The remote work culture that took hold in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic is retreating rapidly among the country’s companies. As a growing number of firms increase mandatory office days or effectively eliminate work-from-home arrangements altogether, some employees are pushing back against the abrupt shift and weighing whether to quit.
LY Corporation, the Japanese internet company, has required employees to come into the office either once a week or once a month depending on their department since April of last year, the Asahi Shimbun reported on the 26th. The company raised that requirement to three days a week in May.
LY Corporation had broadly permitted remote work in the wake of the pandemic and, until April of last year, did not require employees to report to the office at all.
The company said the expanded office attendance was intended “to strengthen solidarity among employees through everyday conversation and to speed up decision-making.”
The pullback from remote work is visible at other companies as well. Global consulting firm Accenture effectively abolished work-from-home arrangements in June of last year. Telecommunications carrier KDDI has also been encouraging employees back to the office by expanding its work space after relocating its headquarters to a new building in July of last year.
Confectionery maker Calbee likewise shifted toward more in-office work in May of last year, enlarging its office space and creating seating available to all employees.
The share of Japanese office workers doing their jobs remotely has fallen sharply from pandemic levels. In a survey of 1,100 people employed at companies and organizations conducted last month by the Japan Productivity Center, only 14.5% said they worked outside the office, including from home. That is less than half the 31.5% recorded in a May 2020 survey taken as the pandemic was spreading.
Despite the advantages of remote work, some say it can add to the management burden. A human resources official at one company said remote work “has the advantage of letting people use their time efficiently and of speeding up decisions.” Still, the official noted that “the burden on middle managers grows when they have to check on the progress of work or gauge how their subordinates are doing.”
In some cases, however, resistance from employees has mounted as companies tighten attendance rules or scrap remote work. Masatoshi Kumagai, founder and chief executive of the internet group GMO Internet, said on X, formerly Twitter, on the 14th of last month that the group would completely end its promotion of remote work.
Remote work “is a minus in many respects, including communication and training,” Kumagai said.
Kumagai also drew controversy inside and outside the company by claiming that employees’ hourly keystroke counts on their computers had fallen noticeably after remote work was allowed. As criticism mounted, Kumagai said he was “not rejecting remote work as a way of working in itself.”
Discontent over the policy reversal has also surfaced within LY Corporation. The Asahi Shimbun quoted one LY Corporation employee as saying, “The backlash from employees over the company’s sudden change of policy was considerable. Some colleagues have decided to resign.”
Experts point to the possibility that the problem lies less with remote work itself than with the management systems companies use to run it. Hiroki Sato, a professor at the University of Tokyo, said that “remote work spread, but in many cases companies failed to put in place appropriate management systems or rules to support it,” adding that “there is a tendency to mistake productivity problems caused by a failure to set proper rules for problems with remote work itself.”
#RemoteWork#ReturnToOffice#JapanBusiness#LYCorporation#GMOInternet#WorkFromHome
Original reporting by Cho Su-yeon for Seoul Economic Daily.
AI-translated from Korean. Quotes from foreign sources are based on Korean-language reports and may not reflect exact original wording.
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