the original pre-pandemic work style or at least reduce the number of remote working days.

In a typical Japanese company, numerous studies show patterns of “self-protective leadership” where supervisors bear responsibility for team performance and are given authority to make independent decisions for the team. The decision to continue or dismantle remote work after the pandemic is thus a top-down decision.

The mandatory remote working policy during the pandemic was comparable to a large-scale experiment that failed to take root. Although pandemic restrictions have been lifted, the defunct remote work policy has at least made requests for alternative arrangements at work less outrageous.