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Volume 3 Issue 3 ISSN 2186-277X

SPECIAL NEW YEAR 2014 EDITION

Japan’s first bilingual HR magazine published by The Japan HR Society (JHRS) THE AGENDA®

January-March 2014Print: ¥1,575Digital: Free!

Ahead in the HR Clouds: Blue Sky Research and New Digital Dimensions 11

Gamification 14Who Owns the Future? 16

Create a Silicon Valley in Your own Backyard 21

HR 2.0People, Ideas, Technology

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P U B L I S H E R ’ S M E S S A G E

Be Relevant. Be HR.The State of the JHRS Community Report 2014Jun Kabigting, MBA/MS/HRMP

J H R S C O M M U N I T Y N E W S

Women's Leadership in 2014: Our Wish Lists Elizabeth Handover and Mireille Watanabe Handover

Taking Advantage of Outsourcing & Shared ServicesThe HR Agenda

F E AT U R E S TO RY

Ahead in the HR Clouds: Blue Sky Research and New Digital DimensionsHilda Rosca Nartea

Gamification David Barton

K N O W L E D G E @ W H A R TO N

Who Owns the Future?

Protecting Personal Information in JapanAtty. Taku Maruyama

H R L E G A L C L I N I C

Paid Annual Leaves for Fixed-term Contract EmployeesAtty. Jiro Oyama

TA L E N T M A N A G E M E N T

Get in on the Mix: High-tech Silicon Valley's Blend of Talent and CultureJames Robinson

Create a Silicon Valley in Your own BackyardJames Santagata

A S K H R

Bringing Positive Disruption to HR and Business Practices Andrew Manterfield & Yoshiharu Matsui

B O O K R E V I E W

Managing Employee Use of ‘Our New Telephone’Stephenie Overman

E D I TO R I A L

HR2.0: People, Ideas, Technology Annette Karseras

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C O N T E N T S

The HR Agenda Mission

To provide up-to-date and relevant sources of HR information and resources affecting and influencing the HR profession in Japan, and to become a bridge between Japanese and non-Japanese HR management systems so that we can facilitate the exchange of information and HR best practices, standards, and HR body of knowledge.

JAN-MAR 2014

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The HR Agenda magazine is Japan’s first and only bilingual human resources (HR)-focused magazine, published quarterly by The Japan HR Society (JHRS) and produced by the HR Learning & Publishing Division of HR Central K.K. (The JHRS Secretariat).

Publisher The Japan HR Society (JHRS) HRAgenda@jhrs.org www.jhrs.org www.jhrs.org/hr_agenda

Managing Editor Jun Kabigting, MBA/MS/HRMP managing_editor@jhrs.org

Editor in Chief Annette Karseras editor-in-chief@jhrs.org

Senior Contributing Stephenie OvermanEditor

Senior Editor Hiroshi Okamoto

Contributing Editor Hilda Rosca Nartea

Translators Syra Morii, Masanobu Sawada, Norio Okawa, Hiroshi Okamoto Design and Boon PrintsProduction

Art Director Annette Karseras

Ad Sales, Marketing, HR Central K.K.and Distribution advertising@jhrs.org Editorial Assistant Marc Cillo

Address The HR Agenda c/o HR Central K.K. (The JHRS Secretariat) Shinagawa Intercity FRONT Bldg. 3F, Desk@ MB28 2-14-14, Kounan, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0075 JAPAN

Telephone/Fax +81 (0)50-3394-0198 +81 (0)3-6745-9292

Magazine SubscriptionSubscribe online at http://www.jhrs.org/hr_agenda/subscribe

Japan Domestic Subscription• Digital Version (current issue only): -FREE- • Single Print (Anniversary) Issue: JPY 1,575 (tax & postage included)• Single Print (Anniversary) Issue + Digital Versions (current & past issues): JPY 3,150 per

year (tax & postage included) • Digital-only Version (current & past issues): JPY 1,575 per year (tax included)• Multiple/bulk orders: Email HRAgenda@jhrs.org with your name/company, postal address,

number of copies required, and preferred method of payment. We will send you an estimate of price including postage before confirming your order.

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The HR Agenda and JHRS logos are registered trademarks and properties of The Japan HR Society (JHRS).

©2014 The Japan HR Society (JHRS). All rights reserved.

Cover ImageConcept by Annette Karseras, Technology and People abstract by Ardie Coloma, compilation and design by Boon Prints.

Article Image SourcesBusinessman holding clipboard by Zestmarina, Business woman peeping over white billboard by Zmkstudio, Cloudscape dramatic abstract by Joanne Zh, Cumulus Clouds by Tyler Olson, Childish adult by Bowie15, Paid leave by Photooasis, Collaborative working system by Burnedflowers, Japan Zen Garden by Patricklin, Groovy Line Abstract by Ardie Coloma, Annette Karseras by John Matthews

DisclaimerThe positions and opinions expressed by contributors in this magazine are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position or views of The Japan HR Society (JHRS), its general membership, its Secretariat, advertisers, friends, or supporters. We are not liable, in whole or in part, for the accuracy or truthfulness of any data, statistics, or information found in any of the published articles or advertisements herein. Further, any advice, opinions, or views found herein should be considered for informational purposes only and are not meant to substitute for competent legal and/or financial advice from qualified legal and financial professionals.

THE AGENDA®

Japan,s first bilingual HR magazine published by The Japan HR Society (JHRS)

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Jun Kabigting, MBA/MS/HRMP

Chief Community Officer, The Japan HR Society (JHRS)

Originally written in English

Be Relevant. Be HR.The State of the JHRS Community Report 2014

P U B L I S H E R ' S M E S S A G E

JAN-MAR 2014

Every year, on the occasion of delivering the traditional State

of the JHRS Community Report on the pages of The HR Agenda Magazine, The Japan HR Society (JHRS) chooses a simple but powerful word or phrase that best describes the community’s collective aspirations and goals for the year ahead. In 2012, we chose Thankful!; in 2013, Onward and Upward!; and, for 2014, we dare to boldly declare: “Be Relevant. Be HR.”

How do we become relevant? Let me propose three ways:

Become Relevant as a ProfessionIn the past year alone, the pages of this magazine have

featured a number of articles that focused on transforming the role of HR in Japan into that of a more strategic business partner rather than that of a mere pencil pusher or “organizational po-lice.” Whether you accept it or not, the inconvenient truth of the matter is that HR as a profession will only become relevant to an organization if it actually delivers real value to the organization.

Again, HR must always remember David Ulrich’s famous quote: “HR must give value or give notice.” Below are some sug-gested readings that might help drive this point into our subcon-scious:

• HR Business Partnering: The What, Why and How • KL Calls HR Business Leaders: Global HR Excellence

Conference• Forget HR Strategy! • HR Business Partnering: The Global Hokey-Cokey• Does HR Belong in the Hiring Business? • HR as a Business Leader: Going Beyond the Psychobabble

& Esoteric Nonsense• Why are You in HR? A Hint – It Shouldn’t be Just About

the People

For this issue of The HR Agenda Magazine, we look deeper as we bring you articles on the more advanced, avant-garde HR practices and tools collectively called HR 2.0. Read each of these articles, learn from them, and most importantly, put your learning into practice. If you need help, contact us (jun@jhrs.org). JHRS can help!

Become Relevant as an HR Professional If HR is to become relevant as a profession, it goes with-

out saying that the people within the HR function also should become relevant as HR professionals. To do this, we should be investing in our own professional development so that we can be equipped with up-to-date and business-relevant HR 2.0 practices, tools and techniques to meet the expectations of the business and our stakeholders.

Go for an MBA (if you don’t have one yet), take an HR Certificate course via JHRS Academy x TUJ or JHRS eAcademy x eCornell, or if you really want to have a globally-recognized HR credential, get certified by our alliance partner, the HR Certifica-tion Institute (HRCI), and join the elite pool of HRMP, HRBP or GPHR professionals around the world. Click here to learn more.

The message is simple: if we want to be treated as “profes-sionals” by other professionals (e.g., lawyers, doctors, accountants, etc.) then we need to think and act like professionals. Integrity and credibility can’t be freely given. They must be earned.

Become Relevant as a Community of HR Professionals in JapanThis year we will be celebrating our seventh anniversary and

there is no better way to celebrate our collective achievements than by reinforcing and invigorating the JHRS community as a whole and advancing our basic strategy of expanding and getting recognized both domestically and internationally so that we can

This is the year to do your part to improve yourself and the profession.

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Jun Kabigting is managing director of HR Central K.K. and an adjunct professor with Temple University Japan Campus. He has more than 20 years of experience across the entire HR value chain, most of them Japan-focused. He passionately believes in advancing the HR agenda in Japan through continu-ing HR education, knowledge sharing and use of HR best practices.

continue to be a thriving and relevant community of HR profes-sionals in Japan.

To date, we are proud of our institutional partnerships with TUJ, eCornell, Knowledge@Wharton and HRCI. To the best of my knowledge, no other HR association in Japan has worked so hard and come so far in providing Japan-focused HR professionals with platforms for continuing HR education, an HR credentialing system and Japan’s first and only bilingual HR magazine.

