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meaningfulness of labor between carrying out monotonous routine work requiring little
thinking and carrying out work based on even a small amount of free thinking and ingenuity.
Considering this from a different angle, work based on free thinking and ingenuity means
skillfully incorporating “life-like” elements into monotonous, routine work, and with regard
to qualitative aspects, means making work more personal and enjoyable.
3.3 Step 3: Revision from the Viewpoint of Diversity
Based on Steps 1 and 2, Step 3 involves envisioning that “ways of creating balance
depend on the individual person and range widely” and providing as many menus as possible
for promoting “work-life balance” programs from which individuals can choose. The
companies that participated in the hearing surveys have already introduced multiple systems
aimed at work-life balance and are expanding and enhancing these measures. However, even
in large-scale companies, further enhancing, for example, systems of shorter working hours
for full-time employees and telecommuting systems, and expanding their sphere of
application could be considered more actively.
4
For workers in jobs in which they are often
transferred and whose workplace is not necessarily close to their home, the diffusion of
telecommuting systems as well as the values and culture of a society that accepts such work
practices are extremely important factors in improving their work-life balance.
Alternatively, depending on the individual person, work-life balance measures that
cover workers’ entire lifetimes also need to be considered in the future. For example, these
might include work-life balance measures that fulfill the individual wishes of workers, such
as “In my 30s I want to work actively, but in my 40s I would like to have more time for
childrearing and interacting with my family, and in my 50s I want to go back to working
actively”. In the sense that workers can freely design their own lifestyles, thinking and
mechanisms that make “lifestyle design” a possibility need to be spread throughout Japanese
society.
The point here is that work systems should be designed that allow room for
independence and discretion for workers to think and make decisions based on their own
situations. In the words of the Osaka Prefectural Industrial Labor Policy Promotion Council
(2007) report, thinking that enables workers to decide matters pertaining to them for
4 For a detailed perspective on the potential for the working style of telecommuting systems using
information technology to promote work-life balance, see Shimozaki and Kojima (2007).