Job-hopping losing dishonor in Japan  

By RONALD E. YATES

(This article was first published in the Chicago Tribune of June 24, 1990)

When Yusuke Miwa began his career as an electrical engineer with one of Japan's largest steel companies more than 35 years ago, it was a bit like signing on with the French Foreign Legion.

"You never talked about quitting," recalled Miwa. "And switching jobs? That would have been a kind of corporate treason . . . a capital offense.

"Joining a company in those days was like enlisting in the military. We even had a kind of basic-training camp where we had to practice zen meditation. We cleaned company toilets and ran 10 kilometer endurance races."

Times are changing in the corporate armies of Japan. Lifetime employment and unwavering corporate loyalty, traditionally the impervious armor-plating of the Japanese industrial juggernaut, are eroding and peeling away as millions of Japanese workers discover that job-hopping is no longer dishonorable.

That was not the case when Miwa, 57, began his working career. As little as five years ago in Japan, it was expected that you would finish your working life in the same company where you began — or die trying, like all good corporate soldiers. In return for such corporate loyalty, you were guaranteed regular promotions based on seniority.

But today, Japanese corporations, faced with an acute shortage of skilled workers because of a declining birth rate, suddenly find themselves struggling — often unsuccessfully — to keep corporate loyalty alive through the promise of benefits other than lifetime employment.

"I don't want to be tied down to the same company all my life," says Yuji Nakamura, a 37-year-old securities analyst who was trained as an engineer and who worked for three different manufacturing companies before deciding to apply his considerable math skills to the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

"I hated my first job," he recalls. "My fellow workers were like robots. They were programmed to give their lives to the company. I won't do that. I prefer to be a ronin (masterless samurai). I want to live my life for myself and not for my company."

A few years ago Nakamura's sentiments would have caused him to be labeled a shinjunrui (new breed). Today, he is simply called a realist.

According to Japan's Labor Ministry, Japanese like Nakamura are not part of some fickle fringe group. A ministry report this year indicates the number of Japanese eschewing lifetime employment and switching jobs reached a record 2.5 million in 1989 — and the number is increasing some 17.5 percent each year. What's more, a survey of Japanese corporate "salarymen" in their 20s and 30s found that 40 percent are thinking about changing jobs soon.

With the Japanese economy facing a shortage of some 2.1 million skilled workers annually, mid-career employees like Nakamura need only toss their resumes into the job pool for a few hours before getting several bites.

So intense has the rivalry become that corporate headhunting firms in Tokyo have grown from 50 in 1985 to more than 250 in 1990. With names like Best Match, Able Fellows and Link-Up, the headhunters have more work than they can handle.

Some corporations, among them Nippon Steel Corp., are using magazine and TV ads featuring American movie stars such as Sigourney Weaver to add a bit of glamour to their smokestack image. Others are offering a wide range of perks, including corporate golf memberships, free cars, company-subsidized mortgages, fitness club memberships, longer vacations, annual bonuses ranging between $7,000 and $10,000, and even match-making services for singles.

"For years Japanese companies had it easy — loyalty was really a one-way street," said Keiji Nakahori, who operates the Link-up executive search firm in Tokyo. "Employees were expected to be loyal to the company, but at the age of 55 they were discarded like trash to make room for younger workers. Today, there aren't enough university graduates to go around, and those who are in their 40s and 50s are suddenly very valuable as companies try to keep them happy. But employee loyalty is slowly dying."

At least one Japanese firm, IP Consulting Co., has come up with a new twist in Japan's labor trenches. It helps corporations hang on to dissatisfied employees who have announced they are quitting to join another firm.

The company analyzes the disgruntled employee's current work situation, contrasts it with the potential offered by the new job, examines the gaps between the employee's capabilities and the new employer's expectations and  then convinces the employee he is actually better off staying where he is. IP boasts a 50 percent success rate for its 30 client corporations.

 "The Japanese labor market is so different from what it was just five years ago, it is really hard to believe we are talking about the same country," said headhunter Hidesuke Yamada. "In 1985 anybody who switched jobs was considered a kind of dropout — an unreliable, insecure person. That is no longer the case."

Certainly not in a society where in 1989 there were 1.4 job offers for every job seeker — the highest in 20 years.

© Chicago Tribune, 1990, 2003