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If you have an idea for an article we look forward to hearing from you. Please send your articles to HRAgenda@jhrs.org. We cannot promise to publish all submissions, but our policy is to reply to all emails we receive. We welcome your feedback on any aspect of the magazine. We would also like to hear what topics you would like to read about in future issues.

The HR Agenda: A Ground-Breaking PlatformAs Japan’s first bilingual HR magazine, The HR Agenda offers an incredibly

unique platform. By sourcing material written in both English and Japanese, funding translation and encouraging bilingual submissions from contributors, we offer a genuinely two-way exchange. For a century and a half Japan has been translating Western knowledge into Japanese. We create a forum where Japanese voices can also be heard in international circles. Our aim is to understand both sides of the coin; all facets of an issue. We want to encourage collegiality through open and sincere dialogue amongst our readers in Japan and overseas, and amongst HR professionals, researchers, and key opinion leaders throughout the world.

How many faces can you name?!Each issue, The HR Agenda invites contributors

to be our special guests at a JHRS event. "Join us!" to Get Published!

Be part of the dialogue.

P.S. For those of you who are interested in reading the usual statistics and “Hits and Misses” we normally put in our State of the JHRS Community Report, click here.

P.P.S. Don’t forget to sign up here for the Annual JHRS Shin Nen Kai 2014 and start the year on the right foot. See you all there!

This year we will be celebrating our seventh anniversary and there is no better

way to celebrate our collective achievements than by reinforcing and invigorating the

JHRS community as a whole and advancing our basic strategy of expanding and

getting recognized both domestically and internationally so that we can continue to

be a thriving and relevant community of HR professionals in Japan.

And we are just starting. In the future, we envision JHRS be-

coming an institution where government and business leaders go when they want to consult or get expert opinions on HR-related matters affecting the industry and the country. We aim to be the Keidanren or Chamber of Commerce for the HR profession in Japan.

Since our founding, our vision and mission has remained (and will continue to be) the same: “To become an exponent of growth

and progress for advancing the HR management practices in Japan.” We believe that by being authentic and being steadfastly com-mitted to our core principles in everything we say and do, we become relevant.

So in 2014, we do have one important New Year resolution to make: “Become relevant or be irrelevant.” I choose to become relevant. What about you? Click here to vote for your answer.

BE RELEVANT. BE HR.

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Elizabeth HandoverJHRS, Women in HR Advocate Leader

Women’s Leadership in 2014 Our Wish Lists

JAN-MAR 2014

C O M M U N I T YN E W S Get to know the latest news and updates within the JHRS Community.

How to begin the challenging and complex work of advancing women's leadership in Japan? For two top women leaders, it all

starts with the powerful act of writing a wish list.

Women’s leadership in Japan was a hot topic in 2013. In April, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe revealed his vision to have “no less than 30 percent of leadership positions in all areas of society filled by women by 2020” in a speech about growth strategy. In May, we helped to bring the WIN (Women’s International Networking) Conference to Tokyo for the second time. Masako Mori, Minister of State for Gender Equality, was a special guest. Also in May, the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (ACCJ) and the U.S.-Japan Council (USJC) co-hosted the successful Women in Business Summit. In July, Facebook COO and Lean In author Sheryl Sandberg visited Japan, appearing on NHK program “Close-up Gendai” and met with the prime minister. Even the Keizai Douyukai, Keidanren and Three Economic Associations are on board in the discussions on women’s empowerment in the workplace.

How do we move forward from here? The problems are complex and wide-ranging but talking alone will not transform Japanese businesses or Japanese society. It’s time for ac-tion. So we are starting right off with a wish list of actions that we would like to see happen in 2014.

Elizabeth’s Wish List1. Support More Diversity Initiatives

The clock is ticking. Financial markets are waiting. The alarm is likely to go off in about six months, according to experts. Will Abenomics deliver its promised growth and dramatic recovery? Womenomics will be pivotal to the success of the government’s economic plan. I would like to see HR departments in every organization get at least one initiative actively going by next May. It can be awareness raising, diversity and/or women’s leadership training. It can be policies to introduce more flexible working hours or to make it easier for women to on-ramp back into work after taking a break.

Mireille Watanabe Handover JHRS, Women in HR Advisor

Originally written in English

2. Establish Informal Peer Mentoring and Support Networks Women who strive to keep their careers going often feel isolated and unmotivated in the workplace. Official mentoring programs are vital but few women have ac-cess to senior role models. It would make a difference if all organizations actively supported networking groups where women can peer mentor, give career advice, offer mutual support and be a sounding board for ideas, plans and actions.

3. Industry Leaders Speaking Out Some major companies are positively supporting women’s career development within their organizations. My request is for leaders of these companies to step up and give time to speaking at events, commenting to the media and generally putting stronger emphasis on the message that economic success rests strongly on getting women into the workforce. The more that influential leaders of industry demonstrate their public support in making the work environment gender equal, the more that all Japan Inc. will jump on board.

It’s time for action. So we are starting right off with a wish list of actions that we would

like to see happening in 2014.

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Mireille Watanabe Handover is a Lumina Learning partner for Asia. As a Lumina faculty member, she trains and supports licensed Lumina practitioners to deliver inspiring and practical workshops in the areas of global leadership, diversity, teamwork and presentation skills.

Mireille’s Wish List1. Invite Career Women to Speak at Schools

Every school – from elementary to high school – should actively invite interesting and inspiring working women as guest speakers to talk to the students. Girls should be encouraged to have ambitions starting at a young age. A recent poll by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare found that 38 percent of the unmarried women sur-veyed did not want to become dedicated housewives after marriage. Since many girls have mothers who do not work or have low wage part-time jobs, they will need external role models to inspire them and show them what is possible. A lack of ambition is a problem for young men in Japan too so having both male and female guest speakers could help to motivate an entire generation.

2. Promote a Positive Image of Working Mothers in the Media Many women who continue working after having children struggle with a sense of guilt. The image of the dedicated homemaker – as seen in TV commercials for everything from cleaning products to headache pills – reinforces the idea that the best kind of mother is a mother who stays at home. A recent study in Denmark found that children whose mothers worked had a higher grade point average than those who didn’t. I’d like to see more images of working mothers in the Japanese media to change social perceptions and support women and their families to feel proud of the professional roles they play.

3. Ensure that Young Women are Promoted at an Equal Pace to Their Male Peers It is important that young women have an equal chance at success when they are starting out. If they see a lack of opportunities for women in the company they are more likely to opt out of a career and choose to stay at home. The IpPanShoku 一般職 (non-career track/clerical jobs) system also needs to be reformed so that women are no longer trapped in jobs with no prospects.

Let us know what women’s career and leadership initia-tives you or your organization are putting energy into. Email us at mailto:winHR@jhrs.org. We look forward to hearing from you.

Elizabeth Handover is president of Intrapersona K.K. and a Lumina Learning partner for Asia. She is co-chair of the ACCJ Women in Business Committee, co-founder of the Women's Leadership Develop-ment Centre and special adviser to the Global WIN Conference.

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Taking Advantage of Outsourcing & Shared Services

The HR Agenda

Originally written in English

The need for Japanese companies to manage talent in the face of an aging population, prepare for international expansion, face competition in rising Asian markets and protect data were the featured topics at the third annual Business Transformation, Outsourcing and Shared Services Summit held in November.

The Japan HR Society (JHRS) opened the second day of the Tokyo conference by bringing issues from the society’s magazine The HR Agenda off the page and into discussion with a panel on “Superior talent management” (see also issues on Selection

and Staffing and Diversity and Inclusion). Editor-in-chief Annette Karseras, who moderated the discussion, commented: “Getting

Summit addresses ways that outsourcing and shared services can help Japanese companies overcome 21st century challenges.

people to share their experiences and ideas brings us a step closer to pinpointing workable change and ways to implement this.”

Panelist Christine Meguro, chief financial officer at Stryker, emphasized the importance of flexible work arrangements, including arrangements to work from home, to enable women to re-enter the workplace when family commitments are part of the equation. She also talked about “the willingness of companies, such as Stryker, to put new processes in place,” giving the exam-ple of the provision of a transcriber to support a colleague with a hearing impairment.

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Akira Sato, director for MSD, described how companies can “utilize differently-abled employees in their workforces by break- -ing down business processes into skill-specific tasks.” He gave the example of training people with learning disabilities to scan large quantities of invoices moving between China and Japan.

Jun Kabigting, JHRS chief community officer, spoke about how legislation in Japan is gradually making it easier for companies “to hire people from abroad in order to secure the right talent at the right cost.” In 2010, the Japanese government adopted the fourth edition of the Basic Plan for Immigration Control which provides “a point-based immigration system for highly-skilled individuals in the areas of science, technology, business and even the arts similar to what you see in Australia, Canada or the U.S.,” Kabigting said.

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The effect of an aging demographic on talentmanagementWith Japan’s workforce aging considerably there is aneed to bring in skilled talent to help Japanesebusinesses grow. The event will focus onhow to attract the right employees bylooking at bringing women back intowork, recruitment of expatriatesand the need to attract middlemanagement.

Transforming your business and preparingfor international expansion

At world markets get smaller, it is essentialto look at ways to streamline and grow

businesses globally. This can happenthrough standardization of

processes to help with reducingcosts and understanding how

shared services can support the business unit.

