The Six Monthly Reshuffle

On Friday I packed up the contents of my desk as my colleague and I are to move floors as a part of the office reorganization. One of the things that surprised me about working in Japan was the frequency with which the office composition changed. I work for a foreign multinational company, and every six months there seems to be an announcement about some minor tweak to the Organizational chart, resulting in the movement of desks and a change in the layout of the office.

A quick poll of my friends working for other companies here; came back with the same results. It appears that in larger style organizations changes to roles are made if not six monthly, then about once a year.

I know that as a part of the older style “employment for life” mantra, employees are rotated around different business units in order to get a broad understanding of the overall business and obtain experience in different roles. They will be able to draw on these rolls as they make their way up the corporate ladder.

I wonder how relevant it is to still be moving people around in the current work environment? Whilst our change is a minor one - our roles will stay the same, but we will move from part of a sales division to a marketing one – I have heard of cases where quite major changes are made as part of this rotation. This can be disruptive; not only to the employees who need to abruptly begin to learn a new role, but also to customers who may find they have a sudden change in account management.

I suppose on the upside, staff turnover remains fairly low in most Japanese organizations, so even those who do have to learn a new role, can take comfort in the knowledge that their predecessor will be around to help them learn the ropes. However I still can’t shake the idea that this practice seems to be more disruptive than productive in terms of company practice.

With a rapidly declining workforce, and a falling birthrate, Japanese organizations will need to learn to work smarter rather than harder as the number of people available to fill vacancies will decrease. My personal hope is that this will lead to more opportunities for foreign workers, and better conditions for Japanese women in the workforce.