Day 21 — Common Sense of HENNGE and Mountain Huts

I’m Wakiya from HENNGE. I joined HENNGE in 2018 as a member of Human Resources Section and have been working in the area of Human Resources and Organizational Development for about 2 years now.

I have been participating in the HENNGE Advent Calendar for the past 4 years, and this year I decided to write about “HENNGE and Mountain lodges”.

It’s like, “What are you talking about all of a sudden?”, right?

And here is a quiz out of the blue.

What do the members of HENNGE and the staff working at a mountain hut have in common?

Please read the rest of the article below if you have time.

Koyaban: Staff of Mountain Huts

When I was 30 years old, I resigned from my first career as a city officer in a local government. I began working as a staff at a mountain hut on the Yatsugatake mountain, which straddles Nagano and Yamanashi prefectures, for less than two years. The staff of a mountain lodge is called Koyaban.

A mountain hut is a facility that provides meals and a place to stay for hikers, helping them to have a safe, enjoyable, and memorable trip up the mountain. To put it nicely, it is a hotel on the mountain. For example, a typical day of a Koyaban might go like this;

5:00 a.m.: Wake up. Prepare breakfast for guests
7:30 a.m.: Staff breakfast
8:30 a.m.: Cleaning the hut
10:00 a.m.: Prepare dinner, Carry the food from the foot of the mountain to the hut), Work outside, etc.
(Staff breaks are rotated during the day)
12:00p.m.: Staff lunch
3:00 p.m.: Prepare dinner for guests
6:00 p.m.: Serve dinner to guests and wash dishes
8:00 p.m.: Staff dinner
9:00 p.m.: Lights out. Staff spend their free time in their own way

This kind of life continues every day as a live-in worker. When there are several days off in a month, the Koyaban go down to the town, spend some free time, and then return to the mountain and restart work until the next vacation.

Communication Style of Koyaban

As I mentioned above, life in a mountain lodge is “live-in.” This means that you live and eat with the people you work with. The room you sleep in is the same, the workplace you wake up in the morning for 10 seconds is the same, the place and time for breakfast and dinner are the same, and of course, you are together during work.

Together, together, together, together, you are usually in the same space as others.

The only time you have your own space is when you are out in the mountains during break time.

To be honest, this is quite stressful.

In my experience, working in such an environment without a day off until the vacations, I gradually became more and more excited or became a Koyaban with a bad attitude (So sorry), and the outlier value of my usual behavior increased.

And so, in order to adapt to such an environment, the Koyaban take a method.

Koyaban exposes themselves anyway.

Or, rather, it is correct to say that they naturally did so because they could not work if they kept things bottled up.

They communicate what they want to say by putting it into words.

They express their feelings and thoughts in words.

They communicate both serious and funny things in words.

In my case, since I had not behaved in such a way before, there were times when I communicated incorrectly or got into fights with too much emotion. Still, even so, I thought that if I behaved in such a way, each of us could work more freely, and communication among the Koyaban was open.

I still visit the hut from time to time, and in my heart, the hut is my “Second home”. It is a place where I can be my natural self.

So, about HENNGE as a workplace

HENNGE is a diverse organization. It is not only that we have members from over 20 different countries or that we are linguistically diverse, but also that even among Japanese people, for example, there are many different backgrounds and ideas, making us a highly diverse organization.

The HENNGE Way consists of nine behavior guidelines that the members of HENNGE value. I would like to introduce all of them, but the one I picked up, in particular, is “Keep it open.”

This means “Openness of information and opinions” and making information accessible to everyone as much as possible and sparing no effort to do so. It means being frank about our opinions and asking directly what we want to know, having the courage to do so, and respecting differences. This is the meaning of “Keep it open”.

Yes, both Koyaban style communication and the communication we value at HENNGE are “Being open”.

When I started working at HENNGE, I thought it was just an open workplace, but at some point, I realized that communication at HENNGE is the same as that at a mountain hut.

Lastly, Tatemae and Hon-ne

I’ve tried to write a bit of a beautiful story so far, but I’m going to end with a bit of honesty (It’s my subjective opinion). “Keep it open” is not as easy as it sounds, and it’s not always good.

As I mentioned earlier, being open sometimes leads to conflict, and we must choose the right words (I often make mistakes and make the other person feel uncomfortable. So sorry, again).In other words, it is a hassle.

And this may depend on the person, but it’s hard to do well. Sometimes, I let my emotions get the better of me and I would say too much or get angry at people at a level that was unbecoming of a member of society. I understand the feeling that the other person was hurt and I was hurt, so why not just wrap up my words in a bland way and keep my feelings and thoughts to myself? I tried that at one time.

But even so, I still think it is better to be open.

As a person, not as a human resource staff, I aim to contribute to creating a world where the potential of both people and organizations is fully unleashed. When I imagine such a world, I believe that communication should be open. We communicate what is good and are willing to clash with each other from time to time. But I think this is only possible because each person is respected and recognized as an autonomous entity. And in a world where such recognition is a prerequisite, I believe that people and organizations can truly demonstrate their strength.

I admit that I have said some beautiful things, and I admit that I have yet to actually keep it open, but in order to keep it open, I have failed, failed, and sometimes succeeded, and today, I am still failing.

(Tip; Working in a mountain hut was already 10 years ago. Just a reminder that survival strategies vary from hut to hut and from generation to generation).

Check out other 2023 HENNGE Advent Calendar articles here.