CORONAVIRUS BEGAN TO CHANGE THE WORK CULTURE IN JAPAN

The land of rising sun, stunning foreigners with its technological innovations, still remains committed to the traditional technologies in labor and business relations.  However, the experts believe that the 2020 pandemic is able to change the culture of Japan. The experts believe that many Japanese companies can reconsider existing views on the business methods and choose more flexible digital technologies.

Until recently, two old-fashioned phenomena l were markers of adherence to traditions in Japan - a fax machine and a carved official seal (“hanko”), which is customary to certify all official documents with or without a personal signature.

For the Europeans, who associate the fax machine with the 1980s, using it in 2020 seems to be a strange habit.

When it comes to the "hanko", here the traditionalism of the Japanese knew no limits.

Everything changed after one Japanese doctor has posted a message, criticizing the legal requirement in his microblog - all medical institutions were previously required to manually fill in piles of paper documents for each case of coronavirus.  Then they sent information by fax to the Government health centers, the staff of which manually loaded them into the computer's memory.  Thus, the authorities tried to track the spread of the disease until recently. The call to end this practice on Twitter, published by a specialist in respiratory medicine, was supported by many citizens.

As a result, the state authorities were forced to listen to the opinion of the doctor and make changes.  Masaaki Taira, the IT minister, said that from May 10, doctors will be able to email the patients with COVID-19.

As for the custom of “hanko”, it was entrusted to reconsider it.

The Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has emphasized that such a practice is contrary to the authorities' recommendations to maintain the social distance.

The experts note that many elderly Japanese continue to distrust modern technology because of the fear of information leakage, the possibility of computer hacking and the lack of a tangible paper document.  However, gradually, their place is occupied by the new generations of Japanese, proposing the concept of "virtual hanko" and online paperwork.

The practice of working from home plays far from the last role in this process. 

The call of the authorities to reduce the number of office workers by 80% was heard by the majority of law-abiding Japanese entrepreneurs, even in those areas of the economy where the active contacts with the customers were previously assumed.

Now, as the sociologists note, many of the workers who have realized that such an experience is more effective, may no longer be willing to return to the previous methods of work. There is no need to go to work in the crowded trains and buses as the remote work is more effective.