Understanding the intricacies of the Japan workplace culture and change with Miho Sakai, Marketing at Itoki Corporation

Hardeep Matharu 
Hello everyone, and welcome to A Better World of Work podcast. My name is Hardeep. Today we've got a very special episode, we're going to Japan. I'm joined today with a special guest host Kazumasa Ikoma, who's one of my colleagues from our Tokyo office. 

Kazumas Ikoma 
Hi, nice to meet you, everyone. 

Hardeep Matharu 
Thank you. Today, we are joined by our guest, Miko Sakai, who has been working with Itoki for the past eight years. Itoki is our partner company in Japan. We're very lucky to have her to talk about the experiences that she has seen with regard to making and embracing change in the Japan market regarding new ways of working. So Miho, welcome, please do share a little bit about yourself to our listeners.

Miho Sakai 
Okay and hello, everyone! I'm Miho Sakai from Itoki Corporation and thank you for having me today on your podcast. I'm very excited. Itoki is a Japanese office furniture manufacturer and we also design workplace and workstyle, in addition to furniture. Our company philosophy is derived from our founder based on a pioneering spirit. We are the first Japanese company to implement Activity Based Working. Since then, I've been working on planning and marketing every year on our consultancy services. I also work on current data analysis and conduct change managment training as the internal change ambassador in Itoki. Thank you.

Kazumas Ikoma 
Okay, we would like to start with the question of how did the pandemic affect our ways of working in Japan? From my perspective, I see that there are a lot of changes happening in Japan. We have almost never work from home, but some companies are starting to change and work in hybrid work models. So Miho-san on your side, what are the changes that you've seen so far? 

Miho Sakai 
First of all, as Kazu-san mentioned, like many other countries, there has been a widespread of working from home in Japan. Originally, in Japan, we call work from home telework. It was promoted by the government around 2,000 to promote employing diverse human resources such as employees in Japan who have to balance work with child care or nursing care, or with disability. Working from home is also a good option to provide business continuity, especially in cases of transportation disruption due to disasters. However, it didn't become a common practice except for huge multinational companies. When we looked at surveys conducted by Itoki for companies with more than 300 employees, more than half of employees say that their environment does not support them to work from home. That figure dropped to 36% last year. According to the survey this year, half of the employees work from home, 15% of employees have the environment in place but do not actually work from home.

Hardeep Matharu 
Miho, that sounds like Japan has adapted well in terms of being ready for working from home and being more flexible. I suppose, again, for the many listeners out there from the Western world, it's probably well known that Japanese organisations are quite famously reluctant to change.  With that being the case, it seemed like the people are ready to work differently but it sounds like they aren't quite doing that yet. This sounds like what we might expect for Japan. What do you think might be the reason for that? What do you think is holding leaders and organisations back from driving change initiatives?

Miho Sakai 
When it comes to workstyle changes, one of the reasons could be that the labour market is less fluid compared to other developed countries. Talent war is less also intense here. Until now, there have been no sense of crisis that employees might quit if flexible workstyle options are not offered. Due to the pandemic, there are surveys and reports in Japan that have indicated that many employees are considering leaving their companies if work from home or other flexible workstyle arrangements is not allowed. This may change the companies' way of thinking in the future. In addition, I personally think that reason why Japanese companies don't change is because very few people know or try to know of the work trend situations outside of Japan. This could be due, in part, to the language barrier. Japan has always been slow to import new ideas that companies should focus on such as diversity, inclusion or sustainability. I think many people also don't understand why change is necessary or how much overseas companies are working on changing their workplace.

Kazumas Ikoma 
That's a good point, Miho-san. Yeah, prior to the pandemic, we almost don't have anyone working from home. It's a very rare case in Japan. But after the pandemic, in the last two years, we conducted a survey here at Veldhoen + Company. It showed that more than 60% of the employees would like to have more than three days working from home. This is a lot and it's very high compared to other APAC countries. Even though Japanese organisations are reluctant to change, change is happening. I like to ask you another question about how change is initiated in Itoki to illustrate an ideal Japanese change example. Itoki implemented activity based working two years before the pandemic starts and the change has been working well in your organisation. Can you elaborate a little bit more about the change journey.  

Miho Sakai 
Itoki started to conduct teleworking trials in 2013, and made preparations to finding and resolving issues related to paper independence and technology. In 2017, teleworking policy was established in our company and that is the starting point of our flexible workstyle. In 2018, Itoki joined a programme named Telework Days conducted by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. This programme encouraged employees in Tokyo to try to work from home at least once a year. This programme was designed to address the flood of visitors in Tokyo during the Olympic period in 2020. 

