Japan Productivity Center (President, Mr. Tsuneaki Taniguchi) announced the result of 12th survey of labor practices in Japan, which explored the trend of recruitment, compensation, HRD, etc. among Japanese companies. This survey was conducted since 1997 towards all listed companies in Japan. The summary of the survey is as follows.
- Re-hiring of retired workers: More companies are recognizing the cost benefit while 40% mentioning the hesitance of utilizing re-hired workers. 72.0% of responding companies replied to have done the "re-hiring" and companies with employees of between 1,000 to 2,000 had the highest share of 83.9%. Regarding the challenge associated with "re-hiring," 41.2% responded with "re-hired workers tend to be ex-managers and incumbent workers feel hesitancy in working together."
- Compensation system: The most common system for managers was the combination to apply mixture of performance-based pay and position-based pay (31.2%.) The same for general employees was the mixture of performance-based pay and age/seniority-based pay (28.9%.) For both of managers and general employees, the ratio to apply age/seniority-based pay was decreasing.
- HRD of managers: Percentage of companies selecting future executives increased from 26.1% in 2004 to 42.6%. On the other hand, companies disclosing the names of those selected remained at about 40%. Similarly, percentage of those who disclosed the criteria of selection was 46.2% and the same for selection process was 18.7%.
- Compensation of executives: Percentage of companies phasing out the traditional retirement grants for executives reached 51.7% as compared to mere 9.1% in 2004. At the same time, 49.7% of companies introduced performance-based compensation system for executives.
- Full-time workers and non-full-time workers: Percentage of companies that agreed to the idea of "relaxing the rules on termination of full-time workers would result in increase of hiring full-time workers" remained at 38.6%. 72.8% of companies rejected the idea that "companies should pay due share of the cost of public program to train non-full-time workers."
