Dateline - Dying to work

Dateline - Dying to work

TOKYO – A recent television special said it all: It showed a building in downtown Tokyo with preprogrammed office lights that uniformly shut off at 10 pm; seconds later, virtually every light in the building came right back on. Despite such displays, the nation that has taken the sting out of the world ‘workaholic,’ producing 10 percent of the world’s exports with just 2 percent of its population, is suddenly obsessed with a deadly phenomenon known as karoshi. That’s the Japanese word for ‘death from overwork.’ Tetsunojo Uehata, the medical authority who coined the word, defines karoshi as a ‘condition in which psychologically unsound word processes are allowed to continue in a way that disrupts the worker’s normal work and life rhythms, leading to a buildup of fatigue in the body and a chronic condition of overwork accompanied by worsening of pre-existent high blood pressure and a hardening of the arteries and finally resulting in a fatal breakdown.’ Translation: All work and no play can really wreck one’s health, even in Japan.

Hardly a week goes by without a grim report about some overzealous worker in the prime of his life who could not just say no to overtime. Not long ago, a 39-year-old police sergeant, Haruo Okada, captured headlines as a karoshi victim by working double shifts for a month during the enthronement ceremonies for the nation’s new monarch. There are no reliable figures on the number of victims, but analysts believe that tens of thousands of Japanese become seriously ill or die from overwork each year. Despite promises by the government to trim working hours, the average Japanese clocked 2,150 hours in 1989, compared with 1,924 hours for Americans and 1,643 hours for the French.

Some Japanese want to change. When a group of lawyers and doctors set up the nation’s first karoshi hot line in 1988, 135 people phoned in on the first day. Since then, nearly 2,000 cases have been reported to the 42 hot lines across the nation, and an international call-in center has been set up recently.

To raise public awareness about the problem and to pressure the government and corporate Japan into action, a group of lawyers, doctors and victims’ wives has published a book called ‘Karoshi: When the Corporate Warrior Dies,’ which recount numerous horror stories. Yet the government and most Japanese companies rarely acknowledge karoshi and provide no special compensation to survivors. As the Ministry of Labour defines it, overwork can only be considered a cause of death if a victim ‘worked continuously for 24 hours preceding death,’ or ‘worked 16 hours a day for seven consecutive days leading up to death.’

Alas, the recent media attention probably won’t slow down the production lines much. In a poll conducted by an insurance company, more than 40 percent of the employees the firm covered said they feared that overwork might kill them; few planned to do anything about it. All in all, it looks like another busy year for the folks at the karoshi hot line.

By Jim Impoco

US News & World Report

Learning to cope with corporate culture clashes

Learning to cope with corporate culture clashes

The does and don’t of travelling abroad are a potential minefield for the unprepared traveller. If you spit in some countries, you could end up in prison. In others, spitting is a competitive sport.

The Centre for International Briefing has spent 40 years preparing the wary traveller for such pitfalls. Though it may sound like a covert operation for aspiring secret agents. What the Centre does is prepare travellers for encounters with new social and business customs worldwide. To date, over 50,000 people have passed through its headquarters at Farnham Castle in Surrey. ‘There are two broad tracks to our training programme.’ explains Jeff Tom, Marketing Director. ‘One covers business needs, the other social etiquette. For example, business travellers need to know how decision-making works.’

In Asian cultures most of it takes place behind the scenes. In China, it may be necessary to have government involved in any decisions taken. And in India, people are sometimes late for a scheduled appointment.

Greetings, gestures and terms of address are all potential hazards abroad. While we are familiar with short firm handshake in this part of the world, in Middle East the hand is held in a loose grip for a longer time. In Islamic cultures, showing the soles of your feet is a sign of disrespect and crossing your legs is seen as offensive.

The difference between understanding a culture and ignoring its conventions can be the measure of success or failure abroad. Jeff Tom tells the story of a British employee asked to post a letter by her Indonesian employer. ‘She knew the letter was too late for the six o’clock post, so she decided to hold it until the eight o’clock one. Her boss saw the letter on her desk and sacked her for not posting it immediately. In Western cultures, we believe in empowering people and rewarding them for using initiative, but other cultures operate on the basis of obeying direct orders.’

John Doherty, International Marketing Director with the Irish Industrial Development Authority, explains how you can easily take yourself into trouble at a business meeting in Japan: ‘For them, the most senior person at the meeting will say very little, and the person doing most of the talking is now very important.’ Doherty has spent 12 of his 16 years with the IDA working abroad in USA, Germany, South-East Asia and Japan.

‘In a country like Japan, the notion of personal space which we value so simply has no meaning,’ he says. ‘With a population of 125 million condensed into a narrow strip of land, private space for the Japanese is virtually non-existent. You can’t worry about your personal space in a packed train when people are standing on your feet.’

Tiptoeing through the minefield

DO

· Show an interest in, and at least an elementary knowledge of the country you are visiting.

· Learn a few words of the language – it will be seen as a compliment.

· Be sensitive to countries who have bigger and better-known neighbours, and try not to confuse Canadians with Americans, New Zealanders with Australians, Belgians with French.

