Low unemployment (3.5% August 2014), rising uncertainty amongst the young and old, a corporate culture characterized by collectivism and a very powerful hierarchy, human resources in Japan appear unchanged. Nevertheless in less than 5 years “the country is marking a turning point due to generational renewal and serious competition from China and Korea.” This is how Pierre Tuvi of Franco-Japanese origin and Associate Director of SyVision, an international advisory firm, analyses the situation. Planet labor interviewed this specialist in human resourceson the latest major changes underway in Japanese businesses.
- What is specific about Japanese human resources?
Pierre Tuvi: What first stands out is that absence of resource evaluation and skills assessment: human resource managers in Japan have never been trained to do this and do not understand for example the utility of an annual interview. In fact it is the team that is evaluated with the employees being perceived as members of a family. Individual objectives are non-existent but collective objectives do exist, for example collective bi-annual objec
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