IT outsourcing and protectionof data

Be a part of the discussion thatfocuses on how you can protect

Your data and IP rights whilst stilleffectively reducing costs.

Maintaining a competitive edgein rising Asian marketsWith tremendous competition intoday’s market as Asia continuesto grow there is a need to look athow Japan can compete with countrieslike China, India and the Philippines with respect togaining a competitive edge in business.

focus on meetings about the best kind of strategic alliances to forge with agents overseas. His company needed to penetrate new markets abroad if they were to become profitable in the next five years.

Also due for discussion was the possibility of expanding his company’s existing relationship with one of its “cooperation companies” – a Japanese manufacturer with bases in Thailand and Vietnam. With an estimated labor-cost reduction of 50 percent, and import tax back to Japan remaining constant at five percent, the financial part of outsourcing in Asia easily made sense.

“How about quality?” asked another manager who had just canceled a golfing weekend to resolve a quality control issue: a shipment of parts from Shanghai arriving for assembly showed a size disparity of 0.5mm from the blueprints. He’d been called away from courting new business on the green to deal with an existing U.S. customer’s reaction to the Shanghai re-scaling!

It seemed that in the case of the proposed outsourcing to Thailand and Vietnam, the fact the partner, a Japanese firm with whom the company had an existing relationship, has a proven track record of quality assurance made it seem the most likely way forward. But this Japanese manager knew that to ensure a robust strategy, he would need more than one likely lead. He said he hoped that the Summit would provide some additional food for thought with a session on “Balancing in-house versus outsourced to maintain the most cost efficient model” followed by case studies on shared services and outsourcing in China, India and Malaysia. Find out about upcoming events in Asia 2014 on outsourcing and shared services.

Getting people to share their experiences and ideas brings us a step closer to pinpointing workable change and ways to

implement this.

Networking at the Summit provided further opportunities for understanding the business realities associated with outsourc-ing relationships. A general manager The HR Agenda spoke with said that while his company had exceeded its three percent growth targets over the last 10 years, indirect costs had increased ten-fold over that decade, with human labor costs being their big-gest challenge to profitability.

He said his weekend had been spent devising strategies to increase sales and reduce costs and that the month ahead would

Source: http://www.ssojapan/com/

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Date/Time:31 January 2014 (Friday) 18:30-21:00

Venue in Tokyo - to be announced -

Register Online

With the support of

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F E AT U R E S TO RY

JAN-MAR 2014

Hilda Rosca NarteaContributing Editor, The HR Agenda

Originally written in English

Ahead in the HR Clouds Blue Sky Research and New Digital Dimensions

In a span of just less than a decade, digital innovations have completely transformed the way people do business. Is HR ready for next-generation technology?

Imagine: Hurricane Sandy swirling, roaring around you… Now, imagine the aftermath: Day-to-day survival in blacked-

out lower Manhattan, searching for clean drinking water and for-aging for food. Longing for a hot bath. Novelist Abha Dawesar’s, daily foraging included finding electricity not just to heat water but to charge her devices. Dawesar was not alone as she lined up for hours to scrounge power to communicate digitally. Hundreds of others stood with her, waiting at the cafes and shops that had set up generators for victims in hurricane-hit communities.

There is nothing like a crisis to reveal what people value most, Dawesar says. Her retelling shows how our need to con-nect to others online has become as fundamental as our basic animal needs for food and water. Advances in digital technology have transformed the way people think, feel and behave – ICT

(Information & Communications Technology) has become part of our identity.

In the world of business the impact of digital innovation has been remarkable. When the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to two old friends, Doctors Haroche and Wineland for challenging the boundaries of quantum reality, we entered a new digital paradigm, where the limitations of physical science as we know it are fast dissolving. Advances in the most transformative and disruptive IT trends – cloud, mobile, social media and big data – do not follow the linear curve that has historically been used to measure and predict change. Digital advance and quantum think-ing allows us to zoom through to new pathways of exponential growth.

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Enterprise cloud software company NetSuite now owns Human Capital Management space TribeHR – a mid-market sized version of Workday or a SuccessFactors cloud platforms for HR.

HR-related start-up companies to watch in 2014 include BackOps which attracted investment funding from Sherpa Ventures and Google Ventures last year. BackOps combines a “cloud software platform with a legion of experienced work-at-home professionals” reports All Things 3D.

Martec’s Law: The Pace of Technological Change

For many global business leaders, this warp-speed develop-ment makes technology the ultimate driver of change. Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM, made the statement last year : “technology will change absolutely everything.”

In this kind of environment, businesses that rely solely on traditional tools and solutions may find themselves choking in the digital dust their competitors left behind. Survival and growth rely on how progressive and decisive firms are at predicting and reacting to real-world, real-time developments that are relevant to their organization. HR plays a key role in helping the busi-ness recognize which technology its people are ready to absorb. Helping employees adapt to fast, massive change by finding and making the connection between human talent and technology is where HR needs to excel in the digital now. After all, business technology is about how people use tools and machines.

organizations changelogarithmically

technology changesexponentially

technologymanagement isdeciding which

changes areadopted

?

?

Martec’s Law: Technology changes exponentially,organizations change logarithmically

by Scott Brinker @chiefmartec

Gamification Plays a Serious Role

At the forefront of next-generation HR 2.0 technology is gamification. Businesses have long utilized the major concepts of gaming in sales and marketing to entertain customers. Today, a generation of workers has grown up with one or more game platforms in their living rooms; computer gaming is second nature to them. This makes gamification less costly and complicated to apply to a broader range of business processes than might have been conceivable a decade ago. More and more organizations are now exploring how the major concepts of play – creativity, critical thinking, teamwork and competition – can fuel employee engage-ment, performance and leadership (see Gamification article in this issue). HR visionaries have begun to incorporate gaming elements into key functions such as recruitment, training, outsourcing and

performance management. Gartner Group predicts 70 percent of the world’s top 2,000 global companies will have at least one of their applications gamified by the end of this year.

In Japan, game-based applications are now being utilized by a wide range of sectors in society, from industry leaders such as Lexus which has launched “the world’s most sophisticated” safety driving simulator, to non-profit organizations that see gamification as a tool for positive change. Even the most conservative fields are exploring the playful and cutesy world of games: In politics, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party released the Abe-Hop, a smart-phone game.

The gaming population in Japan soared to 31.42 million home video gamers,13.85 million social media gamers and 10 million smart phone gamers in 2012. This permanently increasing player population with their ever-advancing skill level has started many of the people-people in HR thinking about how to adapt game-think to non-game components of their company’s business processes. The challenge, however, is to make sure the HR initi-ated games go to plan – or there is a risk of being relegated to the 80 percent of game-based business applications that fail due to poor design (Editor: Or, as Santagata suggests, accept a larger failure>success ratio as the norm; just be sure to "fail forward" and keep learning).

HR 2.0 Companies to Look out for in 2014

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Big Data Recruiting Rises

Social media, the Internet and mobile technology are simul-taneously creating and feeding on the volume, velocity and variety that define big data. Recruiting professionals are now at the entrance to a whole new world of data which, not too long ago, there was simply no way to analyze. Authors of Big Data: A Revo-

lution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think, describe big data as, “our newfound ability to crunch a vast quantity of information, analyze it instantly and draw sometimes astonishing conclusions from it."

Recruiting manager Mark Tortorici points out that staffing professionals can use data-driven recruitment for a number of purposes: To make sure campaigns are paying off, to look for the right candidate profiles, to look for candidates in the right part of the Web and to create recruitment messages that speak to the right audience. But all this depends on HR’s ability to interpret the data and convert this knowledge to valuable solutions. Who in your HR department is up for this challenge?

Hilda Rosca Nartea, heads the writing team of a Sydney-based PR agency. She is also a content producer for non-profit organizations and has done projects for the United Nations Development Programme under the Philippine Department of Energy.

privacy, creating fluidity in our understanding of what is and is not out of bounds once in the public domain (see Managing Employ-ee Use of ‘Our New Telephone’).

Moreover, leading SNS' such as Facebook, Flickr, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Second Life, Tumblr, Twitter, Wikipedia, Word-press, Yahoo groups (Note: Yahoo Groups will be terminated by Yahoo by end of Mar 2014), Yelp, YouTube, and ZoomInfo are constantly tweaking their algorithms to carry out even more meticulous data sorting. One of the latest features offered by LinkedIn, which counts more than 259 million users worldwide, is the “People You May Want to Hire” function tagged by Forbes as a “digital cheat-sheet for recruiters.” Businesses seem to like the fact that an extremely easy-to-use data-based system can make decisions for them, or at least lead them to make smarter choices. In a 2012 SHRM survey, 55 percent of organizations said they plan to increase their social media use within 12 months.

Venturing into the Vortex It has taken less than a decade for Web 2.0 digital tools to

take over the world and transform the way we live. With such exponential growth, who knows what innovations will rock our lives in the next five years? You’ve heard the old adage “the only constant is change.” The new adage is “the only constant is the increasing pace of change.” By the time you analyze your data it may already be out of date! But for forward-looking companies, the real question is not so much about getting up to top speed, as being proactive in creating the right pace for your people. HR professionals peeking through the portal to this new digital dimension, are you going to allow trends to slowly transport you? Or are you ready to surf the incoming HR 2.0 wave?

