What it means to belong to a company

＊This article was originally written in Japanese by our CEO, Yoshihide Arai.

In the newspaper this morning, in a survey asking, “Why do you work?”, more than half of the people in their 20s answered, “for self-growth”.

This gave me a complex feeling.

If the reason why you work is for self-growth, does that mean companies are just an educational system for individuals? Of course, this is not the case. In the first place, what do they want to do after the self-growth? Do they want to get rid of the anxiety of their future economically? If so, then the people who have the enough wealth, do they not want self-growth? I have so many doubts.

This is only my opinion, however, I think a company as just a team in the business field. In addition, since different kind of ways of working, such as freelance or side-work, have become normal, it probably means that a company is a place where people gather in order to accomplish something big that an individual cannot.

Of course, at times, companies want a work-ready person and a worker wants to gain experience in a short term their interest would match so a relationship like this is fine too. On the other side, more than half of the workers say that they work just for their self-growth, it feels very weird to me.

Ichiro and Matsui said that contributing to the teams victory is more important than their own record. What they’ve been doing is to polish themselves so they can contribute to the team’s victory.

On the other hand, of course, they have interest for self-growth. Continuous growth might be one of the goals. But if it’s to get rid of the anxiety of the future, then that sounds a little sad. I believe that if more people have something they want to accomplish in their life, and in order to do so, they put effort for self-growth, Japan would change in a good way!

A company is just a team to do something good to the society. Therefore, as I’ve been thinking, what it means to be in a company is to accomplish the company vision and mission, so if they don’t share the same vision, we do not hire regardless of the ability they have.

Of course, it doesn’t mean to devote yourself to the company.

What I mean is that, you have your passions, Atrae has its goals. I believe that combining those and leveraging that common ground is the best way forward, and that’s probably the only way to work passionately and feel rewarded.

The first page of today’s newspaper insisted me to spread how fun it is to be passionate and enthusiastic about accomplishing something as a team…!!