What are the general characteristics of Japanese corporations?

If you have studied Japanese and want to actively utilize it on the job, then a Japanese corporation is likely to be your first choice. There are Japanese corporations that have grown based on traditional management practices, referred to as “Japanese-style business management,” all over the world. What are the general characteristics of Japanese corporations? Two of the main ones are described below.

1. A culture of employee training

As opposed to foreign-owned enterprises that expect their employees to be immediately effective workers, Japanese corporations have a culture of thoroughly training their employees. For example, many leading corporations have excellent training programs and offer meticulous support for learning everything from basic business etiquette like exchanging business cards, interacting with people on the phone, and writing business e-mails to the knowledge and skills necessary for the job. This support system is not just for new employees but is regularly available after that as well. These wide-ranging systems include management training and support for obtaining licenses useful for the job as the employee moves up the ranks.

Acquiring basic business skills while working for a Japanese corporation will undoubtedly be useful in creating a career path, including future job changes.

2. Job stability

Japanese corporations tend to look at the long term when it comes to human resources based on a tradition of lifetime employment, in which full-time employees stay with the corporation until retirement. For this reason, it is rare for someone to be fired for not producing results within one year as is expected at foreign-owned corporations, and employees can expect to have stable, long-term jobs at their corporations. Additionally, it is common for Japanese corporations to have seniority systems in which employees are promoted and given raises according to years of service and age, so there are advantages to staying with the corporation over the long term if the workplace is a good fit.

However, in recent years demand for diverse work styles has been on the rise from both corporations and workers, and even Japanese corporations are taking another look at their traditional employment practices, including the elimination of regular raises and the implementation of merit-based pay. For this reason, it is important to identify the employment and human resource system that best suits you and engage in job-hunting activities after learning which systems are used at the corporations you wish to apply to.

Read more about Japanese recruitment information, see Japanese-Jobs.com ( https://jp.japanese-jobs.com/en).