It has taken less than a decade for Web 2.0 digital tools to take over the world and

transform the way we live.

Social Networking Sites Turn Decision-Making Digital Tortorici tells us that social networking information doesn’t

qualify as big data because it lacks the criterion for variety. In other words, it is not constantly changing (unless you are one of those people who updates your LinkedIn profile every second!). Still, it is an extremely valuable tool for companies today as it pro-vides not just a platform for businesses to seek and speak to their target audience, but acts as a recruitment and branding channel as well. Perhaps the most notable thing about social networking sites (SNS) is their ability to provide recruitment professionals and employers with a peek into the future. Data from social me-dia allows us to determine trends, make predictions and gener-ally know more about our potential and present employees to the point that it can transgress traditional limitations of personal

14

David BartonGamification Process Advocate

Originally written in English

Gamification

Traditionally, when Generation X thinks of games, they think about families playing monopoly at Christmas or Generation Y geeks playing computer games in dark rooms all night.

The traditional thinking on games is not something that really falls into corporate strategies. This is changing.

Thanks to companies such as Coursera, Bunchball and Bigdoor, gamification is appearing as a viable option for multiple divisions across most companies.

So What is Gamification?

It is more than just creating a video game or board game, and involves a system of rewards to achieve wider goals.

Within western education, gaming has become an accepted and widely utilised method to engage children and improve dedi-cation and concentration. This same concept can be brought to a work environment with rewards being earned through tasks.

The rewards for this are not necessarily physical things or even things that have any monetary value. Leader-boards and

Not just for computer geeks, gamification can motivate employees, predict their behaviour and identify their strengths and weaknesses.

aspirational goals are often one of the best ways to engage with users.

A classic, if basic, gamification model would be the use of loyalty cards in shops. When buying products the customer earns points, which can then be used to purchase rewards such as money off future purchases or even buying a reward in itself.

The uses of gamification can go beyond simple motivational uses and with analytics can actually be used to predict behaviour and identify underlying strengths and weaknesses.

The process is becoming more and more popular and we are increasingly seeing leading consultancies adopt this in order to help both identification and implantation of projects.

The basis behind this can be traced back to computer games. In reality the goals of the games have no real-world value, but in terms of a desire to complete a game, the use of aspirational targets is what drives people to succeed. This same mentality can be seen everywhere, even looking at something as old as the re-ligious practice of Lent, giving something up for a predetermined

15

time and then starting again after this time serves no actual purpose. The key to this though is the satisfaction in knowing that you have done it.

David Barton has been a keen advocate for the introduction of the gamification process to help drive innovation within companies. He has implemented the concept at multiple companies both in the U.K. and U.S..

Gamification can also be mutually beneficial to both parties from a business perspective. Take Duolingo.com for instance. Duolingo allows people to learn a language through ”leveling up” and “losing lives.” The benefit to Duolingo is that in return for this they can translate websites without needing to have dedicated translators.

This kind of mutually beneficial business model pleases everybody and shows the kind of power that gamification can achieve, making tasks that may otherwise seem monotonous, not only fun, but almost compelling.

The limits of gamification are only in the imagination of those who want to implement it, so which business areas could you use it for?

Editor's Note: This article was originally written for and published in The Chief Strategy Officer Maga-zine. Republished with permission.

Gamification is…more than just creating a video game or board game and involves a system of rewards to achieve wider goals.

So What Business use Does this Have?

The ability to get people to fulfill necessary criteria is one of the key ways that gamification is currently used. For instance, look at the way that LinkedIn uses this to complete your profile. They have a bar at the top of the screen that shows what percentage of your profile has been completed. Seeing a bar that is at 75 percent makes most people aspire to fill the bar the entire way. In reality this achievement means nothing to the individual, but they feel the compulsion to do it regardless.

The same thing can be done with internal training and tasks. Having a way to measure and display progress can be an important way to engage employees to complete a task, be this in training or action.

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JAN-MAR 2014

Who Owns the Future?Knowledge@Wharton

Jaron Lanier answers hard questions about the hardest currency of the information economy – our personal data. "The challenge" says Lanier, is that people still don't

understand the value of their data.

If the technology industry can boast a true renaissance man, it is Jaron Lanier. A polymathic computer scientist, composer, visual artist and author with a mass of dreadlocks tumbling down his back, the 53-year-old Lanier first found fame by popularizing the term “virtual reality” (VR) in the early 1980s. Lanier was scholar at large with Microsoft 2006-2009 and has been with Microsoft Research as partner architect since then. Knowledge@Wharton spoke with Lanier about who he believes will own the future at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, WA.

K@W: Why is it that we all appear so willing to give away the hardest currency of the information economy – our personal data – either for free or in exchange for digital trivia?Lanier: People are relatively willing to accept suggestions so long as what they are asked to do is relatively easy and pleasant. I don’t think there’s anything particularly significant about people being willing to give something a try. The challenge is that people still don’t understand the value of their data. They have been infused with the idea that the ubiquitous fashionable arrange-ment, wherein you obtain free services or so-called bargains in exchange for personal data, is a fair trade. But it isn’t, because you’re not a first-class participant in the transaction. By first-class participant, I mean a party to a negotiation where everyone has roughly the same ability to bargain, so that when they do bargain, the result is a fair transaction in an open market economy. But if you’re in a position, from which you have to accept whatever is offered, then you give much more to whoever has your data than you get in exchange.

Look at loyalty cards, frequent flier memberships, and the like. There can be an argument about the difference between gathering intelligence about customers versus locking them in, but I argue the two benefits are deeply similar. The differential between using a loyalty card and not using the card for a given person in the course of a year is a measure of one small portion of the value of that person’s information. I strongly suspect that once we measure the cumulative value of personal data using techniques like this, we’ll see that it’s getting more valuable each year.

If I’m right, then one interesting question is, will the value of information from a typical person ever transcend the poverty line? There could be an entirely new sort of more complete market that actually creates stable social security in an organic way. The possibility fascinates me. It is not irrational to imagine this future.

K@W: How much blame for data inequities do you ascribe to social media?Lanier: I don’t think social media per se is to blame – rather it’s the use of the consumer-facing Internet to achieve a kind of extreme income concentration in a way that’s similar to what has happened in finance during the last 20-25 years. I don’t think there was any evil scheme in Silicon Valley to make this happen. For example, Google didn’t have any roadmap from the start that said, wow, if we collect everybody’s personal information we can

17

gradually be in a position to tax the world for access to transactions, or have an ability to manipulate outcomes using the power of statistical calculations on big data.

Silicon Valley has rediscovered the old thoughts of cybernetics’ Norbert Wiener, but in a way that was too immediately profitable to allow for self-reflection. You see a very similar pattern emerging in Silicon Valley to what happened in finance: the use of large-scale computation to gather enough data to gain an information advantage over whoever has a lesser computer. (see also Santagata and Robinson's articles on Silicon Valley).

I don’t know if you’ve read the early emails of [Facebook CEO] Mark Zuckerberg from when he was a student starting out, where he says he just can’t believe that people are giving him all their information. He seems utterly astonished that people are doing it. The reason his fellow students did it was simply that on a first pass most people are pretty trusting and good-natured and pretty game to try things. But what happens with social media is that they quickly become subject to a vaguely “blackmail-like” cycle that keeps them engaged and locked in, be-cause if you don’t play the game intensely on Facebook, your reputation is at stake.

Editor's Note: Abridged with permission by Knowledge@Wharton from the original version, “ ‘Who Owns the Future?’ Why Jaron Lanier Remains a Digital Optimist”

Email us at askHR@jhrs.org and bring Andrew and Yoshi to your organization!

Protecting Personal Information in Japan

Taku Maruyama is a Japanese lawyer qualified in 1999 who specializes in advising MNCs on general corporate, labor, intellectual property and dispute resolution matters. His experience includes management consulting at McKinsey & Company (where he worked at its offices in Tokyo, London and Frankfurt). He established his law firm of IPAX Partners and consulting firm of IPAX Advisory Service in 2010.

In Japan, the Protection of Personal Information Act, April 2005, requires business operators to properly handle personal information. The act, in essence, includes the OECD’s Eight Privacy Principles, but as the detailed guidelines that flesh out the Act’s provisions have been issued by a number of governmental agencies in Japan, respective business operators must be mindful of these differ-ent guidelines in accordance with their type of business.

The security safeguards principle is among the requirements placed on business operators under the Act and thus, business operators are required to take certain security measures to protect personal information handled by their employees. However, business operators are also required to protect their employees' privacy if they wish to monitor their employees emails, access logs and other personal information.

Jaron Lanier, author of Who Owns the Future? finds that people are often willing to give away personal information. But protection exists for those of us who want to retain at least some of our privacy.

Taku MaruyamaLawyer, IPAX Partner and Advisory Service

Originally written in Japanese

What happens with social media is that they quickly become subject to a

vaguely “blackmail-like” cycle that keeps them engaged and locked in.

K@W: You laid the groundwork for Who Owns the Future? in your previous book, You Are Not a Gadget. That already earned you a reputation as the technology industry’s conscience. What persuaded you of the need for a second book?Lanier: I felt I needed to at least take another step to-ward trying to interpret how particular digital trends are impacting our economy, society and politics. But as with the previous book, I think I raised yet more questions that will require yet more work. I don’t think it’s complete.

