Yukari Ozawa, 39, who works in the personnel division of Hitachi, Ltd., walks to a nursery to pick up her second son after she finishes work at home in Kanagawa Prefecture every weekday evening.
The nursery makes it a rule that parents fetch their children by 7 p.m. at the latest. But it takes one and a half hours for Ozawa to get there from Hitachi's head office in Marunouchi, Tokyo, where she is employed. She used to rush out of her office in Tokyo then run from the nearest railway station to get to the nursery in time.
"Sometimes I had to call it a day while I was halfway through my work, feeling stressed," she recalled.
As coronavirus infections spread last spring, Hitachi adopted a policy of having about 50,000 employees working at its head office and elsewhere switch to working from home, in principle. Consequently, Ozawa's style of work changed completely. As she has been able to use the about three hours that she would have spent commuting for other things, she said, "I have gained some leeway mentally and also in terms of time." The time she spends with her family or on reading has increased, she said.
According to a survey conducted from Jan. 15-22 by the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren), after a state of emergency was declared in Tokyo and 10 other prefectures, the number of workers who commuted to their offices declined by about 870,000, or about 65%, in these prefectures due to telecommuting.
On the other hand, however, not a few of those have been hard put by changes that are too rapid.
-- Telework refugees
A male employee in his 40s who works at a communications company created a workspace partitioned with walls in his condo in Meguro Ward, Tokyo, last month. He made this space as he was "concerned about everyday life being apparent in the background" during videoconferencing. He said he assumed all the renovation costs, totaling a few million yen, himself.
Con Spirito Inc., an architectural design firm that undertook the renovation work, said similar requests for renovation advice have been rising since November last year when the third wave of coronavirus infections started.
Some can hardly concentrate on their work at home.
A male employee in his 30s who works for a life insurance company participates in video conferences with his superiors by taking his computer to the backseat of his minivan in the parking space at his home. "I cannot concentrate on my work as I worry about whether my superiors will hear the cries of my 2-year-old son or barking from our dog."
There are also "telework refugees," namely those who move from one place to another -- coffee shops and the like -- as they have difficulty securing an appropriate place to work.
Among large companies, moves have emerged to establish a support system for employees to improve their work environments at home. Fujitsu Ltd. has since last July been providing its employees with 5,000 yen a month to help them with expenses for communications, heat and lighting, and equipment. Yet a limited number of companies are doing this.
There are also jobs that are hard to handle from home, such as sales and marketing. Ayana Fukuhara, 30, who works for Suntory Holdings Ltd., still visits her corporate clients, including supermarkets and convenience stores, even during the state of emergency. When the state of emergency was in place last year, she held business meetings with clients online. But "it was difficult to perceive clients' responses," she said.
After the state of emergency was lifted, she handled her sales and marketing activities by trying to find ways, such as reducing the time needed for face-to-face talks with clients as much as possible by having prior consultations with them.
There are also cases of people overworking as the boundary between their work and private life becomes vague, or having stress build up due to a lack of communication with their superiors and colleagues.
Nissin Foods Holdings Co. last summer established a "team to prevent telework depression." The team is tasked with measuring the degree of fatigue in the brains of employees working from home with the use of a special device. Following the findings, the team conducts interviews with such workers online, thus preventing their stress from building up.
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