· Familiarise yourself with the basics of business and social etiquette. As a starting point, learning how to greet people is very important.

Don’t

· Assume you won’t meet any communication problems because you speak English. You may think you are paying somebody a compliment by telling them their business is going a bomb. Americans will infer you think it is falling.

· Appear too reserved. As Americans are generally more exuberant than their European colleagues, they may equate reserve with lack of enthusiasm.

The Irish Independent

Pirated Goods Row of Titan Stores

Pirated Goods Row of Titan Stores

Integrity and high ethical standards – We put people first

Report for SPSF

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Titan Stores is a major retailer with stores. Because the serious allegation and the effect on the company’s image and share price, Titan Stores decided to hold a press conference. As a chief man, I felt shamed about our customers and shareholders, but we still face the serious problems. Even though the allegation is factitious and un-true, we still give a good reason and set a responsibility to our all the public people.

INTRODUCTION

With accusing pirated goods, in Titan Stores, we are known for our integrity and high ethical standards. We felt sorry and ashamed with our customers because we always price our products competitively and offer top quality goods. We also have a skilled and committed workforce in whom we have great confidence.

Titan Stores’ Background

· Based in Dublin, Ireland, Titan Stores is a major retailer with stores in most European cities.

· Merchandise:

Ø Stationery and greeting cards.

Ø Books, Magazines and music products.

Ø Computer software and games.

Ø Office equipments, etc.

· Major Customer:
Teenagers and young adults.

· Workforce: 8,000

· Annual Turnover (past one year):
Sales: €720m
Pre-tax: €90m

FINDINGS

Pirated Goods

· Race against Time
This game was from the company, Netherland, we had bought the software license in low price due to this company had a financial problem and they want to sell quickly five years ago. As a chief of Titan’s company, I believe that will help us been more competitive with our competitions.

· Space Gladiator 4 and Endgame
These two games are from another company in Hong Kong. We had some traded goods with each other, but not too much. Before we began in business, they had showed me the licenses (copyright) with these two games. They had the right to sell them, so I had decided to trade with them.

Employees Redundant

Our company’s mission is just like the slogan ’We put people first.’ Past years ago, our company was a small company. When the company had been varied, we lead in many kinds of goods to enrich our selling such as books, music and software etc. Because of fierce competition, we had no choice to make the decision.

We have to increase profits because the share price has been declining and shareholders are becoming restless. We had cut down approximately 2,000 stuffs, but all the processes were fit the Stand of Human Resource Management (SHRM). It is not so called ‘ruthless and dictatorial.’ We knew some employees who had lots of complain and sadness but, believe me, we were in the same feeling and the same situation.

Although the turnover is high during these years the pre-tax profits is still not good enough. We have had problems in our buying department recently. We have faced the problems and tried to fix all the improper selling policy and behaviors.

We had done these steps below:

· We had contacted with our chief buyer. He said no one know who placed the original order. According to him, it could have been a buyer who has left the company.

· We had contacted the manufacturer of the game Race against time. They were not helpful. They said they were still considering what action to take regarding the illegal copies.

CONCLUSION

According to our market survey groups, it is true that there are some illegal copies have been spread on the market. But we still had sold approximately 5,000 packs of the game in the past three months. We had asked the software providers given a copyright or an anti-counterfeit mark on our products. It’s impossible for us to recycle all these packs, but we can guarantee that our games and software are legal and right licenses.

RECOMMENDATIONS

With these allegations, we felt sorry to our consumers. We have decided to stop sell these three software and communicate with customers who had bought our products and check with them to see if they had bought the illegal copies.

We will take the list step below:

1. To stop selling these software provisionally and cooperate the SPSF investigation.

2. To contact with our software providers and tell the serious allegation will destroy our Titan’s reputation.

3. We will make a final conclusion and hold a meeting room again until the SPSF finishes their investigation.

Chief Executive Operator of Titan Stores

14 August 2008

New working model

New working model - By Michael Skapinker

As we embark on this new investigation of the future of work, there are several lessons we can draw by looking back. First, time, and our own adaptability, may solve some of our deepest problems. There are still developed countries worried about large-scale unemployment, France and Germany among them. But their problems are now widely seen as the result of excessive labor market regulation. Far from telling employees to enjoy more leisure, French and German companies are trying to find ways to ensure their staff work more hours. And in the UK, employers and policymakers now worry about a shortage of workers, not of work.

Second, the countries that seem poised to assume world economic leadership – Japan in the past; India and specially China now – may face obstacles that are barely visible today. And third, there is nothing new about our sense that we are at a turning point. People have often felt that work was changing in ways they had not seen before. Is it different this time? Is the way we work really changing fundamentally?

In one sense yes, simply because the countries that are playing a fuller part in the world economy, particularly China and India, have such large populations. ‘We simply have not comprehended yet the full impact of 2.5bn people coming into the world economy who were not part of it before,’ says Kim Clark, dean of Harvard Business School.