Business operators are also required to give regard to privacy protection issues in relation to their employees

if they wish to monitor their employees emails, access logs and other personal information.

There is some support among the judicial precedents in Japan for the

notion that, as a general rule, such monitoring conducted even without the consent of the subject employees is not illegal insofar as the purposes and methods of such monitoring are considered as socially acceptable and appro-priate on the whole.

From a practical perspective however, if employees are not even aware of the existence of such monitoring beforehand, not much can be expected of the system as a deterrent to employees leaking personal information handled by the business. Accordingly, if business operators wish to introduce a monitor-ing system, the advisable approach would be to build a detailed mechanism into the employment rules and other internal rules of the workplace, and clearly communicate the introduction of such system broadly among all per-sonnel.

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L E G A LC L I N I C

"Ignorance of the Lawis no excuse."

Introducing ourPanel of Experts

Disclaimer: The advice, views, and/or opinions expressed by the author(s) in this section are for general informational purposes only and do not constitute legal advice. Individuals requiring legal advice are encouraged to engage a qualified legal professional.

Legal Questions?If you have legal questions relating to HR practices, or would like to become a member of our panel of legal experts, please contact us at hrclinic@jhrs.org.

L E G A LC L I N I C

Paid Annual Leaves for Fixed-term Contract Employees

ANSWER:Originally written in Japanese

QUESTION:We hired someone to fill in for a full-time employee on leave for a year. The initial agreement was a fixed-term contract of six months, with

five days of paid annual leaves. However, it has become necessary to extend the contract for another six months. We were planning on giving

an additional five days of paid annual leaves, which would result in a total of 10 days for the year. The law stipulates that workers who have

worked for six months are entitled to 10 days of paid annual leaves. Is our paid annual leaves benefit legally compliant?

Atty. Jiro Oyama is principal, Yokohama Partner LawOffice is a graduate of the University of Tokyo’s Facul-ty of Law and Washington University in St. Louis Law School. He worked in the legal and IP departments of Alpine Electronics, Inc. and Sidley Austine TokyoOffice for 16 years before establishing his private lawpractice specializing in labor/employment matters aswell as providing legal counsel to his clients.

The answer depends on what was written in the initial contract. The decisive factor is whether your labor agreement is more favorable than the provisions of the Labor Standards Act. If so, you’re OK. If not, you have a problem.

The initial labor agreement was for a fixed term of six months, followed by another six months’ contract. When you conclude the second contract, you only need to give the em-ployee another five days of paid annual leaves.

The provision on paid annual leaves takes into account con-cluding another fixed-term contract from the beginning. Instead of accruing 10 days of paid annual leaves after six months, if five of the days are provided from the beginning, there is no problem with granting the additional five days after six months. This is be-cause the provision of the labor agreement is more favorable to the employee than the Labor Standard Act's provision. The labor agreement is more flexible as the employee can take the first five days leave either within the first or second 6-month period, while the Labor Standard Act provides 10 days of paid holiday only after six months.

JAN-MAR 2014

The decisive factor is whether your labor agreement is more favorable than the provisions of the Labor Standards Act. If so, you’re OK. If not, you have a problem.

However, if the initial contract only grants five days of paid

annual leaves for six months from the start of employment, the situation becomes a little different. This is because the employee might be expecting to receive 10 days of paid holiday after six

months of work. In this sense, the initial contract could be seen as creating less favorable conditions than those stipulated in the Labor Standards Act.

In your case, there shouldn’t be a big problem as long you can discuss and resolve the issue with the employee in question.

When designing HR systems in the future, it is necessary to ex-ercise due caution so that no question of legal violations arises.

Vicki BeyerRecruiting & hiring; benefits programs; termination; retirement; employee relations; discrimination & diversity; non-competition; investigations & disciplinary matters.

Toby MallenDoing business in the U.S.A.; labor and employment; real estate laws.

Jiro OyamaCorporation laws; intellectual property laws.

Grant StillmanLaw of international organizations and trade.

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Silicon Valley’s specialty is creating companies that take inven-tions and make them go viral. The Valley used to be about being a small startup company doing something new and crazy well; now it is about being BIG. The environment in Silicon Valley has changed and now is very attractive to companies, in part because of the other mega corporations that call the Valley home: compa-nies such as Apple, Google, Oracle and Intel.

High-technology and industrial companies in Japan and else-where should consider moving their global product development teams to Silicon Valley. Why? Because in the Valley companies get exceptional access to valuable talent, culture and networks.

Diverse, Educated Talent Pool

The product development and marketing talent pool in Silicon Valley is the best in the world. Talents from all over the

globe have gathered in the Valley to create a culture of sharing and collaboration. Many companies send their best and brightest human capital to the Valley to be a vital part of this highly produc-tive and creative community. This talent pool has three main characteristics. First it is extremely diverse. People from every conceivable walk of life, with varied backgrounds and interests, converge there. In 2012, 37 percent of Silicon Valley’s popula-tion was foreign born. Second, the talent pool is highly educated. More than 48 percent of the population has at least a bachelor’s degree, with 18 percent having graduate or professional degrees. Finally, the pool of talent is large and growing, with 33 percent of the talent pool – the core working group – between ages 25 and 44, according to the Silicon Valley Index.

NTTi3, which opened its global research center in Silicon Valley this year, is a perfect example of a company deciding to

James RobinsonPresident, Silicon Valley Fudousan

Originally written in English

High-tech innovation centers, such as Silicon Valley in California, offer companies an ideal mix of talented workers, profitable networking opportunities and vibrant culture.

Get in on the MixHigh-tech Silicon Valley's Blend of Talent and Culture

JAN-MAR 2014

TA L E N T M A N A G E M E N T

Savvy Network

The Valley’s network of people with technical savvy and business savvy keeps the innovation engine humming. As a com-pany looks for new product ideas or is trying to find a technical solution, the network of professionals in the Valley often is key to accomplishment.

Look at the BMW example. BMW set up a technology center in Palo Alto, California and was the first automobile manu-facturer to incorporate iPod features in its cars. This project was a collaboration between Apple and BMW.

Silicon Valley offers many benefits for enterprises. The talent pool of young innovative thinking professionals provides compa-nies with the brain power to develop new products. The culture supports innovators and helps them succeed. Finally, the network of technical and business savvy professionals brings together the elements that are needed for new products and services to go viral.

James Robinson is president of Silicon Valley Fudousan. He is a longtime resident of Tokyo and Silicon Valley, with 12 years of experience in corporate real estate in both markets.

take advantage of the Valley’s exceptional environment. “Our best practices are rolled out globally, to Japan and emerging countries, through open innovation by leveraging [the] Silicon Valley location and tapping into the rich talent pool of the Valley,” the company announced.

Trust, Speed, Innovation

The culture in the Valley is one of trust, speed and innova-tion. When someone has a good idea it is acted upon quickly. As traction is gained, more human and financial capital is added to increase the speed of development and marketing. If the idea does not pan out, the innovator is congratulated for his effort and is considered more valuable because of his failure!

This culture of innovation is exactly what Yoshimura Shingo, president of Work Happiness Ltd., described in a speech at the HR Solutions Forum 2013 organized by HR Professional, Inc. in October: “Executives must give innovators the opportunity to fail. As the innovator fails he learns and by having the opportunity to try again he will find the solution eventually.”

The beauty of Silicon Valley is that the culture pushes people and companies to think globally. The culture makes them think that if it is worth doing, it is worth doing for everyone on the planet. The Valley’s culture melded with the extremely high work ethic and large investment in human capital of Japanese com-panies could bring the next several life-changing products and services to the world.

21

Simply hearing the words Silicon Valley can evoke an image of cutting-edge innovation advanced by an army of daring, if not slightly mad, entrepreneurs who feverishly seek to develop the world’s next technological marvels.

But what exactly makes Silicon Valley so successful and, more importantly, can it be replicated? China has Zhong Guan Cun, India has Bangalore. Where is Japan's “Silicon Valley”? Japan, the third largest economy in the world, still lacks any type of large, formal tech epicenter like the one in California.

Does this even matter for business success in the 21st cen-tury? Many people, including Silicon Valley industry insiders, will immediately and perhaps misguidedly say yes.

A more reasoned and introspective analysis, however, dem-onstrates that this type of success is not about location but more importantly about talent. And even more specifically: it is not just about talent, but about how that talent is selected, developed, deployed and managed.

To create a Silicon Valley atmosphere, a company needs employees who possess these three skills:

1. Business acumen to identify huge opportunities;2. Leadership to seize those opportunities; and3. The ability to select, develop, deploy and manage talent

to quickly exploit these opportunities.

Once we understand this, what then are the core skills that we should be focusing on when developing talent that can rise to and perform at the level of Silicon Valley’s?

If we look closely, it’s clear that this boils down to five core skills, all of which can be readily developed in our existing employ-ees:

1. Leadership: The ability to take risks, to develop a vi-sion and to lead others to the successful path. This is not just for senior leaders, but for all key players so that they can learn how to lead across all levels: from senior management to their peers or to those below them. And it includes the ability to reframe what are commonly perceived as failures as mistakes and mis-steps with important lessons to learn.

