Chapter 1: Integration & Inclusion
Whether you are a Japanese or a foreign worker, it is a prerequisite for your motivation to feel that your job is integrated into an important strategy of your company. Otherwise, you feel like a slave, just doing what you are told to do without any clear purpose just for salary to survive. You are not dead but not alive either. It is called a feeling of “社畜,”[pron: shachiku] literally meaning “company slave or company farm animal” in Japanese. It is shocking to observe that so many workers in Japan admit that they are corporate slaves and seem to have accepted this situation as an unavoidable way of life.
Integration also has another dimension when we consider the non-Japanese workforce. Are those non-Japanese employees well integrated into the total workforce of a Japanese company? Or are they still treated as nonintegrated resources of the company? Despite all the cultural differences and language barriers, has the company integrated a universal value system that both Japanese and non-Japanese employees can share to function collaboratively in an integrated manner as a global workforce? It is still a widespread feeling among many foreign workers who have worked in Japan for more than two decades not to feel integrated.
Another aspect of integration is work/life integration. The Japanese are notoriously known for long working hours and sacrificing one’s private life for their company. Over the years, their company life becomes the only life they know, and they demand others to accept the same fate. Recently, the remote work/work-from-home due to COVID-19 has forced the Japanese to spend more time at home with their families. Yet, many older Japanese leaders still ignore the worldwide medical advice and continue to commute to work and spend their entire day in the office. Strangely, their view of work/life integration is achieved by not having any private life. For them, their company is their home, and their work is their life. It is not surprising that the younger generations have difficulty understanding such a mentality.
When it comes to inclusion, many Japanese companies have even more serious issues. Over the past several decades, leaders have talked about the need for more diversity. However, most companies are simply increasing the number of female leaders who think and act like middle-aged Japanese men. Also, it seems Japanese companies are simply promoting foreigners who think and act like middle-aged Japanese men when it comes to globalization. This is not real diversity, is it? If everybody still thinks and acts like middle-aged Japanese men regardless of gender and nationality, they are not so different from the stormtroopers we see in Star Wars!
As it is often said, “Inclusion is what makes diversity work!”. If there is no inclusion culture, which is to accept, respect and even celebrate different ways of thinking and doing things, Japanese leaders and companies will never graduate from the cadet