Creating Success for the Expat in Japan
Japan is a beautiful country with an amazing people and culture. Much has been said about working in Japan as an expat. I heard one person who worked in Japan for 5+ years say, “if you have been in Japan for a week you can write a book, for a month you can write a paper and if you stayed for a full year all you can say will fit on an index card.” I have even caught myself saying that I have worked in Japan myself for more than 15 years and after all this time, I am still not sure how work gets done. Please do not take this in a derogatory fashion. I love Japan and have many long-time Japanese friends and colleagues whom I cherish. Together we were able to succeed quite effectively. It is just not one of the easier places to understand, at least for me. Last year I attended an event in Singapore where HR Executives from across Asia came together to discuss how they have approached recruitment in Japan and the topic of expats was discussed at length. Before sharing some very helpul tips from these seasoned HR Executives, I thought I would share a bit of research taken from Geert Hofstede’s work on International Cultural Dimensions. As you may recall, he used a number of dimensions to describe cultures. (Keep in mind that these are broad generalities.)
Power distance: The extent to which people accept the uneven distribution of power. A low power distance therefore points to a society where the power structure is flatter, where wealth is more evenly distributed, and where decisions are more democratic.
Individualism vs collectivism: The extent to which the individual’s interests and identity prevails over the group’s interest and identity.
Masculinity vs femininity: Masculine societies emphasise competitiveness, assertiveness, and excelling, while feminine societies focus on quality of life and caring for the weak.
Uncertainty avoidance index: The extent to which a society feels threatened by the uncertainty of the future.
Long term orientation: The extent to which a society focuses on the future instead of the present/past.
As you can see, Japan scores quite high on the last three listed above. (I can provide a couple of my own examples as to how this plays out in real life. I have been doing employee engagement surveys in Japan for many years. Japan generally has one of the highest completion rates of any country. Employees feel it is their duty to complete the survey. That said, Japan tends to also have the lowest country norm in terms of absolute scores. There is always room for a great deal of improvement. I also had an experience where we were in Year 2 of a new recruitment strategy of moving to mostly fresh graduate hiring. In Year 1 things had gone much better than expected by the Japanese Management Team. This was in a dramatically growing business where hiring was a real challenge. In Year 2 however the feeling from the team on the ground was to build a story around a more conservative hiring number for the next year as there was concern about absorbing so many new hires.)
Many companies desire to place expats in Japan. There are a variety of reasons:
- Developing future leaders to give them strong global experience in an importnat market
- Provide special expertise for a project or strategy that needs to be implemented
- Act as a liason for corporate (boots on the ground)
- General lack of bench strength
- Blindspots of existing leadership
Source: Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA
The truth is that the labor market in Japan is very tight and many companies are looking to supplement their local staff. By and large immigration policy in Japan has not changed much in the last 50 years. Japan is one of the few countries in the world with a very high percentage of the population at or near retirement age. (Historically Japan has maintained a policy that 60 is mandatory retirement age) Japan’s population is declining, but that doesn’t mean the death rate is increasing. In fact, Japanese people are living longer, healthier lives than ever before. This is a good thing under normal circumstances, but pair it with a declining birth rate and issues begin to appear.
With all of this to set the background, here are some thoughts about seeing your expats succeed in Japan.
- It may sound counterintuitive, but maybe the best approach is to send executives from Japan to other countries. One very large BPO had similar experiences to other companies. They had sent high potentials to Japan only to have their success be less than stellar. They happened upon a much better experience. They had a key Japanese executive that was sent to London on a one year assignment. He was then repatriated to Japan. He became one of the fiercest supporters for their expats in Japan. He said he had not realized how hard it was going to another country, learning new cultural norms and speaking in another language. More importantly he experienced what it feels like to be an outsider when it came to after hours get togethers etc. He made it his mission to help expats succeed in Japan. This was the start of a new approach for them in Japan.
- One company selected 25 junior people annually from Japan and sent them to their main offices around the world for 2-3 weeks. There was a prescribed format for their visit and a local business leader was selected to be their chaperone. It included an overview of local business operations, working on a real customer project, evening social events, a day of sighseeing among other things. Upon return these employees were much more equipped and able to work across boundaries. The host country reported benefits from a much better understanding of working with Japan.
- A commercial sales organization selected their top 10 sales people in Japan and had them go to the US for several weeks of orientation and exposure to the corpoarate agenda and the most senior executives. They then became mentors and hosts for visiting executives and expats upon return. Many reported a deep desire to work on their english upon returning home and wanting more of these types of experiences.
- Many companies reported assigning a local mentor to help ease an expat into their assignment.
- Onboarding a new expat in Japan is crucial. They should be given a cross cultural briefing before arriving in Japan. A formal executive assimilation should also be conducted by an experienced facilitator with significant work experience in Japan.
- It is key to ensure that there is plenty of after hour social time for the new expat with boss, peers and reports. This cannot be understated as much business in Japan is socialized in informal settings.
Hopefully these examples were helpful. I have always enjoyed my time in Japan. It is delightful working in a country that is so different than my own. I am always keen to learn the how’s of working in Japan and the answer has mostly been contained in language and culture. The office where I worked out of for many years had vending machines and this is one of the drinks and advertisements that was in the machine. I asked what it was about and found this video…..enjoy! As I said always interesting and intriguing.