I’ve taken interest in the future career these days and I came to pay attention to many news related to it.

     I watched a news program this morning. It was about how major companies make an effort to offer a “work-life balance” for the workers. There are many interesting attempts of the companies.

    one company gives them money, every time the family of the worker has a baby. When the first baby is born, they can get ￥300.000. The second baby is born, they can get ￥500.000. The third baby is born, they can get one million yen. The president think that if the workers are not happy, they cannot make their customers happy. Therefore, this system was introduced. I was really impressed by his idea. It is not only about amount of money but the company’s flexible idea towards workers’ family life. It encourages workers very much.  Another comany offers a cafeteria which has all you can eat for free. Also, other company is aiming at establishing the four-day workweek according to the TV program.

   　While there are these companies which have friendly-working environment, severe working environment is still existing in some companies. On the last Friday, Japan’s first paper on karoushi released and said 1 in 4 companies have admitted that some employees do more than 80 hours of overwork per month.  Japan still faces this kind of issue.

     According to the OECD’s Better Life Index, Denmark has the best work-life balance among the OECD countries. Japan ranked 35th out of 38 countries. It is not surprising to see this low ranked number… The progress has been made very slowly.

     !!It is totally okay, if you like to work very hard.!!  Every person’s value of happiness is different but we cannot work if we are mentally and physically stressed and tired.

I really hope the concept “Work-life balance” will spread wider someday soon in Japan.