The second change is the technology affecting work today. The internet and broadband connections have made it far easier for companies to distribute their work around the world and to remain open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The trends towards both outsourcing and offshoring have offered India and China huge opportunities to develop their people’s skill. They have also provided companies around the world with enticements that are difficult to resist. Diana Farrell, director of McKinsey Global Institute, the consultancy’s in-house economic think-tank, says that 70 per cent of the costs of a typical company in the developed world come from labor and 30 per cent from capital. Capital is expensive and labor cheap in countries such as India and China. Companies that benefit from the cost savings involved in employing Indian and Chinese labor are at a significant advantage.

The problem is, Ms Farrell says, that competitor companies can achieve the same benefits by moving some of their operations to India or China too. Competitive advantage can only be retained if companies understand that there is more to be gained from India or china than cost-cutting. The two countries are potentially huge markets too. Lower vehicle development costs in India, for example, mean cheap cars can be produced for the local market. New niche markets can be found for these products in developed countries too.

Companies can address business problems in India and China that they could not solved in their home markets. For example, Ms Farrell cites an airline that used to find it uneconomic to chase debts of less than $200. By using Indian accountants, they were able to chase debts of $50. This is good for western companies, but what of western workers?

A common question heard in the US and Western Europe today is: “What are we all going go to do?” Prof Clark says: ’First of all we have to recognize something that’s lost in a lot of these conversations: most of us don’t work in places that are competing with the Chinese, or the Indians.’

Technology is likely to continue to allow more jobs to be done remotely, but, Prof Clark argues, there will be an opposing trend too: companies offering a more personal service at close quarters. Ms Farrell argues that demographic changes mean there are going to be fewer Americans and western Europeans to do the jobs available anyway.

Japan and Western Europe are ageing societies. Even the US, still a relatively young country by comparison, will have 5 per cent fewer people of working age by 2015 than it does today.

Faced with these projections, western societies can either export the jobs or impact the workers.

Will China and India become as dominant as Japan once looked like becoming? Prof Clark says the most significant obstacle they face is the quality of the universities. Few of them show signs of becoming the world-class research centers they need to be if China and India are to become world economic leaders.

From the Financial Times

Financial times

Masayoshi Son and SOFTBANK

Masayoshi Son and SOFTBANK

Masayoshi Son was born in Kyushu, Japan in 1957. He is founder of SOFTBANK, Japan’s leading PC software distributor. Read his account of how he came to start the business and work out how long it took him to decide what to do.

I spent a long time doing research and making business plans before I started the company. I was living in Kyushu at the time. It was 1979 and I’d just come back from the States. I had no income and all my family and friends were worried. They couldn’t understand why I wasn’t doing anything, but I was thinking.

I’d gone to the States to study when I was sixteen I went to Oakland, California for a couple of years first, then transferred to Berkeley where I graduated. I met my wife while I was studying English in Oakland and by the time we came back to Kyushu we had a new baby. She was worried too. I had come up with 40 new business ideas – everything from creating software to setting up hospital chains – but I didn’t know how to start.

I wanted a business I could fall in love with. It had to be unique and original. It had to have great growth potential. I had about 25 points like this and I took a big sheet of paper and gave each business idea scores. Then I picked the best one. It turned out to be the personal computer software business. So in 1981 we finally moved to Tokyo and I started SOFTBANK.

Guinness

When I first started working Guinness I was employed as a general worker. For three years I work in the bottling plant as a machine operator. The next position I held was for a period of seven years in the engineering department as a maintenance assistant. This involved working with technically skilled personnel in maintaining plant and equipment. In both jobs I reported directly to a supervisor. Since then, however, the structure of the company has significantly changed and the supervisor layer no longer exists. General workers now report a plant manager. I was then promoted to the position of laboratory officer in the quality assurance laboratory. The job involved carrying out a wide range of analyses on all aspects of the brewing process. For the past year I’ve worked in the personnel departments as an Industrial Relations Manager. In this role I report directly to the Personnel Manager of the company.

COLGATE-PALMOLIVE COMPANY

COLGATE-PALMOLIVE COMPANY

William Colgate founded the Colgate Company in 1806 as a starch, soap and candle business in New York City. For the first hundred years, the company did all its business in United States. However, in the early 1900s, the company began an aggressive expansion programme that has led to the establishment of Colgate operations in countries throughout Europe, Latin American and the Far East. In recent years it set up operations in Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Eastern Europe and China. Colgate-Palmolive became a truly global consumer products company, worth $8.7 bn and selling in more than 200 countries.

Colgate-Palmolive’s five main sectors of business are: Oral Care, Body Care, Household Surface Care, Fabric Care and Pet Nutrition and Health Care. In the area of Oral Care, Colgate-Palmolive is the world leader in toothpaste. As a result of the company’s heavy investment in research and technology, it has developed and toothbrushes. To strengthen its presence in professional products, Colgate-Palmolive bought the Ora Pharm Company of Australia and the dental therapeutic business of Scherer Laboratories USA in 1990. For many years, the company has had a strong dental education programme in schools throughout the world and has maintained a close partnership with the international dental community. Recently it has created a web site for dental professionals

The company has always paid close attention to the environment. It has already made great progress in the use of recyclable bottles and packaging materials.