[Let's Stop Laboring, Japan] Toward an Era Where a Play-Centered Way of Life Builds Sustainable Companies

In 2020, the words "remote work" and "telework" became keywords everyone knows.

The following is Google Trends data as of September, and you can see that they surged from late March to early April, right in the middle of the COVID crisis.

After that they dropped sharply, but even so, search volume remains higher than before COVID.

So, the words "remote work" and "telework" themselves are known even by my mother, who lives on a pension and whose main source of information is TV, so, to use a cliché, you could say they have truly "gone mainstream."

How widespread has telework actually become?

Skimming through voices online (social media), you hear all sorts of words, such as "fully remote," "partly remote," and "nothing to do with telework."

Looking at this, to put it crudely, it is "different from company to company".

However, although about 60% of companies introduced telework or changed how they work, you must not overlook that as many as 41% answered "did none of these".

Each company probably has its own circumstances, but in the midst of an unprecedented crisis and transformation, companies that made no improvement of any kind account for 41%.

The "digital first" trend can't be stopped

On the other hand, at the level of individual businesses, big transformations have also emerged.

Those are the main ones.

Also, since the new cabinet took office, the government's policies related to "digital first" have become prominent.

This trend can't be stopped, and those who maintain the status quo will be exposed to rapid decline and extinction.

Work shifts toward the "essential"

Telework represents only one aspect of the "transformation to digital first," but why is "digital first" in such demand?

It's probably because these problems exist and digital first can solve them.

However,

what's essential is a fundamental rethink: "Does a human really need to do that work?"

That is my position.

To borrow the title of the agenda for the 2021 Davos meeting, you might call it the "Great Reset."

Many people think next-generation technologies such as AI and RPA will "take their jobs."

But there are also many jobs that only humans can do, so what will happen is a "division of work."

As I also wrote in the following article, the future is one where humans and technology coexist.

[Japan Lags Behind in IT] Three Traits of People Left Behind by Technology October 14, 2020

Working hours will get shorter

The work humans will concentrate on from here has been repeatedly discussed and spread under titles such as "jobs that will remain and jobs that will disappear with the arrival of AI."

It would get long, so I won't dig deep, but humans can do productive activity for only about three hours, and as we pursue productivity, we will probably stop using the full current statutory working hours.

In other words, days off will increase while working days and hours decrease.

As above, Mizuho Bank seems to have steered toward reducing both working days and daily working hours.

Takafumi Horie, known as Horiemon, also says in his books and elsewhere that "from now on, we will live by playing," and I can feel the world getting closer to that.

How to build a sustainable business

So, to start wrapping up: making a company or business sustainable is nothing other than putting "digital first × reducing working hours" into practice.

To come back to telework: employees of companies where telework is going well get rid of waste and are freed from homes and lifestyles built around the office.

It is this personal time that offline should be allocated to.

Offline should come into play not for boring, by-precedent work, but for the times when you savor life, emotions, and stories to the fullest.

By the way, from January 2019 to March 2020, I ran my business without any problems while traveling through Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Ukraine, and elsewhere.

I'd like to write a separate article recommending workations and the nomad lifestyle.