Steve Jobs had success in a variety of diverse areas and products, from the iMac, iPod, iPhone, iTunes and Pixar. This wasn’t accidental nor was it surprising, as each of these areas was ripe for a true leader to identify and then pluck the low hanging, yet massive fruit. His move into iTunes alone was pure leadership as he had to overcome the lawsuit Apple had lost to the Beatles re-cord label prohibiting engagement in music-related businesses. His success with iPod was further made possible by Sony’s reluctance to move its Walkman franchise forward into developing solid-state devices including technologies such as microprocessor chip, crystalline semiconductors and RAM.

2. Communication: The ability to clearly communicate through a variety of media ranging from one-on-one and group meetings to formal reports and presenta-tions to business emails and video conferences.

Very often, the best ideas as well as the pulse of the market comes from those closest to the customer – support engineers, sales and customer service. And yet, most often this information does not get captured and clearly communicated back to product

James SantagataPrincipal Consultant, SiliconEdge

Originally written in English

Select, develop, deploy and manage your people right and you can have the advantages of a high-tech economic center right at home.

Create a Silicon Valleyin Your own Backyard

managers and the executive staff (see also Ogushi Matrix Com-munication lines).

3. Influence & Persuasion: The ability to get others to want to support a project or, if they won’t actively support it, to at least make sure that they don’t ac-tively resist it.

Previously we mentioned the need to capture and clearly communicate opportunities and obstacles a company may face or is facing. Yet, there are plenty of instances where even a clearly communicated issue or opportunity falls on deaf ears, such as Kodak’s need to move from film-based to digital cameras.

There are many reasons for resisting opportunities or ignor-ing warnings about obstacles, including that this information or proposed shift in business may benefit the company but specifi-cally expose or harm one person’s or department’s operations, ego, status or bonuses. For this reason, clear communication is only a starting point. Beyond this, influence and persuasion must be utilized as well.

4. Negotiation: The ability to negotiate not only external-ly but, often more importantly, internally. This is critical during situations such as when a green light is needed for a feasibility study, to request funds and resources for product development or to get approval and buy in for the launch of a product that will potentially can-nibalize an existing cash cow product.

Influence and persuasion can only take us so far, and at some point it can be expected that we will need to negotiate. This requires the ability to craft a win-win solution as well as to ensure that the other party sees it that way. It is not only possible but extremely common for a win-win to be misperceived and sub-

sequently blocked, simply because the other person has become psychologically opposed resulting in a classic “cut your nose off to spite your face” scenario. In these scenarios everyone loses including employees, managers, shareholders and customers.

5. Assertiveness: The ability and confidence to speak up and share opinions or ideas or to challenge another’s opinions or ideas in a professionally affirmative man-ner.

Assertiveness (often confused with aggressiveness) is a criti-cal skill that is especially important for those who may have key insights and knowledge, such as engineers or service people, but not the personality or interest in speaking out nor the title or standing within the company. Instilling this skill in a firm’s employ-ees can unleash great productivity and opportunity while also identifying problems or obstacles before they become dangerous or expensive.

By developing these core skills sets and Valley Values in your existing talent you will ensure that your employees’ inherent creativity and innovative nature do not go to waste and that the people with these ideas have the tools and skills needed to bring this forth to their peers and superiors and ultimately to the market place.

James Santagata is Principal Consultant at SiliconEdge. He is an international executive coach who provides communication and leadership development training to both foreign-capital and domestic firms in Japan and other parts of Asia.

Your

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nstantly learn, unlearn and re-learn as today’s facts are shown to be yesterday’s

VALLEY VALUES m

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’s c

utting edge products quickly become tomorrow’s collectible antiques and nostalgia.

Your ability to handle and respond to ambiguity

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o view “failure” as a learning experience and to “fail” forw

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ithout becoming dejected, shunning averse or

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ent’s response to missteps be they small or large.

and develop structured framework when needed.

23

A n d r e w & Y o s h i ’s

AskHRHelping you solve your people issues.

Ask Andrew & Yoshi: email us at AskHR@jhrs.org

Bringing Positive Disruption to HR and Business Practices

ANDREW SAYS…Article originally written in English

I will respond in light of making systemic changes, not just one-time fixes. Behavioral and capability change happens by changing (a) the organization’s system and culture, (b) the team/collaboration system and (c) individual capability.

(a) Organization’s system and culture:

• The strategic focus should be on innovation within the organization and/or on discontinuing unnecessary or under-performing activities.

• Measurement needs to focus on the success rate and value of new business. (See also Silicon Valley by James Robinson in this issue).

(b) Team/collaboration system:

• First, members of the organization need to understand the high-performance-team concept, and to develop collaborative systems that incorporate innovative pro-cesses into their work.

• Enabling activities such as benchmarking, information sharing and knowledge management should be built in the work system.

"Our CEO is looking for disruptive ideas to help grow the business and improve oper-ational efficiency in each department/function. I need your help to find creative ideas that could bring positive disruption to our business in the HR function."

–HR/GA Manager, Foreign-affiliated Firm in Aichi

A S K H R

Andrew ManterfieldExecutive Coach and Senior Consultant, SudaManterfield

Andrew has an innate belief in people and their desire and ability to achieve more. His purpose is to find the greatness in every person he meets and to ensure that greatness lives and breathes every day and is fulfilled.

He has worked in the global FMCG industry for over 27 years for Diageo Plc, the world’s biggest adult drinks company. Andrew has over a decade of director-level experience in both human resources and sales. He has lived and worked in Japan, Australia, and the U.K., and he has worked with organisations across Asia, Latin America and Africa.

(c) Individual capability:

• In order to increase creative and innovative capability, organization members need to take part in action learning workshops to acquire those new skills (see also interview with Marquardt on action learning).

• Capability progress needs to be traced and rewarded to enhance learning and performance growth.

For an immediate performance change, I recommend that you proceed with an action research or action learning project that involves a series of workshops, builds creative capability and develops and implements innovative strategic plans. Systemic changes will take place along the way.

JAN-MAR 2014

24

Yoshiharu Matsui President, HPO Creation, Inc .

Yoshi specializes in leadership and organization development leverag-ing his more than 12 years of marketing experience and 12 years of HR/OD experience. He provides executive coaching, leadership development, organizational change and marketing and sales development to help clients strengthen their business performance, organizational health and employee engagement.

He has a BA in intercultural communication from Kita-Kyushu University and an MBA from Northwest Missouri State University. He is currently working on his doctoral degree in organization change at Pep-perdine University.

Disclaimer: The answers, opinions, or viewpoints expressed by Andrew and Yoshi are their own and do not necessarily represent the general views and sentiments of The Japan HR Society and its members, Secretariat, friends, and supporters. In addition, the answers, advice, or opinions expressed by Andrew and Yoshi are for informational purposes only and are not meant to substitute for legal and/or financial advice from qualified legal and financial professionals.

By looking at HR itself, you could make organizational changes such as introducing business partnering to build

capability in line management and make HR more strategic...

YOSHI SAYS…Translated from the Japanese original

From an HR perspective there are two roles to play – one is looking at opportunities within the function and the other is looking across the organization at, for example, organizational design opportunities.

First, by looking at HR itself, you could make organizational changes such as:

• Introducing business partnering to build capability in line management and make HR more strategic;

• Removing recruitment support for line managers to make them more responsible for recruiting and developing the people in their teams;

• Introducing new capability/competence frameworks to raise the capability levels.

And the list goes on – my advice would be to talk to other functional heads and your HR team and ask what is not working versus what is working and go from there. A good question would be: “If there was one thing in HR you can change that would drastically improve business performance, what would it be?’’ That would help identify the change required.

Second, I suggest leading improvements in organizational effectiveness. A strong way to create change is to reinvent the organization in some way. Two strong examples would be:

• Reinvent your business goals and competitive set. If your business is growing at 5 percent per year, decide to go for 10 percent growth as this will force you to do something different. To bring this to life you can reinvent your competition from the current set to a wider group. For example, if you sell motorbikes your current competitors could be other motorbike manufacturers. If you expand this to all makers of motorized vehicles, this changes your way of thinking and creates new opportunities.

• Change the organization focus (and maybe structure). For example, move from customer-focused to consumer-focused or vice versa. Again you are bringing in new thinking to the way you do business.

As an HR leader you should be leading these discussions.

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B O O K R E V I E W

JAN-MAR 2014

Stephenie OvermanSenior Contributing Editor, The HR Agenda

Originally written in English

Managing Employee Use of ‘Our New Telephone’

“Social media is here to stay… There may never come a time when you will hear people say, ‘Remember that social media thing?’” Wright notes in her book, A Necessary Evil: Managing Employee Activ-

ity on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn… and the

Hundreds of Other Social Media Sites. But Wright finds that too many

companies, “whether from fear, confu-sion or a stubborn inability to embrace change, are continuing to ban employee use of what has essentially become our new telephone.”

To counter the fear and confusion – there may be no cure for stubbornness – her book covers what social media is, why it’s important, and how to devise ap-propriate company policies. She includes an extensive resource guide and advises managers to “familiarize yourself with the social media networks your employees are using.”

