How COVID-19 and technology has changed the Japanese workplace
Today I want to discuss how COVID-19 has changed the way we work in Japan. It might be hard to imagine in today’s world that most Japanese office workers work from 9 am to 6 pm in the office, and in many cases, they are not allowed to work from home — they might even be prohibited from taking their laptops outside the office. While technology has gradually improved the productivity of office workers over the decades, Japan has a very strict labor-management policy, and it has been quite challenging to have a flexible work environment.
With COVID-19, all of that has changed. It all started with companies such as Dentsu having had an employee who was affected by COVID-19. This forced the entire headquarter workforce of the company to work from home or work remotely. Other businesses, including the NTT Group, followed suit as the virus rapidly spread around the entire nation. Our major cities, such as Tokyo and Osaka, are famous for their harsh commute, with many people riding on packed trains for more than an hour to get to work. Today (as of March 7) many people are working from home, avoiding such trains and having more time to spend for themselves and with their family.
Under the circumstance, there has been a tremendous increase in the adoption of “working from home” in Japan, especially in Tokyo. We are seeing fewer people on crowded trains and notice news reports and social media posts about how everyone has started using modern technology such as Zoom to communicate with colleagues and customers/partners from home. I think the general public has finally started asking, “If we can get so much work done from home, why did we have to commute into the office every morning on those super crowded trains every morning?” Good question. Many offices had actually started to go paperless prior to this coronavirus situation and provide laptops to their employees to be able to work more flexibly — whether we realized this or not — but the policy remained that everyone should show up at the office at 9 am. Due to the COVID-19 situation, that policy has changed and it opened our eyes to a more flexible and modern work style.
All this being said, working from home does not make work and life perfect for everyone. Many people are facing the challenges that arise from the fact that the schools are closed too, and parents are often forced to take care of their children while working from home. Here in Japan, hiring babysitters and/or nannies is not common practice (maybe I can go into detail someday about this topic), our homes are very small, and many people are having to work from their living rooms or bedrooms, where other family members may be present. There is also the mental and emotional problem of those who just cannot adjust to working from home and prefer to work from an office.
So what’s happening next? I have no idea when this coronavirus craze will come to an end, but it will last at least for the next few weeks and continue to challenge us Japanese on how we work and achieve a work/life balance. What we can expect is that we will learn from this situation, and it will become a great asset for us to improve the quality of our lives in the long term.
(Maybe I will post another article on some of the issues around working from home in Japan and how they can be solved. Please leave comments if you want to read more about this topic.)