Mon, Sep 30, 2002 page11

• Japanese workers like foreign bosses

  DIFFERENT SYSTEMS Wages at Western businesses are set by performance, not seniority, attracting the brightest and best among the young and ambitious

  • AFP
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  When Miyuki Watanabe ditched the comforts of lifetime employment at Toyota to take less secure but more rewarding work at US rival Ford, the Japanese automotive giant wanted to know why.

  "A lady from the human resources department took me out for a very expensive dinner," recalled the 27-year-old, who now works at Ford Japan in Tokyo.

  "She wanted feedback from people who had left Toyota to make a report for the management who are old, traditional men who do not know why women want to move from such a well-known firm," she said.

  But there is no magic formula: it is just that wages at Western businesses are decided on performance rather than length of service, and the atmosphere is simply more relaxed, according to many women.

  As a result, a growing number of women in Japan are switching allegiance from Japanese companies to Western firms -- or "gaishi".

  "With an American company your salary never goes up unless you are doing a good job, whereas at Toyota it is based on seniority," said Watanabe.

  "Also, Toyota is more like an army, while an American company is laid-back and there is freedom: it is more fun."

  In Japan great prestige is attached to being employed by a bluechip company such as Toyota Motor Corp -- the nation's largest automaker, technology giant Fujitsu Ltd or major mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo Inc.

  But many women perceive working for even the best known Japanese firms to be frustrating as they may miss out on opportunities for promotion or simply not given much responsibility -- unlike at a foreign enterprise.

  "In my cynical view, [after graduating from university] I decided I wanted to work for a Western company as I would never make it to president or senior management at a Japanese firm," said Rika Beppu, who is a partner at the Tokyo office of major British law firm Simmons and Simmons.

  Those women in coveted graduate trainee positions at Japanese companies are typically treated equally with men.

  But some claim even this is unfair because they cannot reap the benefits of long-term employment if they chose to leave to have a family, for example, a burden which is not shared by their male counterparts.

  Fluent in English, French and Japanese, Watanabe was ecstatic to be one of some 100 graduates picked from thousands of applicants to work for Toyota as a vehicle pricing analyst around five years ago.

  But she soon became disillusioned as she was expected most nights to stay at work until the boss left the office, even if she had nothing to do and without receiving adequate overtime. She was also often pressured into going out with senior management.

  "My colleagues and I felt this was stupid, but the case is different for men and women," she said, arguing that there was no point in women trying to make it in a system geared to lifetime employment.

  "Women have a lot of choices in life, they can just quit if they want. But when it comes to men, especially in this society, they have to work until 60 when they get a pension so they are financially stable."

  After just two-and-a-half years Watanabe realized she would have to dedicate much of her working life to Toyota to be sufficiently rewarded, so decided to switch to a Western firm where she had heard she could make more money faster and work better hours.

  The number of employees leaving Toyota to work for Western firms is not yet large enough to be a real worry, said Haruyuki Miyadai, a group manager at the carmaker's global human resources division.

  But he admitted Toyota was looking at how to alter its corporate structure to remain attractive to graduates.

  Toyota was successful because of its overall strength from the assembly line up, not because of a few high-flying leaders, Miyadai stressed.

  "We don't have an elite [fast-track] system that is common in a Western company... Long-term employment is a factor we believe in to sustain total corporate power," he said.

  "[But] we need to strike some balance between new social trends and our core value set," Miyadai conceded.

  Traditional Japanese firms such as Toyota need to evolve faster to meet changing social demands or they risk losing more female talent to the Western business world, warned Watanabe.

  "Next time I switch my job -- if that happens -- I will look for an American company again," she said.
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