Nearly 70 percent of companies overall do not have a social media policy, but every company needs some kind of social media strategy, even if it does not currently use social media, according to Wright. Why? “Because your employees are using social media – whether you want them to or not, and they will need guidelines to protect your interests and your reputation (and theirs).”

To develop a successful strategy, and an effective policy that reflects it, she recommends bringing together a social media team made up of people from throughout the company.

Her book offers a number of tips about what a good policy should contain:

• The expectations the company has concerning employee productivity in conjunction with their social media habits;

• Guidelines on when employees need approval before posting certain types of information;

Social media is everywhere. Employees today “can access social media from the palms of their hands” says Aliah D. Wright, editor for the Society for Human Resource

Management. So, how do you protect your company and your employees from misuse?

• The legal consequences of misuse for employers and disciplinary ramifica-tions for employees.

Your social media policy should make clear to employees that they can be held accountable for content they post on the Internet – whether they are in the office, at home, or on their own time – par-ticularly if something they post or share violates other company policies.

The policy should also make clear that employees are not to divulge trade secrets or confidential or proprietary information.

But, Wright adds: “Remember, you are not the social media police, rather partners in social media engagement.”

Your company can restrict who uses social media at work, but Wright encourages allowing everyone to use it, because she finds that discouraging employees from using social media hinders knowledge sharing, innovation and col-laboration, while breeding resentment and mistrust.

Wright dedicates one chapter of the book to selling social media to the CEO. No one person or department should “own social media,” according to Wright, but all stakeholders – including the CEO – should be active contributors to both external and internal networks.

Stephenie Overman is a contributing editor toThe HR Agenda. She is based in the Washington,D.C. area and is author of “Next-GenerationWellness at Work.”

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Annette Karseras

Editor in Chief, The HR Agenda

Originally written in English

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Cool Kamiyama: Faster Connectivity than Roppongi Hills

You’ve heard of Cool Japan: the new wave of animation, hi-tech games and cute Kawaii 可愛い pop culture. But have you heard of cool Kamiyama?

I first heard of this small mountain town from an IT engi-neer in her 30s, let’s call her Sakuko Ito. Sakuko-san would shut down her computer in Roppongi Hills each Friday evening, put on her running shoes and jog for an hour – around the majestic stone walls of Japan’s imperial palace to Tokyo station where, after having dinner, she would catch the night-bus from Tokyo to Tokushima. Sleeping soundly all night as the bus rumbled steadily westward along hundreds of kilometers of road, Sakuko-san would wake a little after sunrise in the still freshness of Shikoku island and head inland 40 minutes to Kamiyana to spend the weekend restoring an old property she bought with her partner and doing trail runs up the steep mountain paths.

Sakuko-san loves the people in Kamiyama for their openness. After centuries of welcoming pilgrims, the 6,000 strong popula-tion is not shy of strangers and people readily invite her to dinner and to talk. She admires the local government’s efforts to design a trendy town centre, putting out tenders across the country for a bakery, boutiques and bistro bars. There’s even a French restaurant run by a Michelin-trained chef. Since the ‘90s, the town has had its own international artist in residence programme (to which more than a hundred people apply each year). Sakuko-san is also inspired by the intelligent fusion of traditional local low-tech methods of energy generation and hi-tech eco-friendly in-novation. Neighbors drop in to help her acquire this local wisdom as she renovates her house. But most of all, Sakuko-san chuckles at the fact that this small mountain town has faster bandwidth per head than Roppongi Hills.

Cost-effective KamiyamaWith office space at around half the cost of Roppongi’s

40,000 JPY per square meter, there is a big draw for HR to consider agricultural towns like Kamiyama and others that have become part of Japan’s rural development initiatives for re-cruitment or relocation. In the last couple of years Tokushima Prefecture’s Kamiyama has been featured in NHK documentaries including “Jaunts Around Japan” Nippon Kikou にっぽん紀行 as well as Nikkei business news. One NHK documentary featured three young programmers sent to develop a new information management service programme tailored for overseas compa-nies. For Sakuko-san, these programmers and other teleworkers, Kamiyama is a trendy techie-hub for eco-lifestyle junkies who love their work and don’t need the hubbub of a city office to stimulate them. For the ten or more companies that have satellite offices here, it’s a business hub that’s part of their workforce-related cost-reduction strategy (see also our review of the Summit on Outsourcing and Shared Services).

Types of TeleworkTelework includes any work done outside a company’s main

offices, for example from an employee’s own home or a com-pany’s satellite office anywhere in the world. Advances in satellite telecommunications mean mobile work can also be done from an increasing number of third places such as a coffee shop, hill top or yacht. Countries like Sweden define telework as remote access to the company’s network. Typically, the IT department secures a Virtual Private Network (VPN) login for remote work-ers to access the company’s IT network. Many countries combine VPN access with 3G, 4G or GSM mobile access to the Internet.

Different countries and companies implement telework for a range of reasons from cost-cutting and emissions reduction, to

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government holds a national telework week each November. They have designed an ROI Telework Tool to help you calculate how much time, money and carbon emissions your company could save by implementing a telework program.

selected Hubei region for a telecommuting pilot in 2010 with the main aim of reducing carbon emissions turning it into a “low-carbon area.” A joint World Wildlife Fund (WWF) China and China Mobile study shows that China’s telecommunications sector cut 58.2 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2009.

established an Advisory Committee on Telecommu-nications as long ago as 1998. Today, around 50 percent of Ireland’s working population is made up of mobile workers with “more employees experience a blurring of business and private usage of technology," says Nicholas McQuire, director, Mobile Enterprise Strat-egies EMEA at IDC.

embraces telework to address Tokyo’s power short-ages and the increasing need for a “good balance among work, child care and nursing” the elderly. With a shrinking and ageing population, telework is targeted to “widen the pool of potential candidates” to include talented women who need to balance domestic welfare work and professional employment.

Ministry of Public Administration and Security established SmartWork centres for employees who find it difficult to focus at home. Equipped with video conferencing facilities, employees can talk face-to-face with colleagues at other centres and manag-ers can feel more comfortable that their employees’ work is getting done. One or two SmartWork days per worker/week saves employ-ees up to 3 hours commute and reduces costs of emissions trading and transportation by approximately $310 USD per worker annually.

Fifty percent of Swedish enterprises with 250+ employees uses IT both to reduce energy consumption and for telework. In finance and ICT industries more than 75 percent of employees regularly work offsite with access to the enterprises' IT system. More than 90 percent of employees have 3G, 4G or GSM mobile access to the Internet. Enterprises with the fastest pace of technological change are those with 10 to 49 employees.

About 24 percent of the entire U.S. American workforce does work at home, either during the workday or to catch up after-hours. About 10 percent regularly works from home at least one day a week (Census 2010). “Implementation of a telework program for employees” can be counted for U.S. government surveys of Green Technologies and Practices (GTP). The Bureau of Labor Statistics itself includes “Refine and support telework” in its goal to help employees “balance home and work life” as a means to “recruit, train, and retain a talented and diverse group of individuals.”

Telework ROI Calculator

Telework Around the World

Telecommute Targets to Create Low-Carbon Area

Blurs use of Business and Private Technology

Telework Targets: Welfare, Workforce and Electric Shortage

SmartWork Centres use Video Conferencing

Works 50 Percent Off-site

Green Technologies and Practices: Telework Counts

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enabling parents and care-givers to work, to regional re-vitalization, employee engagement and Business Continu-ity Planning (BCP) in the event of disaster (see Sidebar).

In countries like Ireland, the Bring-Your-Own-Device trend is already well underway, with companies increas-ingly relying on people to use private devices for work. Many firms provide benefits such as free installation of virus software and helpdesk support to workers who use their own equipment. By contrast, more rather than less provision of hardware is typically sought by Chinese telecommuters who may require home office furniture in addition to telecom facilities. To reduce infrastructure costs of telecommuting, more and more companies are authorizing use of free platforms such as Skype to enable face-to-face communication for low security work. There may be additional remote security considerations espe-cially in industries where malware poses a high threat.

Telework in Japan & Across BoardersJapan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communica-

tions reports a year on year increases in telework: 15 percent of companies in Japan used telework in 2004 and around 19 percent in 2009. This breaks down to seven percent being home-based and almost 12 percent from other premises. In all, over 16 percent of Japan’s working population, almost 11 million people, were teleworkers in 2010. The good news is that “Increase in telecommuting in Japan raises employee satisfaction and lowers operating costs,” says Hays Specialist Recruiting Japan KK.

In terms of cross-border telecommuting, interna-tional lawyer Donald Dowling writing for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) notes three main scenarios. HR’s role differs in each:

1. Telecommuting from a country where the em-ployer already has a local branch;

2. Telecommuting from a new country;3. Telecommuting to phase out local operations.

Dawling notes that “laws require written individual employment agreements or statements that must men-tion… place of work.” When changing place of work to include the home “be sure the employee executes an employment contract amendment that reflects that,” he advises.

