Calbee to keep teleworking, stop transferring persons away from families

There’s nothing like a global pandemic to essentially disrupt the way business is done around the world and specifically in Japan, which nonetheless clings to antiquated procedures just like personal seals and faxing. With worries of COVID-19 arrived a wave of teleworking through Japanese corporations in which thousands of would-be commuters exchanged their train-passes for Zoom accounts.

While not always the smoothest transition, the work-from-home concept seemed to go pretty very well on the whole with an increase of efficiency and less waste being reported. In fact, regarding potato chip maker Calbee, it went so very well that they’ve made a decision to keep it going indefinitely.

On 25 June, Calbee announced that from July 1, it'll continue with the same work-from-home system that has been set up since March. The system thus far has shown a positive result from reducing commuting period and increasing efficiency, thus they will continue with it as long as it never proves detrimental to overall work functionality.

The plan is aimed at about 800 of its employees who work at headquarters and sales offices, accounting for 20% of its total workforce. Through the use of teleconferencing and digital signature systems, they are looking to reduce business office attendance rates to about 30 percent.

Moreover, Calbee has also announced that they can end the practice of tanshin funin. That is a prevalent corporate custom where Japanese corporations periodically transfer employees who've families to other cities, which traditionally led to fathers moving a long way away from the others of their family members for a long time at a time.

Although ending this unusual practice probably doesn’t want explanation, Calbee said the reason why was to improve the family lives of personnel and thus improve the efficiency of their work.

The generally chip-loving nation of Japan didn’t actually need another reason to praise Calbee, but on the other hand were a lot more than happy about the company’s progressive movements towards its employees’ well-being.

“Really?! Is Calbee selecting by any chance?”

“A friend’s daughter works at Calbee and I heard it had been always great to its workers.”

“Congrats Calbee!”

“I’m in the middle of a good tanshin funin nowadays, and am extremely jealous of Calbee staff. I can’t check out my family and we must pay dual for living expenses. There is nothing good relating to this antiquated system.”

“I’m happy they are closing tanshin funin, but I am hoping that goes for almost all their workers in the development lines too.”

“I suddenly think the urge to get some chips.”

“It’s sad that it took the coronavirus to get Japanese corporations in to the modern age of the Internet.”

“Apartment companies aren’t likely to get happy if this catches on.”

Of course there have been also come concerns, like this possibly being truly a trick to squeeze longer working hard hours out of employees or to cut them out of your decision-making process. Nonetheless, it’s certainly a step in the right direction, even though some organization traditions do possess their charm, others, such as for example arbitrarily splitting up families, have prolonged overstayed their welcome.