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2016 MTPC keynote speech
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2.3 Relationship between Work-Life Balance and Work Performance
There is no data expressly linking work-life balance measures with improvements in
performance or profitability for any of the four companies in terms of business operators’
and human resource managers’ awareness and feeling. However, it can be seen that the
companies share the view that, over a medium-to-long-term time span of at least four to five
years, more skilled human resources have become established within the business as the
result of work-life measures, ultimately leading to high performance results. The costs of
introducing work-life measures impact income and expenditure for that year, but companies
are aware that, afterwards, performance will gradually improve over several years. Linking
this to the shape of the letter “J”, this phenomenon is known as the “Work-life Balance
J-curve Effect”.
A report by the Osaka Prefectural Industrial Labor Policy Promotion Council (2007)
states that, because of the nature of Osaka people to “focus on money”, especially within
small- and medium-sized businesses, evidence to prove that promoting “work-life balance”
does indeed lead to improvements in performance and profits is needed. Therefore, this point
suggests that viewing work-life balance from a medium-to-long-term perspective of at least
four to five years is important when discussing the monetary aspects of work-life balance
measures.
2.4 Issues for the Future
Since introducing work-life measures, each company has found that awareness amongst
their employees about the concept of work-life balance has gradually increased. However,
large-scale companies are conscious that the issue of how to best incorporate work-life
balance measures into daily work practices needs to be addressed. By mainly bringing to the
improvements related to creating an environment in which it is easy to work, work-life
balance measures tend to make light of work and working styles themselves. In particular,
overcoming the problem of long working hours is closely related to changing the everyday
working styles of employees, and all companies recognized the need to consciously carry out
work restructuring in conjunction with work-life balance measures. However, when the
companies were asked whether or not they were in fact carrying out work restructuring, the
majority responded that they had not yet done so in a concrete manner.