Japanese Companies Are Changing Global Talent Development Strategy

Osaka – Monday, 24 January, 2011




Following the previous article How Japanese Companies Started Acquiring and Retaining Global Talent, this article introduced how Japanese companies have been developing Japanese employees to make them global talents and what additional actions they started to take. This is because they are short of global talents when they are to globalize their business.



Globalization of the Japanese employees would lead to fostering a global culture with D&I (Diversity and Inclusion) mindset. This would help develop and retain non-Japanese global talent successfully acquired as mentioned in the previous article as well thus would further drive globalization and D&I culture, which is a requirement to survive in the global economy.



1. How can “Japanese business person of global talent” be defined?



Japanese business person of global talent has been a hot topic in media lately in Japan and the definition seems to vary from people to people.



Having said that, based on the articles and discussions on this topic and from her own experience, the author would like to define as “a business person with global employability in today’s global and flat world”. Such global business person would have hard and soft skills and competencies, and mindset such as the following.



- Solid expertise in his/her specialty

- English proficiency

- IT literacy

- Financial literacy

- Logical thinking, analytics, conceptualization

- Communication skills (including inter-cultural communication skills and inter-personal skills)

- Global mindset, D&I spirit



2. What have Japanese companies been focusing on in globalizing their Japanese employees?



Japanese companies have been focusing mostly on developing English fluency. For this reason, many large companies have made all employees to take TOEIC. And for example some companies made the policy that TOEIC 450 points (out of 1000 points) is a requirement to become a manager and TOEIC 650 points is a requirement to work in an international department.



3. What kind of training and development programme have Japanese companies been providing to their employees to make them globalized?






1) English courses



Many companies provide English courses of different levels to meet needs of different English proficiency employees.



2) Overseas Training



Some large companies have overseas training programme. They would select a few “overseas talent” from new graduates and send them to overseas sites for 2 years immediately after a few months orientation training. In the first year the new graduate employees go to a local university to learn English and in the second year they work in the site (sales company, factory etc.). Living, learning and working abroad would not only improve their English but also foster inter-cultural communication skills and global mindset.



After their 2 year overseas training they return to Japan and are usually allocated to international/overseas department.



3) International Assignments



Limited people, very often employees who were allocated in international/overseas department, are sent to sales companies and other sites outside Japan as international assignment for 3 to 5 years per assignment. This would have greater effect in terms of developing global talent than 2 year overseas training.



4) MBA / Business School



Many large companies select candidates among those who applied, train their English and send them to MBA courses in the U.S. Also a few senior people, candidate for senior executive, are sent to study for 6-12 months in business school in the U.S. or Europe. These are aimed to acquire business administration knowledge and logical thinking but would also make the candidates to improve English and to foster global mindset and make them being able to work with diverse team.



3. What are additional actions that Japanese companies to take to further drive globalization of their Japanese employees?






1) International Assignment to all employees graduated from university



Last year many leading trading companies announced the policy of sending all their employees graduated from university for a year or two abroad as international assignment before they become 28 years old.



And, earlier this month, the top 2 trading companies additional announced that with growing China market, they are to send their employees for a year to two to their sites in China as international assignment before they become 28 years old. In the future they aim to make half of their employees be able to communicate in Chinese.



2) English as official language in the workplace



Last year Fast Retailing and Rakuten made English the official language used in the company, although currently the proportion of their overseas business is still low, something like 10% or 20% at the most. The reason is because they plan to grow their overseas business and they believe it would be necessary for all their employees to be able to communicate in English.　　



English was used in meetings in which non-Japanese participants were included but these two companies now use English in meetings even if the participants are all Japanese. The news about the 2 companies provoked much discussion among many business persons in all industry of all levels of the organization.



3) Hiring exlusively candidates with high English communication skills



Only a few days ago Takeda Pharmaceutical, the pharmaceutical leader in Japan, announced the new policy of one of the new requirements for new graduates in applying to work with them is to have TOEIC score of 730 points or more, regardless of what they studied in university.



4. The author’s final thoughts



Developing Japanese employees to make them global talent does not only mean improving hard skill of their English although it is an important factor. English is simply a tool of communication and other skills such as of their specialty, logical thinking, analytics and conceptualization are also extremely important.



What might be even more important are “soft” skills and competencies such as global and D&I mindset that makes them comfortable working in a diverse team of different culture and background that requires such skills as inter-cultural communication skill. These “soft” skills can only be acquired through experience at work or virtual situation such as in MBA courses and therefore strategic international rotation by international assignments needs to be designed for global talent development as well as achieving short-term goal.



Last but not least, fostering global and D&I mindset among employees does not necessarily mean they all should live and work abroad. It can be fostered even in Japan as long as they work in an environment in which people of different culture and background (including ethnicity) work as a team. For this reason, although few local employees abroad were transferred to work in Japan until today, it is important that international rotation includes people coming into Japan from other countries as well as people going to other countries from Japan. This is eliminating boundaries among countries and regions while respecting each country and region.