Japanese and Asian employees view their jobs and careers differently

Japanese corporations in Asia must have personnel affairs and employment strategies that appropriately incorporate personnel affairs policies of the local and global standards based on an understanding of the obvious distinctions between Japan and Asia. To that end, they must fully comprehend the different ways that Japanese and Asian employees view their jobs and careers. This article explains these differences while referring to a work-related survey conducted in Asia (China, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc.).

1. Way of thinking about corporate work
After finding employment at a single corporation, Japanese people tend to be committed to their company and work there for many years. In contrast, many Asian human resources see corporate work as just one of many sources of income. There is a tendency in Asia to diversity one’s income, including neighborhood commerce, investment, multi-level marketing, and online auctions, and a larger percentage of people are doing side jobs as shown in the graph below.

Accordingly, corporate work is constantly compared to other sources of income, and there may be a tendency to feel it is acceptable that one’s contributions to the corporation are in line with the income received.

2. Work priorities
Japanese people attach importance to workplace human relationships and work content, while Asian human resources overwhelmingly prioritize wages. The following graph shows the results of a survey in multiple countries on what is seen as important for one’s job. All Asian countries chose “wages” as the top response.
Asian human resources frequently change jobs for better pay and confidently negotiate their salaries. This is likely a different stance than Japanese people, who want long-term, stable employment.

3. Desired career plans
Japanese people want to develop their careers in a functional way—moving up the ranks to section manager, department manager, executive, and president—by gaining different types of work experience in multiple in-house positions. However, Asian human resources want to leverage their major fields of study from university, so they tend to search for opportunities based on specialty and professional duties to advance their careers through repeated job changes. The ratio of people who have changed jobs in their 20s was 29.3% in Japan and 48.7% in Asia (*1). Accordingly, it is essential for Japanese corporations to implement personnel affairs policies with an understanding that Asian human resources prioritize career opportunities to improve their specialized work skills.

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