Even before the pandemic, some employees in our company have worked from home occasionally. For example, an employee who broke his leg or an employee's family member was sick and needed help. This teleworking policy was well received by employees but this wasn't a normal workstyle. However, I think it helped us to transit smoothly for the Activity Based Working implementation in 2018, as well as working from home due to pandemic measures in 2020. We started full scale hybrid work arrangements in 2021, and have changed our work policy to allow teleworking up to four days a week for every employee. They don't need special reasons such as childcare. illness and nursing care to work from home.  We've received positive comments from employees that now, they don't feel the stress to commute and feel easier in balancing work with family matters.

Hardeep Matharu 
Yeah, and a lot of what you've mentioned there is some of the principles that we would employ when we're driving change. Things such as gathering data upfront to to be able to make the right calls later down the line. Indeed, as you've referred to, it is important to have principles about what we're looking to deliver in new ways of working. It's great that Itoki has adopted the approach there and it's working well.  

A question that comes to mind for me is related to what you said before on why some organisations might be more reluctant to take the plunge. When we look at Japanese organisations as a whole, not just Itoki but at a wider level, how are changes initiated and managed? Do you find that most organisations take more of a top down approach or are they quite democratic? I'm curious to find out how a typical Japanese organisation manage change.

Miho Sakai 
In cases of major internal changes, a cross functional working team established by the top management is often in charge of the actual implementation. They need to work on the project in tandem with their daily operations and that tends to slow the speed of change. Their heavy workloads can also be an issue. Most Japanese companies are hierarchical organisations so the amount of change tends to be limited to a single location or a small department.

Kazumas Ikoma 
As Miho-san said,  I've also seen a lot of different cases. The top down approach is most often seen in Japanese organisations. What typically works well to create effective changes in new ways of working for such organisations in Japan? What are the methods or ideas you've seen with the clients whom you work very closely with, Miho-San?

Miho Sakai 
Many companies understand the need for workstyle change and are able to come up with their workstyle vision or slogan. But I feel that the actual workplace and technology measures are often not properly linked to it because their visions or slogan are too abstract They need to make their vision or slogan more concrete, this is an important point for Japanese companies. Change management approach is not very common in Japan. There are many cases where employees' behaviour change is being neglected in the project. In fact, when we explain about our experience around workstyle change to our clients, we receive good feedback because we emphasised on the connections between our aspirations, activities, office design, IT design and behaviour. In addition to that, it's important not to judge the success or failure of the project immediately for Japanese companies. This is something that Itoki learned from Veldhoen + Company. Change in workstyle and behaviour take time to reflect. We need to wait and see how things are changing, and this is a learning that does not exist in many Japanese companies.

Kazumas Ikoma 
Thank you for raising the point, Yes, some clients have a clear vision, but it's not broken down to the workstyle, or how people like to work. We often help them to create the break down and the actual workstyle vision as well. I have seen how Itoki has made a huge progress not just in the past year, but also over the last few years. I understand the importance of continuously monitoring and measuring change on employees behaviours in the physical environment.

Miho Sakai 
There are several stages of evolution in our workstyle and workplace. Our headquarter office was completed in December 2018 to accommodate activity based working practices. The first step we took was to improve the acoustic in our work environment as well as other aspects in the office in response to company reviews and employees feedback. The second step was followed by the physical space renovation which was designed with the aim of improving employees connection and having collaborative space which allows employees to book for a certain amount of time to gather and work with team members. 

This year, the service staff shared feedback that due to the pandemic, there are less people using the office so we have moved the furniture showroom that was located in another building to the ground floor of the headquarter. This has help to increase touch points with customers. Recently, we've conducted a survey and found out that the acoustic environment in the high focus area has worsen. Employees found it difficult to have private conversation, and this could be due to the slightly more formal design of the floor where the showroom is located. We are planning to renovate the floor next year to resolve these issues. 

Hardeep Matharu 
It's great about you are illustrating a lot of what you've mentioned - to not judge the change project as a success or a failure immediately. There's always continual adjustments and continual stages of review.  New things need to be considered with a changing environment, changing preferences versus all reality of driving change. It's never easy but it's good to hear that Itoki has taken all these steps systematically to move forward. It's very key. How widespread do you think hybrid working in Japan really is now, and can you perceive that it will continue to be the norm or can you see organisations pulling people back to return to office?

