Rebirth Tokyo 1986

Chapter 403 Companies Should Treat Their Employees Well

After the interview, although they were all employees of the group, Masato Takeshita still arranged a rather luxurious lunch for them in the cafeteria.

However, he didn't stay long. After about ten minutes, he got up apologetically and said...

"Um, everyone, please enjoy your meal. I have some things to take care of. Sorry."

Upon hearing the chairman's words, Sato and the others could only stand up and respectfully respond.

"It's alright, Chairman, please go ahead with your work."

"President, you're busy, don't worry about us."

"Yes, you're busy, you're busy."

The fact that the president could stay with them for a while was already a pleasant surprise for everyone.

Whether or not something actually happened is completely unimportant.

"Thank you, thank you everyone for your understanding. We'll see you again sometime."

Masato Takeshita really had something to do; he was worried he wouldn't be able to return all the calls.

Besides, he didn't seem very comfortable during the meal. It would be better if he left quickly so everyone could enjoy their meal more.

Unfortunately, his good intentions were like a blind man's light bulb.

News is very time-sensitive, and both media outlets were eager to get back as soon as possible to produce their content, leaving no time for meals.

Therefore, shortly after he left, the Mainichi Shimbun and TBS television stations followed suit with hasty farewells.

"The president is such a nice person!"

On the way back, thinking about the interview and what happened afterward, Takumi Sagawa, who was in charge of filming, couldn't help but sigh as he returned.

"Yes, the president has a strong ability to put herself in others' shoes, and she is also very kind and gentle."

Shingo Sato has interviewed countless high-ranking leaders, but Masato Takeshita is one of the very few whom he particularly admires.

Not only is the company exceptionally well-run, but it is also willing to share the company's profits with its employees.

As far as he knew, even the lowest-level new employees at Xinghai Group could earn an annual salary of 360 million.

In other Japanese companies, new employees would need to meet rather stringent requirements to earn this much.

First, you are a college graduate.

Secondly, the company you joined is doing very well.

In this way, your monthly salary plus two semi-annual bonuses will eventually reach this figure.

As for Xinghai Group, with so many people at the bottom, the number of college graduates is naturally even higher.

Basically, those who can join the Xinghai Group can earn an annual salary that reaches the average level in Japan.

Xinghai Group has already issued more than 5 pre-selection qualifications this year, which means that the extra expenses on college graduates alone easily exceed 500 billion yuan.

If you factor in the entire company, the amount would be even greater.

Xinghai Group has nearly 30 employees in Japan. A simple calculation shows that the company's annual additional salary expenditure in Japan definitely exceeds 3000 billion yen.

This figure is a considerable sum for any company, equivalent to more than one Nokia's profits.

Besides, this is just a very basic estimate.

Based on the high salaries paid to R&D and management personnel by Xinghai Group, Japan's annual extra wage expenditure is at least 5000 billion yen, equivalent to the profits of two Nokias.

Although the salary cost is indeed a bit higher compared to traditional Japanese companies, the young man still feels it's worth it.

Because of the high salaries offered by Xinghai Group, more high-level talents are flocking in, and ordinary talents are also more motivated to work.

Besides, these extra expenses on salaries are nothing to Xinghai Group.

Putting aside other factors, the annual profit of Xinghai Technology alone can basically cover the entire increase in wages.

In Japan, Xinghai Group attracts talent with high salaries and generous benefits, and the same applies to other countries.

In less developed areas, such as China and Southeast Asia, the wages of ordinary workers can generally be increased by more than 50%.

Top talent, on the other hand, are paid double or even several times more according to local regulations. Since the base salary is low anyway, even several times the amount won't cost too much money.

As for European and American countries, the figures are not so exaggerated.

The average number of general workers is higher than the average of large companies in the industry, and the number of top talents is more than 50%.

As for the top-tier positions, they are basically not lured in by salary alone; they require higher performance or stock options.

Xinghai Group cannot currently satisfy its demands in terms of shares, but it can offer very high performance-based salaries.

At this point, another employee in charge of stenographers interjected.

"Yes, that's great. Japan lacks business leaders with such a sense of responsibility as the chairman."

The stenographer thought of his previous hard times at the TV station, and his friends and classmates who were still suffering at other TV stations, and couldn't help but shudder.

