Lately I've been thinking about the differences in working culture between America and Japan, and I came across the blog of Eiji Sakai (Japanese), who is, according to his blog, a software engineer and with a CPA from an American university and an interest in economics, culture, and technology. His articles about the differences in Japanese and western business cultures written from the perspective of a Japanese person who has apparently studied and worked abroad is particularly interesting to me, so I started reading and translating some of his articles. The first article I translated is called "Overtime is Shameful" (残業は恥だ), and I'm posting my translation here.
"Overtime is Shameful"
"If the concept of extreme overtime work were to disappear from Japanese companies, just that alone would surely make the Japanese people much happier. If overtime disappeared from Japanese companies, I myself would consider once again working for one.
Let's take a look at the way people work in western companies where, unlike Japan, there is almost no extreme overtime.
Managers will assign work to each of their subordinates and manage progress.The subordinates will do only the work in the scope that has been assigned to them by their boss. If your own work is done, then you can go home at a regular time, but if it is not finished this results in overtime. Even if the person sitting next to you is doing overtime, that’s someone else's work and thus not your responsibility, so you can still go home early.
In this kind of environment, if somebody is consistently doing overtime, this means that the boss is not correctly estimating the ability of his or her subordinate. So the boss will usually ask his subordinate why he or she is doing so much overtime, and then will redistribute the workload in a manner such that all of his or her subordinates can go home at a reasonable time.
What about Japan? In Japan the boss tends not to give detailed instructions to their subordinates. At departmentwide meetings, the boss will present broad objectives. And the boss will suggest broad roles for each team member, but these are not absolute. It is expected that the team members will talk to each other and decide how to adjust the amount of work each member has appropriately.
In other words, in Japan they don't clearly delineate the work by saying "Okay this specific subset of the work is my responsibility." In this situation, it's hard even if just one person is doing overtime for anyone to go home early. Perhaps some small part of the work that is causing your teammate to do overtime is your responsibility. If that's the case, then the appropriate action is to stay and do overtime yourself to help that person. This means that, when the areas of responsibility are not clearly defined, there is the possibility that everyone's work will increase to no end.
So, how can we decrease the amount of overtime in Japanese companies? This is a difficult question. The only way that I can think of, is to make the division of work clear as they do in western companies, and thus reduce this "social overtime". However the Japanese are an ingenious people when it comes to making it ambiguous where responsibility lies (for example, it's typical for the anonymous culture of the Internet to be criticized in an anonymous article in a newspaper). So, the tough part is really whether this ideal is actually possible or not.
It's probably also important to have an attitude that recognizes that work is just work, and a job is just a job. Work is a public thing, and not a part of yourself. Because Japanese workers feel too strongly that their work is a part of their character or individuality, there are times when it's hard for them to draw the line between public and private life. Work is certainly important, but at the same time it's just work. Exactly what work is more important than your own family or friends? When you fall ill, who's going to be the one to come running to help? Will it be your job? Or will it be your family?
When discussing the reduction of overtime, usually what is emphasized is the effort of the person doing the overtime, but essentially the reduction of overtime is their responsibility of that person's manager. Here, the person who's in the wrong is the boss that failed to plan the work appropriately. Perhaps even the Japanese government could start a propaganda campaign with the slogan "the subordinates overtime is the bosses shame." It should be taken as a given that career bureaucrats in the Japanese government departments should themselves get rid of extended overtime."
