"Working for Balance"-Japan's Balancing Act
Friday, August 29, 2008SUSIE GHARIB: Work-life balance is a hot topic in the American workplace these days, but it's a relatively new concept in other countries, especially Japan. The rise of the career woman and the desire of younger Japanese to have personal time run counter to a traditional mindset that values long hours at the office. Tonight in a preview of our Labor Day holiday program, "Working for Balance," Lucy Craft reports on how some Japanese firms are embracing work life balance.
LUCY CRAFT, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Fighting workaholism has become a national imperative, in part, because scenes like this are becoming all too rare. Overwork is causing under-population, says consultant Joanna Park.
JOANNA PARK, WORK-LIFE CONSULTANT, APPASSIONATA: Many husband don't get home until let's say 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. or many times after midnight. So the wife has to do everything. If she is working, she has to work. She has to do the housework and taking care of the kids all by herself and we see, a lot of women see the reality and realize that if I get married and have kids, I have to do that and they just don't want to do it.
CRAFT: And for the world's fastest aging society, the baby deficit spells fiscal disaster.
PARK: With that birthrate, Japan cannot maintain the social benefits and pension plans as the government promised.
CRAFT: A handful of Japanese companies are trying to get their workers to stop and smell the flowers. Fast retailing, which runs the Uniqlo apparel chain, began experimenting with work-life balance programs three years ago, says Saeko Kaneko, who's in charge of employee relations.
TRANSLATION OF: SAEKO KANEKO, EMPLOYEE RELATIONS TEAM, FAST RETAILING: Giving our employees more time off means they can spend more time with family and on self-improvement. That makes them healthier and more creative, which in turn makes them more efficient and improves the quality of their work.
CRAFT: Worried about its global image and anxious to attract and keep talented employees, the company stopped requiring store managers to work 10-hour days. Now, women run about a fifth of their stores, in a country where management roles usually go to men. To slash overtime, meetings have been sped up by requiring workers to stand, instead of sit. And for most employees, desks are history. Instead, workers are assigned just a cell phone and portable computer. Doing without permanent desks, the thinking goes, cuts clutter, literally and figuratively. Finally, at headquarters, it's lights out at 7:00. Unless permission is granted in advance, even laggards are kicked out by dinnertime.
KANEKO: We don't have proof that cutting overtime helps the bottom line. But the fact is our revenues are growing and overtime has been drastically reduced. So our campaign has yielded results.
CRAFT: Fast Retailing's progressive workplace is still unusual for Japan. But with workaholism taking a severe toll on Japanese society, experts say other Japanese corporations have little choice but to follow suit. Lucy Craft, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Tokyo.
