Lecture of Gomajaki Hiroki
Feb. 28. 2010
Mapo College provides opportunities for the young to explore and rediscover the job market; it offers the Knowledge Library for managing courses and linking to various resources, classes for networking, and a laboratory for possibilities. Mapo College invited Gomajaki Hiroki, who is the CEO of Florence in Japan, to give a lecture about the 'Revolution of Working Style" on Feb. 28.
The following has been extracted from Gomazaki Hiroki’s speech.
Let me introduce myself. My mother's job was taking care of children. One of the children whom my mother took care of had a fever. In Japan, if a child has a fever, parents cannot send him or her to kindergarten. And if they have more than one child who get sick at different times, the parents have difficulty going to work. I wonder why people have to deal with this even though Japan has great economic power.
I started a business called 'Florence' in 2004 which takes care of temporarily sick children. My business has expanded and provides childcare services in 23 districts. I was nominated as one of the '100 People Who are Changing the World" and won a businessperson award this year. Lots of newspapers and TV stations have requested interviews with me. But there is also a quid pro quo. Florence had to do lots of works. People in Florence had to only work all day long. One day, one of my workers submitted her resignation, so I asked her "What does a job mean to you? We are doing very meaningful work together, so why do you want to quit your job?" She answered, "I have another job at home. When I go back home, I start my own job-house chores- again." Since her husband is in the IT business, she has to do all the housework. I think couples should share their housework, but many husbands dump all the housework on their wives.
Why?
I am also busy, so I was afraid that I might become a traditional husband –as mentioned above- in the future. Therefore, I determined that I had to change our working style. I am concerned about "the Revolution of Working Style" for the balance between work and life. At that time, we had lots of overtime work; now our company's extra working time has been reduced by 15 minutes per person. This is a remarkable overtime work reduction for a venture company in Japan. But work-efficiency creates more profit because it reduces extra costs. Also, we can recruit people easily because people think Florence is the best company for women. Generally, it is hard to recruit new people for a company, but we can get good people easily whenever we post a help-wanted ad on our homepage.
One of the main reasons Japanese women quit their jobs is long working hours. The main factor of low fertility is long working hours. There is a correlation between long working hours and fertility. Japan has the longest working hours of any county, but this means that the Japanese work very hard but have low efficiency.
Four ways of changing the work style at Florence.
People usually work 8 hours a day from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm, but people can only actually pay attention to their work for about 3 hours a day. So, I thought about what I have to do within three hours. And it is important knowing how long I can pay attention to my job.
First, prioritizing my job/work/activities
Second, checking my schedule; what I am doing during my working time
Third, concentrating on top priority projects
Fourth, applying this to managers first, and then expanding it to the entire staff.
I told my workers that they could work anywhere. I put an emphasis on productivity so people work hard, but there are some communication problems among the staff members. So I thought about the resolution. With the four points mentioned above, I recommended that the managers leave the office at 6 pm. I expected they would agree with my suggestion, but they didn’t, because many Japanese would rather be busy than leave the office at 6:00 pm. They think staying late in the office means that they are busy, and that being busy means that they are important. I broke this stereotype. I ordered them to be managers who can make people work hard without being dependent on their managers.
After this revolution of working style, my workers feel happier with their lives and they invest their extra time into self-improvement. This has a direct effect on their work and improves work-efficiency.
A working revolution can change a company. If that company changes the industry, then that industry could change corporate society, and, finally, corporate society could change the world.
Extracted from the Hope Network for the Next Generation (http://hopenetwork.tistory.com/)
Translated by KANG Eun-Na
Edited by Patrick Ferraro & Marie LEE
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