Miho Sakai 
I mentioned earlier that our survey has shown that half of employees in companies with more than 300 employees work from home, but other surveys have shown that the precedence is much lower in smaller companies. It is also widespread among workers in Tokyo and other large cities, but not so much in rural area areas. Having said that, our survey also shows that employees have more discretion in how they work in 2020 as compared to last year. For example, more people have said that they're empowered to decide when to go to the office rather than be assigned to by the company or they don't need their supervisors' approval to choose where they work. This suggests that there is a shift from work from home during the pandemic to true hybrid work where people can choose where they work at their own will. 

There is an obvious trend to return to the office. Many companies have cited communication among employees and innovation as reasons to return to the office. When it comes to communication, our survey shows that each year, increasingly more employees felt that there is lesser informal communication such as chatting about news, weather or personal lives, which are not necessary to carry out their work. 

Hardeep Matharu 
Yeah, the water cooler chat as we tend to hear it. You bring up a point there which is on the top of the mind of many clients that we hear from across the region. I would love to hear your perspective on what is the point of getting people to come back to the office. As you've shared, there's a trend or preference from the organisation to return to office. There are also some benefits that we might be missing out on such as the sense of connection and bonding as a team, innovation or informal chat if we purely work from home or remote. What are some of the approaches or tips that you might offer to organisations struggling to bring people back to the office?

Miho Sakai 
If we are bringing people back to the office in a traditional environment with fixed seats that reflects hierarchy, it will not work. It's not just about management's will, but employees' expectations on their work functions and roles in the office must be clarified. Many clients have visited our office in search of hints for how to bring people back into the office. They realised that if it is difficult to create a high focus area at home or if it is difficult to generate ideas without using a whiteboard when working remotely. it will be a good reason to come to the office. This is because online collaborative tools such as Miro Board has yet to enter Japan. As an office furniture manufacturer, we also believe that ability to work with less physical strain is another reason to come into the office because ergonomic chairs and height adjustable desks can be expensive and difficult for employees to prepare on their own.

Miho Sakai
It's really about making that environment that you go into suitable for what the employees need. Essentially, creating an environment that you want to go to that can enable you to work more effectively. 

Miho Sakai 
Yeah, exactly.

Kazumas Ikoma 
Before we close this session, I would like to ask you this big question which is what does a Better World of Work means to you?

Miho Sakai 
That's a difficult question. I believe that a better world of work means to be able to work with healthy physical, mental and social well-being. Japan has many issues regarding employment and workstyle. Some of you may have heard of the term, Karoshi. There are many people who are suffering health issues due to illegal overtime work. There is also a strong sense of gender role in labour and gender gap between men and women. Men are under a lot of pressure to work, and many elderly believe that only women should be responsible for housework or childcare. Of course, how the younger generation thinks is changing. We are seeing new trends such as focusing on outcomes within regular working hours, men should also be responsible for housework and women should also take up senior positions. 

However, how the management is thinking has not changed. Many people are still unable to achieve their desired workstyle and lifestyle. I feel that many people are undermining various aspects of well-being in their work. This is my own personal experience. I'm about Japan's employment situation and decided to major on labour sociology during my university studies. I interviewed employees at IBM Japan to find out if teleworking or work from home could be a solution to this. I found that it would be difficult for all employees to implement such a system because working long hours at assigned desk where bosses can observe their work is highly valued in Japanese workstyle culture. At that time, I had no idea that that short term hybrid work would be created or teleworking would become so widespread. Finally, I hope that the spread of flexible workstyle will help each employee achieve their desired workstyle and lifestyle and in a big well-being way. I think we have been moving closer to that vision over the past few years.

Kazumas Ikoma 
Thank you, Miho-san. You mentioned a really great point. We are struggling in Japan between not having illegal overtime work versus working from home. When we work from home, we tend to work longer, and we are really trying to strike a balance. Thank you for sharing and your time.

Hardeep Matharu 
Yeah, thank you for sharing that Miho-san. The thing that comes to mind as you talk and something that we probably need to keep working towards this idea of balance. Being able to find ways that we don't push things too far, don't work too hard but at the same time, we don't also play too hard. We've got to find that balance in many ways. It's a cycle and a continual struggle. It's great that you've got a perspective there and a chance to work on in your work which is great. I'm very pleased that you're able to make some of those changes to get to that better world of work that you wish. 

Thank you, Miho-san for being with us today. This was a really great chat and indeed, it's one that we, in the Western world, we don't hear a lot about. Also Kazu-san, thank you so much for hosting with me today. Thank you for tuning in and we'll be continuing to have great conversations with great people from around the region as we go.