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"Generation" and hidden class
In Japan, there is no suspense about how much bonus an employee can get, and Japanese companies will not stimulate employees to chase after me by "widening the bonus gap".
It sounds like a bit of a "big pot of rice", but in the eyes of the Japanese, it's also a kind of "team spirit";Influenced by Chinese Confucian culture, Japan likes the golden mean, and does not want to excel, but it cannot be left behind.
However, in such a team, it is very particular about "seniority", and the Japanese talk about "seniority" on many occasions, for example, those who enter the company or school early are "seniors", and those who enter late are "juniors", so in the workplace, it is often seen that older people call young people "seniors".
In addition to "generational ranks", there are many hidden hierarchies in Japanese companies, such as full-time employees, contract employees, and part-time employees. The employee and the company sign a contract with no labor period, and the default lifetime employment;The term of the labor contract for a contracted employee is generally 1 to 3 years, while a zero-hour employee is the one who works for one day and is paid a day's wages.
There are also some subtle differences between employees who enter the company as fresh graduates and employees who jump from other companies, the latter is called "halfway adoption", which not only suffers in terms of "seniority", but also has the meaning of "impure blood". One of the problems with this culture is that Japanese people don't like to change jobs casually.
The salary of an employee of a Japanese company is generally proportional to the number of years he has served in the company, and this system is called "seniority sequence", which means that the salary of an employee increases every year with age and the length of service in the company.
For example, a 20-year-old employee earns 200,000 yen a month, and when he or she reaches the age of 30, his monthly salary rises to 300,000 yen12 months of monthly salary, plus two bonuses in summer and winter, a person's annual salary is about his age multiplied by 16 18, for example, a person who works until he is 50 years old, his annual income is about 8 million 10 million yen. Therefore, Japanese people usually reach the peak of their lifetime income and generation at the age of 50 or 60, which is also the stage when they have the strongest sense of fulfillment in life.
"Retirement pay" and affluent old age
Of course, there are income disparities between industries and enterprises. According to a recent survey of popular companies in Japan, major trading companies such as Itochu, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, and Marubeni are still the first choice for college students. In Japan's traditional trading companies, banking and finance, construction and real estate industries, the average income of employees in large enterprises usually exceeds 10 million yen, while the average annual income of employees in all industries in Japan is about 4 million 5 million yen.
However, high incomes come with high pressures and high taxes. The personal income tax of high-income people in Japan has increased year by year, taking an annual income of 10 million yen as an example, the personal income tax has increased from 2 million yen in 2002 to 2.74 million yen in 2020;In addition, the higher the salary, the longer the overtime hours, and many companies that earn more than 10 million yen a year have employees working overtime for more than 60 hours per monthSo in balance, the income gap in Japanese society is not too large.
In addition to salary, most companies will pay a one-time "retirement payment" according to the employee's length of service to the company when the employee retires or leavesHowever, if you are employed for life and work until you retire at the age of 60, the retirement benefit of most companies is generally around 20 million yen, which is equivalent to 1.3 million yuan.
In addition, many employees will be rehired by the company after retirement, and continue to do their original jobs with half of their salary (4 million 6 million yen), plus the social security pension of **, they can still maintain a comfortable life in terms of money in their later years.
Some time ago, Nippon TV broadcast a program to survey the savings of households in various regions of Japan, and the household savings in many places are more than 10 million yen, and Tokyo ranks first in Japan with more than 20 million yenIt seems that the Japanese people are still quite rich, but this is also related to the aging of Japanese society, because many people's savings come from generous retirement benefits.
All "operators".
I asked Professor Sasaki of Tokyo University of Science about the employment of Japanese companies, and his view was that the labor market in the United States is well developed, and companies can easily obtain both excellent and manual workersBut if Japan does the same, it will not be able to win the international competition, because even if Japanese companies offer the same salary as American companies, the world's top talents have no intention of coming to work in JapanTherefore, Japanese companies must start with cheap fresh graduates and develop human resources for themselves.
Therefore, Japanese companies pay attention to OJT (on-the-job training), focusing on making employees proficient in professional skills related to the company's business, and they should rotate frequently to Xi learn the work skills of each position in the company in an all-round way. At the same time, the company will also encourage employees to take various nationally recognized skill qualification exams, and the more skill qualifications they obtain, the higher the salary.
On the contrary, it is not very marketable to study MBA in Japan, because few companies need to hire an "airborne soldier" to manage, so it is better to get an MBA diploma than to get a skill qualification certificate, which is also the reason why MBA education in Japan has been underdeveloped.
Professor Sasaki also showed me a chart with two lines, one is the straight line where annual income increases with age, and the other is the curve where employees create value for the company. At the stage when fresh graduates are just hired, the salary paid by the company is higher than the value created by the employees;When an employee has a certain ability to work, the value he creates for the company is higher than the salary paid to him by the company;But as he got older, the value he created began to decline, but the salary became very high.
This kind of annual salary system is also an implicit investment in the future. Employees work hard in the prime of life, and when they can't do it, the company gives back with rich returns, this system puts the interests of the enterprise and employees together, so that business owners and employees must be based on long-term considerations, when the company's short-term interests and continuous operation conflict, will not hesitate to choose to continue to operate, otherwise the company is yellow, everyone's pension will be wasted.
There are few people in Japan who say that Japan's money-sharing system makes the boundary between the owner and the operator of the enterprise not very clear, and both the management and the labor side regard the enterprise as their own place to settle down, and they all think that they bear the responsibility of running the enterprise well. Therefore, in Japan, the term "manager" is often used instead of "entrepreneur", and it is emphasized that "everyone is involved in management, and everyone is a manager". This is also a phrase that Kazuo Inamori often hangs on his lips.
Of course, this kind of enterprise system also has many obvious drawbacks, such as making the organization conservative and rigid, suppressing innovation, etc., so since the 90s of the 20th century, the Japanese society has become more and more vocal for breaking the lifelong employment and seniority sequence, and many enterprises are transforming to a more international management model, advocating the free flow and diversity of talents, giving money according to ability, and making value creation and value distribution more compatible.