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Compiled by: Jun Kabigting, Annette Karseras & Stephenie Overman

HR 1.0Employee productivity

Peop

leEmployee profitability

Time management Self-Management

HR as administrators and “police” HR as business partners and people-centred strategic leaders

Employee satisfaction Employee engagementPosition-based hiring (define the position, then

hire someone who fits)People-based hiring (hire the right person, then let them evolve the position)

Benefits standardization (fixed list of benefits)

Idea

s

Benefits personalization (cafeteria benefits)Employee stock options (for retention purposes) Restricted stock units (RSUs) grants

Allocated work spaces (office-based, personal desks/cubicles)

Flexible/shared work spaces (work-anywhere, virtual/telecommuting)

ISO 9000 ISO/TC 260 HRMInternal employee referrals External referrals using ‘crowdsourcing’

Functional roles Centers of expertise/excellence (COEs)

Lifetime employment (undergraduate education + firm-specific skills training)

Lifetime employability (continuous learning + professional development of transferable competencies)

Reactive/passive labor law compliance, labor unions, external labor tribunals

Proactive HR compliance (includes ethics & corporate governance), Labor-Management Council (LMCs), Ombuds & Mediation (see Grant Stillman)

Internal recruiting departments Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO)Direct Hiring Professional employment outsourcing (PEOs)

Job description Performance-based position profilingRecruiting as part of HR Recruiting as part of marketing/supply chain

Web-based job boards for recruiting

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nolo

gy

Interactive virtual environments, social media networks (LI, Twitter, FB, Pinterest, etc.)

Server-based HR technologies SaaS or cloud-based HR technologiesID cards Biometrics

Digital dashboard displaying real-time progress in units/percentages

Infographics dashboard visualizing wide range of results of big-data mining

Paper-based employee data management systems Employee self-service portals (ESS) / HR kiosks for employees to input and update their data

Blended learning and centralized knowledge management

Gamified learning & peer-to-peer socially-enabled knowledge sharing

2.0Web 1.0 Web 2.0

DoubleClickOfoto

Akamaimp3.com

Britannica Onlinepersonal websites

evitedomain name speculation

page viewsscreen scraping

publishingcontent management systems

directories (taxonomy)stickiness

Google AdSenseFlickrBitTorrentNapsterWikipediabloggingupcoming.org & EVDBsearch engine optimizationcost per clickweb servicesparticipationwikistagging ("folksonomy")syndication

Tech

nolo

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The Exec Perspective and the Invisibility ParadoxA Korn Ferry survey conducted with 300 global executives

last year found that 94 percent believed that “Telecommuting is an important option for working parents” and the vast majority (81 percent) also believed “Telecommuters should be paid as much as their peers in the workplace.” However, many also con-sidered that telecommuting has its own costs. When asked “Do you believe telecommuting can limit career upward mobility?” 60 percent replied “Yes,” even though, paradoxically, 77 percent of these execs had actually telecommuted themselves.

A successful telework policy depends on both a conducive corporate culture and a friendly remote-communication infra-structure. Without these two factors teleworkers can become in-visible to those remaining in the office. To prevent a track record of teleworking from limiting employees’ chances of escalating to executive ranks themselves, Ana Dutra, chief executive officer of Korn/Ferry Leadership and Talent Consulting, says: “It is important for telecommuters to remain networked as closely as possible with peers and leaders in the office.”

Intelligent handling of telework is about refining policy rather than treating it as a privilege to be revoked for bad behavior. Sources say that CEO Marissa Mayer based her now notorious decision to end telecommuting at Yahoo last year on (VPN) login data that showed many Yahoo employees were not logged in enough when working from home. The result: a blanket ban.

Computing and technology services company Hewlett-Packard, learning perhaps from the controversy Mayer’s caused, is taking a more differentiated approach. HP bosses are encouraging employees to work in the office more of the time – but not all of the time – as part of a new cultural shift that “will help create a more connected workforce and drive greater collaboration and innovation,” reports Arik Hesseldahl.

The more entangled we become in the Web 2.0 era, the more employment models morph to meet employee expecta-tions and maintain competitive advantage. Intelligent refining of a telework policy can also enhance performance by adapting to dif-ferences like personality and family status. Employees with more extroverted personalities may be energized by being connected more of the time but more introverted people are drained by it. To optimize the performance of these two groups of employ-ees HR can help manage expectations about differences in the amount of realtime/in-person collaboration (versus independent work wherever people are).

Telework also provides performance enhancing options for parents with long commutes. A Stanford study of Shanghai call centres found a 13 percent increase in productivity when work-ers took calls from home instead of the office.

Wise freedoms with mobility can also help people become more innovative – a frequent plea in Japan! Telecommuting puts

When asked “Do you believe telecom-muting can limit career upward mobility?” 60 percent replied “Yes,” even though, paradoxi-cally, 77 percent of these execs had actually

telecommuted themselves.

individuals in a new physical environment. This simple change of scenery adds new input and can stimulate creativity.

Enterprise 2.0 is all about creating a corporate culture of col-laboration strong enough to extend beyond the company walls, enabling inclusion and innovation not invisibility.

Aligning Time Zones & Pajama-hoursTop teams work because of the specific combination of

talents within them. Extending the pool to connect with the best around the world enables this. While Generation Xers may still experience the technology interface as an uncomfortable barrier to communication, many Millennials now have a compelling sense of “being together” through social networking sites (SNS’) (see our feature article this issue Ahead in the HR Clouds for other new wave developments affecting HR).

Aligning teams in time-zones of neighbouring longitudes ena-bles experts to join forces with others. During core hours, instant text messaging and live stream webcams can connect workers whether they are at home in Tokyo’s commuter belt, in a newly-wired hub in rural Japan, or in one of the IT mega centres of the world such as a Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, or China’s Zhong Guan Cun 中关村.

The HR Agenda is living proof that global telework can and does work. Our team of editors, translators, administra-tors, graphic artists and researchers are based in Manila, Tokyo, Washington D.C. and – my own occasional Kamiyama – a coastal village in Cornwall, UK.

WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg is another promoter of global telework, “For anyone who enjoys working from wherever they like in the world, and is interested in WordPress, Automattic is 100 percent committed to being distributed,” he proclaims. For many, it’s an amazing thrill to travel virtually without ever leaving home.

Going Global GraduallyWith the distance of distributed work setups for protection,

global telework can give Japan-based workers at all levels of the organization a chance to develop their sense of partners over-seas before being required to do face-to-face negotiation and management. Traditional wisdom has face-to-face contact first. But, as is often the case, Japan can be different. Unlike stranger-friendly Kamiyama, most Japanese will readily talk about being He-SaTeki 閉鎖的 or insular and closed. That makes teleworking with overseas colleagues a practical way to become familiar, little by little, with “different” ways of working – for example dealing with different approaches to time management and rule adherence – that employees with domestic-only experience may instinctively fear or be unaware of.

According to Laurent & Hough, more than 60 percent of Japanese workers expect the boss to have all the answers compared to less than 15 percent in the United States. This more authoritative kind of relationship between boss and employees is common in China too, meaning less adaptation on this front for Japanese managers. A recent study provided strong support for directive leadership as a necessary component for success. Firm guidelines and instant feedback on work are received by Chinese telecommuters as supportive rather than intrusive, giving them a strong sense of knowing where they stand in terms of supervi-sors’ expectations. Informal communication with supervisors and coworkers was also found to be important for Chinese telecom-

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Annette Karseras is a coach and trainer who develops leaders and teams at all levels of the organization. Annette has trained with the Coach Training Institute (CTI) and the Society of Organizational Learning’s Systems Perspectives. She also delivers Global Mindset and Communication Intelligence courses at Japan’s top universities. Her master’s degree is from Leicester University, UK.

Acknowledgements: S. Adachi, O. Georlette, C. Lee, C. Nakaoka, J. Peters, J. Robinson, E. Suyehiro

muters to feel part of the organization. “Regular group meetings, reliable intranet systems, informative and frequent newsletters within the organizations and organized social events” were ways identified to increase the cohesion among Chinese employees working remotely.

In this respect, as well as providing cost-effective solutions for labor and office space, remote working relations provides a virtual safety net and protective layer of insulation for global skills development.

From Telework Tactics to a Sustainable StrategyThe real test of whether your organization is making the

transition from the 1.0 to the 2.0 world is the extent to which telework is integrated into a broader strategy. “ Mobility is becoming strategic for a host of business enablement and risk management drivers,” says Angela Salmeron, of Mobile Enterprise Strategies, “but firms need holistic solutions… that can operate across the device, network and application layers of mobility.”

The final word on strategic use of HR 2.0 goes to Mark Royal, senior principal at Hay Group Insight. Royal cautions, it’s important not just to use telecommuting as a “Tactical solution. [Organizations] must also focus on long-term solutions to work-life balance issues by helping employees work more productive-ly… leaving more time to attend to personal responsibilities and garnering higher levels of organizational loyalty,” he says.

For Sakuko-san, being at her best is being able to intersperse computer time with trail runs through the Kamiyama wilderness. For parents with long commutes it is the chance to have dinner as a family and coach their kids on their homework. For many couples telework is their chance to switch a crowded commute for a cuddle on the couch. These simple, normal, natural things put the spark back. The HR argument is that the telecommuting spark wins employees’ loyalty and increases performance.

The HR Agenda will be looking in depth at work-life balance in a couple of issues time. If your organization has a proven track record of creating a sustainable career development path with a clear work-life or wellness strategy we’d like to interview you.

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