It is essential to carefully promote discussions to prevent confusion from spreading among businesses and university students.
The Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) plans to abolish its guidelines on the recruitment of university graduates and will decide on new rules by holding discussions with the government and universities.
The move was initiated by Keidanren Chairman Hiroaki Nakanishi, who announced the plan to abolish the current recruitment guidelines.
Under the current guidelines, companies are allowed to hold briefing sessions for juniors in university from March every year, and to start the selection process, including interviews, for seniors from June. Whether to revise these timetables will be the focal point of future discussions.
The current timeline is likely to be maintained for university students who are currently sophomores and will join firms in the spring of 2021. New rules will reportedly be adopted thereafter.
Behind Nakanishi's reference to abolishing the employment rules is the fact that the current guidelines are turning into a formality. Foreign-affiliated and other corporate entities that are not members of Keidanren are not bound by the guidelines. Even many of the Keidanren member companies start a de facto selection process targeted at juniors from around summer, via internship programs.
Even if there are many examples in which the guidelines are not observed, they have ensured a certain degree of moderation regarding recruitment and job-hunting activities. It is reasonable that rules on corporate recruitment activities will be maintained to a certain degree, without being completely abolished. The contents of the new rules should attach importance to corporate autonomy, with the government's involvement limited to a minimum.
Devise appropriate methods
The guidelines started as an employment agreement in 1953, in response to previously excessive corporate recruitment activities.
Unless there are certain rules, there are fears the recruitment period will be moved up a great deal, due to intensifying competition among firms to start recruitment activities as early as possible.
Universities have expressed concern that students become agitated from the time they are freshmen or sophomores and thus make light of learning. This is a reasonable opinion.
Akio Mimura, chairman of the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which includes many small and medium-sized companies, has strongly objected to abolishing the guidelines. Behind his opposition may be a sense of crisis that capable human resources are hired early on by high-profile big businesses.
In Japan, companies across the board have recruited fresh university graduates en masse for many years and fostered them in-house. This practice has actually made efficient recruitment possible and has thus sustained the lifetime employment and seniority systems.
Nakanishi questioned the validity of these Japanese-style labor practices, saying they "have over time become unworkable." It is significant that he raised a question about the advisability of maintaining the traditional employment system.
Indeed, recruitment through the entire year is mainstream in Europe and the United States. An increasing number of companies are adopting such a system in Japan, too.
Despite that, confusion cannot be averted if long-standing practice is changed abruptly. Keidanren and other parties concerned are called on to question anew, from a wide perspective, what kind of recruitment method is most appropriate.
(From The Yomiuri Shimbun, Sept. 23, 2018)
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
