Sunday, October 27, 2019

In Japan, workplace bullying and harassment are driving women to seek mental health treatment

The research shows that happy workers are more productive. If a company is deemed to be fair, people work harder for it. Some companies have shortened the hourly week and yet productivity went up. 


Workplace harassment is far from unusual in Japan, with its hierarchical company structure and culture of subservience and long hours. The government has taken steps to tackle this, introducing legislation specifically to eliminate harassment at work and encouraging companies to draw up their own guidelines to prevent it, but progress on the law is seen to be slow.

A “unique characteristic” of the Japanese workplace is the tendency by senior members of staff to shout at lower-ranked employees, just as they were shouted at by their superiors in the past. They may consider it to be merely delivering instructions, Naito said, but elsewhere it would be classified as verbal abuse and younger workers are upset or offended by this approach.

SCMP

2 comments:

Peter Pan said...

Telling the Japanese that their work culture is wrong, is unlikely to yield results. Cultural change must be pushed by those negatively affected.

Kaivey said...

I think you're right!