I Stopped Offering Remote Work Support. Going Forward, I Think Only People Who Want to Should Work Remotely
Hello, this is Tetsuya Ashida from ACIDHOUSE, INC.
Please follow the link and read the details carefully, but the part prompting discussion is this:
Asked “Are you more productive working remotely than in the office?”, about seven in ten globally answered yes (69.1%), whereas in Japan only 42.8% answered yes, the lowest of the seven countries.
In Japan, arguments over whether to work remotely, whether it is possible, and whether productivity rises have continued from around March 2020 at the beginning of the novel coronavirus pandemic through October 2021, when the fifth wave subsided and the state of emergency was lifted.
Meanwhile, most companies overseas had adopted remote work, with results indicating that people were more productive working remotely.
Conversely, Japan still had not produced a more-productive result, even taking it as an overall opinion.
Through COVID there were many things that made me think, “Ah, Japan does not change even in this situation…” and “It cannot keep up with global trends…”, and remote work proved another example.
Remote Work Is Only One Aspect of Productivity
That said, the companies I work with are fully remote, and I have friends and relatives working remotely too.
I have worked remotely since well before COVID.
A LinkedIn survey gave these results.
Regular LinkedIn users are early adopters with relatively high internet literacy. Among such people, more say they are more productive remotely.
Their distinguishing feature is that they are not being made to use computers and smartphones. They use them like extensions of their limbs outside work too, getting strong results for their time and effort.
For example, they take their smartphone to the toilet, open their banking app while using it, and complete a bank transfer before they finish. They certainly do not make a special trip to a bank ATM or counter to transfer money.
In other words, “People who regularly find ways to work more efficiently actively adopt convenient digital tools for that purpose, and consequently work more efficiently”.
In short,
The issue is not remote work but whether you pursue productivity every day—that was all it came down to. Conversely, I think low-productivity Japanese companies = companies fundamentally unable to work remotely is also a valid equation.
Like Someone Giving Up Because of Sore Muscles After Their First Workout…
Why can overseas companies work remotely when Japanese companies cannot?
For example, how many companies would say this?
Very few, if any.
—and they shut it out.
Many remote work tools and methods are indeed new, so learning to use them well probably involves some “muscle soreness,” but they seem to quit because it hurts.
- Speaking in person or by phone rather than summarizing briefly on Slack
- Paper and seals rather than making full use of the cloud
- Visiting to sell rather than holding webinars
They retreat to the familiar, and familiar methods offer no leverage, so they abandon the long-term benefits.
It is simply whether you do it and keep doing it. So I realized it is just a mindset problem.
Come to think of it, at my company, we started remote work support as a new business and at one point put effort into sharing information, but we stopped all of it.
Changing mindsets was not on our menu, and it is fundamental to every part of business.
So if you are interested in a program for breaking free of the Japanese corporate mindset, I will provide one.
The Important Approach Going Forward Is Finding Separate Niches
As of October 2021, we learned that people's movement was not the cause of the novel coronavirus, and vaccination rates in Japan had risen, so packed trains and commuting to offices had ceased to be fatal actions in themselves.
My view is that we should practice fundamental crisis management, but forgetting the heat once it passes the throat is a Japanese specialty. It has become clear that most cannot change even after an unprecedented crisis following the Great East Japan Earthquake.
Meanwhile, a minority have probably used the COVID crisis to transform into new business models, reconsider their lives, shift to workations, or abandon offices.
Companies and people like these must make up as much as 20% or at least 4% of Japan.
I want to spend the rest of my life with people like them.
So whether it is remote work, improving productivity, digital marketing, or building systems, rather than customers reluctantly thinking “I have to…,” I will serve customers who say “I want to!”, “I want to do more!”, and “I want to improve the quality!”.
Advancing technology makes it easier to create time for yourself.
Leave tedious work to technology or to people who like that kind of work.
An important keyword for life going forward is “finding separate niches”.