Working at high intensity every day is exhausting, and the worst part is that it doesn't improve work efficiency much.

Everyone seems to be busy until 11 or 12 o'clock every day, but in reality, most of them are just slacking off and don't know what they've actually done.

It was nothing like now, when I would work a maximum of ten hours a day and still get everything done easily.

"Exactly, the most despicable companies are those that only think about exploiting their employees and don't hire more people from outside."

"Alright, you can't talk about this kind of thing, it's too easy to offend people."

Shingo Sato quickly told everyone to shut up, because most Japanese companies did the same thing after the bubble burst.

They stopped hiring externally and ruthlessly squeezed employees' time internally.

The results were actually quite good in the short term; everyone was working incredibly hard.

But this thing, like the so-called bottom-ranking elimination system, has serious consequences.

First, excessively squeezing employees' working hours leaves them with little time for reflection, leading to a significant decline in the company's innovation capabilities.

In later generations, when Japanese home appliances failed, they could still find an excuse to say that the white goods industry had relatively low barriers to entry, which benefited companies in low-wage developing countries.

But the computer and mobile phone industries are not doing well; this is entirely due to excessively long working hours and insufficient rewards.

When people work long hours, most become very tired and are too lazy to think or absorb more knowledge from the outside world when they get home.

As a result, your brain will age more and more, gradually forming fixed mindsets, and you will be eliminated by the rapidly developing information age.

When there are too many employees like this, the company will gradually become stagnant, and innovation will be out of the question.

Unless you offer exceptionally high incentives, recent college graduates will be highly motivated to earn higher compensation.

However, this method also has a time limit.

When you earn a certain amount of money and reach a certain age, the threshold for motivation will gradually disappear.

Japanese companies cannot afford to lay off these employees, so their competitive and innovative capabilities naturally diminish over time.

The setbacks of giants like Fujitsu, NEC, Sony, and Toshiba in the computer and mobile phone markets were all influenced by this factor.

Secondly, it could reduce the work efficiency of Japanese companies.

Why do many Chinese people feel this way when doing business with large Japanese companies? They feel that communication with Japanese companies is particularly slow and inefficient.

Things that could be settled in a day often drag on for at least ten days to two weeks. Some really bad ones can take three months or even half a year. A large part of the reason is that long hours of overtime work cause employees to become numb.

The employees were too lazy to figure out the business processes and simply handed them over to their superiors, drifting through each day in a daze.

People are like springs; the more you squeeze them in a short period of time, the more severe the rebound will be in the future.

That's how Japanese working people are. You're making me work overtime every night without rest, aren't you?
Then I'll break up my rest time into my normal working hours, and I'll take every spare moment I can to relax.

In fact, this kind of thinking can be seen by looking at the welfare treatment in various countries around the world today.

Developed European countries were the most inhumane during the Industrial Revolution, with children as young as a few years old forced into child labor, and most workers not surviving more than 10 years.

The image of British workers sleeping on ropes because they couldn't afford to buy or even rent a house is a classic.

Therefore, workers in developed European countries later had the longest rest time, and some even adopted a 4-day, 6-hour work week.

At that time, the United States was sparsely populated and workers could become farmers if they couldn't make a living, so the exploitation was not as cruel as in Europe.

As a result, the United States, with its national strength and economic level far exceeding that of Europe, still had a significant gap in welfare benefits.

Therefore, companies should not exploit their employees too much, as this can easily backfire.

Upon hearing the reprimand from his deputy director, the cameraman at TBS television station chuckled.

“These are all our own people, so of course we can’t do that to outsiders.”

"That's right, that's right."

Like Takeshita Masato, Sato Shingo is a leader with a particularly amiable personality and does not have a strong sense of hierarchy.

Only then did the employees dare to tell him the truth and chat about random things.

If it were any other station director, everyone would have remained completely silent on the way back, and the atmosphere would have been quite tense.

While TV stations and newspapers were busy publishing today's interviews, Masato Takeshita was still stuck in a less-than-pleasant phone call-back session.

It was 11 p.m. again when he finally returned all the phone calls.

"Phew, finally finished. I can get some rest now and prepare for tomorrow's interview."

