Episode #494: The Japanese Don't Take Enough Leave And That Is Bad

Every month, I check the leave balance for my staff and am always unhappy with the numbers. The team can accrue up to 20 days a year for a maximum of two years, so technically they can have 40 days available, if they don’t take any leave at all. Anything beyond that 40 days they lose. In my company we provide an additional 4 days of company paid holidays, plus a CSR day, which they can use anyway they like.

There are 16 national holidays in Japan, so you would think the team would be able to use their leave without feeling they were losing too much of it, but that has not proven to be the case. I found they still weren’t taking enough leave and thought maybe they were worried about sick leave and so were hoarding their annual leave to cover that possibility off. I subsequently gave them an extra 5 days of sick leave, but it made absolutely no difference – they keep stowing away their leave and don’t use it enough.

As an Aussie, this whole Japanese non-leave taking thing is mystifying. I try to set a good example by taking my own leave and heading down to Australia for two weeks, to hit the beach during the southern summer. It is still not inspiring others to take more elongated time off though.

Some bosses may be thinking, “this is great, the Japanese just keep working and working and this is how we will build the revenues of the company”. The problem with this idea is we are talking about quantity, rather than quality. The Japanese office worker pace in my mind is rather slow. They have built up a habit of doing 8 hours work in 10 or 11 hours, rather than the reverse. Parkinson’s laws says the work expands to fill the time and that is Japan to a tee.

I try to head this off by not having any overtime, so that you have to work more intensively to get through your work, in normal hours. If anyone wants to work overtime, they have to apply for it beforehand and get it approved. In a previous company, I noticed that some Japanese staff had worked out the way to get paid more, was to work more hours, regardless of whether it was warranted or not. That makes no sense to me, so I don’t allow that to happen.

I want my team to work like demons, stop work completely and then have a life outside of work. Dribbling along with the work, taking long hours to get through it and wasting their time seems ridiculous to my Aussie brain. Finish work and then have drinks and dinner with friends, have a brilliant hobby, spend time with your family - these all sound like a better use of time than making Parkinson’s Law come true.

The Japanese rhythm of long hours spent at work, preceded and followed by long commutes is draining. Standing up in a crowded train carriage for hours means you are already tired when you get to work. It is hard to be productive if this is repeated every day and you are perpetually tired. I have noticed in many job interviews, that when I ask people why they quit this particular job in their resume, they will often say they got sick because they were working such punishing hours. How can that be right?

Creative ideas rarely emerge from tired humans. If we want innovation, we need to create the right environment to be able to spark new ideas. That means allowing our people to work reasonable hours and to be able to take breaks from work completely, by going off on holiday. It is so stimulating to travel and sight see and when we return we are more refreshed and energized than before we left, no matter how packed the holiday.

Also, when we are worn out we can find ourselves becoming more irritable and short tempered. This can lead to issues within the team, as disputes arise which may not occur if everyone was more rested. Having politics inside the organization is like allowing a cancer to spread. We don’t want that, because it will suck up a huge amount of management time to sort it out and that disrupts the work being produced. If we want our people to work well together get them to take holidays and take a break from their daily work. They will be refreshed and calm and able to overlook any ill chosen words or sharp reactions from their colleagues.

I keep encouraging my team to take their holidays and not lose any days in the year. If someone does take a few weeks at a time, I celebrate them and praise them. I am still not as successful in this holiday taking as I would like, but recommending it sends a good message to my people. Gradually some are starting to listen and act upon it. We are still a work in progress over here, but we are gradually moving in the right direction. Fresh, well rested teams will outperform exhausted rivals every day of the week. It is so obvious, but not yet common practice in Japan and we have to improve that situation.