Recent trends amongst young workers

I’d like to focus two aspects about recent trends amongst young workers. One is mental aspect and the other is business manner. I believed that they are influenced by western corporate culture.

First, mentally vulnerable young generation. Performance based system, so called merit system has been installed in our society for the last two decades. As a negative aspect of performance based system, it generated stressful working environment. Employees are driven by the pressure that they need to bear fruits. Some people lack their confidence and they evaluate themselves as looser when they can’t perform well. For example, one of my subordinates who left our office due to mental depression confessed me that he was overwhelmed by excellency of coworkers and he felt inferior. I don’t think he’s looser at all. But he was annoyed by huge gap between his perfect world and real situation. It’s no exaggeration that present-day young generation is mentally vulnerable and they tend to suffer from illness of the soul.

Second, they lack of logical thinking. In globalize world, logical argument and direct debate are inevitable. Japanese tend to use common phrase such as “We will try to think about this matter positively.” It includes ambiguity and it could cause procrastination in some cases. Even Engineers who need logical thinking, they fail to show convincing data for argument. For example, some of my subordinates try to design our semiconductor micro chip for cell phone without any reason. I always chastise them. On the contrary, westerners demand clear ground/evidence. They set exact time/due date. I believe that this is good aspect Japanese should follow western’s example.

In conclusion, recent trends among young worker are characterized by two aspects. One is mental aspect and the other is business manner.