Resignee Deemed to be Disloyal?

Question

Hi,

I heard from a friend who studied and work in Japan years ago that, an employee who resigned from his company will deemed as a disloyal or unfaithful person. And the resignee will have a hard time in finding other jobs.

Is it true? Like to know more about Japanese society culture.

Many thanks

Answer 1

It depends on the person and it depends on the company, but I would say that in general people who change jobs are sometimes seen as unreliable and perhaps disloyal.

In the past a decent job with a good company was seen as the ticket to an easy life. The company took care of all your needs and provided you with training and skills and most importantly a job until you retired. People entered companies after college or high school graduation with sort of an unwritten promise of this kind of lifetime employement. Not many people switched jobs mid-career regardless of if they were happy doing at what they were doing. The common practice was to put the well being of the company ahead of things like family or personal ambition.

Therefore, it was considered rude and bad form to leave your job for another. People who did this were seen as unreliable because if they did it once then they might do it again. Companies did not want to invest time training such people if they thought they would leave after few years. This was why many companies were reluctant to hire women for high level positions because most supervisors (men) felt that a woman would eventually get married and have to leave.

Also, because so many things (pay, etc.) were based on seniority as opposed to ability, leaving a company after a few years meant that you would have to start at the bottom again at any new job. This most likely meant a huge reduction in salary and other benefits. People didn't usually leave one job for the same or a better position at another company. Most companies promoted entirely from within. They didn't do any head hunting or other stuff to try and snatch people away from other companies.

Alot of things have changed alot over the last 10 to 20 years. As the Japanese economy worsened in the 1990's, many companies were forced to make major structural changes that led to lots of layoffs. The combination of a bad economy, bad business practices, bad luck, etc., etc. made it impossible for companies to sustain this lifetime employment system.

For many Japanese this was quite a shock because the only job they ever had was the one they got after graduation. Lifetime employment was something that they had counted on to get them to retirement. Many of these were well past 30 and had very little marketable skills (ie: computer skills) that companies needed to complete in the global economy.

Since they no longer felt they could rely on their company, many Japanese people started to put their own interests first and people started to change jobs more frequently. New industries such as Internet companies, etc. started to place more emphasis on an employees ability (actual value to the company) then the number of years they have been working in a company.

Japanese people still don't change jobs as often as say people in the US, but there seems to be less of a stigma attached to it than before. Of course, many companies still look down on these types of people, but I think that Japanese Society as a whole does not view them so harshly anymore.