The young man was actually quite worried about facing a barrage of questions from reporters tomorrow.

But a short, sharp pain is worse than a long, drawn-out one; we'll have to face it sooner or later.

Masato Takeshita chose to hold the press conference, which was intended for major media outlets, in the afternoon.

This is also the common practice of most Japanese companies: they will treat the reporter to dinner after the interview and then give them generous travel expenses.

In this way, journalists will not report indiscriminately, causing trouble for Xinghai Group and the young person.

Given the significant impact of the event and the legendary status of Masato Takeshita, each media outlet was only allowed two reporters and one cameraman to enter.

Even so, the venue, which had a capacity of over a thousand people, was still nearly full.

Not only domestic media reporters of all sizes, but also many large foreign media outlets have taken the initiative to approach us.

Soon, after some pleasantries, Takeshita Masato began calling out names.

"This one, this reporter from the New York Times."

Since the Americans gave him face, Masato Takeshita naturally had to reciprocate.

The first opportunity to ask a question was thus handed to the Americans.

"Okay, thank you, Chairman Takeshita. What I'm curious about is why you don't establish a charitable foundation for donations?"

Americans love to establish all sorts of charitable foundations.

First, it allows for tax avoidance; second, it enhances one's social reputation; and finally, it allows family members to hold positions in charitable foundations and engage in extravagant spending.

In short, most charitable foundations are just a facade, engaging in ironic tricks of transferring money from one hand to the other.

However, some of these are genuine acts of charity, and these genuine acts of charity represent the image of the United States in its external propaganda and are also the most popular examples among readers of Yilin's short stories, showcasing the goodness of Americans.

The results are very good, especially when a country's information flow is not smooth and the standard of living is not very high.

Masato Takeshita despised this behavior, but he couldn't say it out loud. He could only suppress his contempt and praise the Americans for their leadership in philanthropy without changing his expression.

After a barrage of flattery, the young man finally responded to the reporter's questions.

"The charity foundation is really good, but the donation was a bit sudden; I didn't think about it at all."

"In the future, Xinghai Group will also establish its own charitable foundation and make donations by referring to the advanced experience of its American counterparts."

Masato Takeshita actually approves of the charitable foundation model, but he doesn't quite approve of the American one.

The sheer volume of donations this year has indeed left him feeling overwhelmed.

Things would be much easier if there were a charitable foundation.

Another advantage is that with a charitable foundation, you don't have to donate so much at once; you can take a gradual, long-term approach.

However, it's not bad to do something capricious once in a while.

If Xinghai Group had a charitable foundation, he would never have won the Person of the Year award this year.

After all, the influence of 200 billion US dollars and the influence of several billion US dollars are not even on the same level.

Such a large amount of donations is almost equivalent to losing the world's richest person.

Of course, this is the world's richest person in the public eye. The assets of those large conglomerates are definitely much greater than this.

After the United States, the next one is naturally a reporter for NHK, which is equivalent to Japan's official media.

These are family members, so the questions they asked were very mild.

"After becoming Person of the Year, has anything changed in your life?"

Takeshita Masato thought for a few seconds, then smiled and replied, "If I said no, it must be a lie."

"Firstly, in terms of public awareness, it has naturally reached a new level. Secondly, my own standards for myself will also increase accordingly."

"After all, we've won an award, so we need to be more mindful of the impact."

"Furthermore, ordinary users trust our products more and are more willing to support the development of our company."

Becoming a Person of the Year brings numerous benefits. Not to mention anything else, the enhancement of Xinghai Group's reputation alone is an invaluable asset.

When many people hear about Xinghai Group, their first reaction is that it's a company that likes to donate money to charity, so they have to support it.

In addition, many college students who are oblivious to the outside world also learned about this company that has a good working environment and is willing to help disadvantaged groups.

Whether you want to enjoy life or pursue a high salary, Xinghai Group is naturally your first choice.

This is an American certification, which was a symbol of authority in the 1990s.

Even if their own government opposes it, it will only invite ridicule and sarcasm.

"That's America?"

One sentence is enough to leave the vast majority of countries and ordinary people speechless.

There was no way around it; in the 1990s, the United States was the most powerful country in the world, and no country could resist its allure.

(End of this chapter)