Feb 10, 2021
The Struggle of Maintaining a Work-Life Balance at a Japanese Company
Work-life balance...Does that even exist in Japanese culture? Not so much, but I’m trying to make it work.
Pic credit: www.pixabay.com
For the past 7 months or so I have been working full-time at a Japanese company. And all of us in Japan know the horrors of Japanese overtime. I have been trying to protect my personal time, and I was upfront with my company about my expectations, but not everything is smooth sailing. (Luckily, I work from home, which makes it a bit easier.)
One of the hardest things is not pressure from my CEO, but rather my peers. My boss is actually quite understanding of foreign expectations. My coworkers, however, not so much. Many of my colleagues work several hours overtime every night, it’s obvious from the chat messages that they send at 10 or 11 at night. So they are not so understanding when I close my computer at 6 pm.
Even so, I manage without too much overtime during typical work from home duties. However, things differ when I have work trips. They overpack the schedule filling it with overtime and me with stress headaches. I understand that this is the norm for them, but my other Western coworkers are strongly showing our boundaries. It may seem selfish, but after seeing several coworkers quit from overwork, I am doing what I can do to protect myself and my well-being.
Our standards and actions are starting to wear off on some of our Japanese coworkers luckily. I am on the communication committee, so I get to explain to them why they shouldn’t schedule events and trips in such a way that we have to travel home on Saturday morning because it breaks into our rest time. And they actually listened and changed the trip, I was quite honestly shocked!
They have also stopped requiring travel on Sundays for Monday morning meetings. (Because I asked for a day off to replace my weekend.) I have been being very protective of my free time; I don't want to become a work robot.
I honestly don't know how the Japanese do it and if I was held to the same expectations I would be exhausted and probably have already quit. Luckily, I have some flexibility and they are starting to understand, or so it seems.
How is your experience with work-life balance in Japan? Are you surviving?
If you are struggling, keep pushing for your rights!
Teacher, Traveler, Dancer -
Currently living in Gifu -
I love Japan, dance, cats, food, and fashion!
4 Comments
SalarymanJim
on Feb 12
I think one of the things I found frustrating when I started out working in a predominantly "Japanese" workplace was the way some colleagues would send me work-related messages (via whatever chat app we use for work) later into the evening. So like, I would finish for the day and get home only to find that I'd been sent a message about work from a colleague at like 9, 10, 11 in evening. I think the most frustrating thing about this was that the messages tended to be a request to do some task the next day. I always felt like, "if it can wait until the next day, then message me about it ... the next day!" It really bothered me for a while and I'm not the kind of person to directly pick someone up on something that I'm not happy with so it took a few months of terse responses or just ignoring the messages in order for my own message to be understood. Again, it's not really my style but I do think there is something to be said for establishing your position early on -- I know colleagues (foreign and Japanese) who made it clear from an early stage that, for them, work stuff after hours is only for when something really does need to be done and anything else isn't going to be welcome. And to be fair, I think when people know what you're about and know that you will get jobs done then, for the most part, they respect they way you like to work. Anyway, good for you. Sounds like you're communicating your position well.
TonetoEdo
on Feb 22
This week, the school I work in sent an email to all staff. The message - do not email, send chats, or post on the student channels between 8 p.m. and 8 p.m. We've restored some sanity! I'll peek at my messages before I turn in at night, just in case there is an emergency.
Eli
on Mar 18
I made similar experiences at previous workplaces. It was rather my colleagues that complained about me not doing much overtime even though I finished my tasks on time. They wanted me to do overtime just because they did overtime.
ReishiiTravels
on Mar 19
@Eli It's crazy right!?