Japan: teleworking and ‘workations’ are becoming more popular

Although teleworking is a concept that has difficulty being generally applied across the country because of employers reticence and a lack of knowledge as to the advantages of this type of working, recent years have seen a consistent increase in the percentage of employees teleworking, and HR specialists see that this new way of working has become increasingly popular for both employees and employers. In addition, an offshoot of teleworking called ‘workation’ (working while on vacation) is now being put forward as a way of boosting employees’ uptake of their paid holiday leave.
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According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications annual Information and Communications in Japan white paper for 2018, teleworking is a working option used in 13.9% of Japan’s companies and although up +2.4 percentage points from 2013, the percentage significantly lags other major economies, including the U.S. (85%), the U.K. (38%), and Germany (22%). Japanese teleworking primarily takes the following three forms: (i) sales staff mobile working who use their smartphones while...

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