[Feature: How Japanese People "Rest"] Roundtable: If the Way We "Rest" Changes, the Way We "Work" Will Change

Today, I would like to think with everyone about "how Japanese people take time off." This year's Golden Week looks like it will be a 10-day consecutive holiday for many people according to the calendar, and it is also the timing when the "Work Style Reform Related Laws" will come into effect this April. I hope we can also think about "how we work" through the lens of "how we rest."

First, I would like to ask each of you to briefly tell us what kind of work you do, and then give a word about your favorite way to take time off and how you spend your holidays.

To start with myself, I specialize in labor economics and mainly use data to conduct various verifications regarding work styles. I haven't done much direct research on how people take time off, but since I usually look at human behavior from the perspective of working, I am looking forward to discussing the characteristics of Japanese people from the perspective of the "rest" that lies behind it.

My ideal way of resting would be a well-modulated one. The difference between busy and non-busy periods in my work is quite extreme, and during busy periods, I work in a way that is almost like staying up all night, so when I rest, I always feel like I want to take about a week off and do nothing.

I have been conducting research at the Recruit Works Institute on the themes of personnel, human resource management, and human resource management in corporations.

Since around 2014, slightly before the government started talking about "Work Style Reform," I have been working on research aimed at improving long working hours. Before that, I was researching the active participation of women, and I realized that behind the reasons why women cannot continue working or why they cannot be promoted within companies, there is an implicit rule of "not minding long working hours."

Discussions on work style reform have been active for the past few years, but as Mr. Yamamoto mentioned regarding modulation, I think the reality is that many working persons in Japan are not yet used to working with a clear distinction between work and rest.

As for my favorite way to spend time off, my child is still in elementary school and plays baseball, so I spend all of Saturday and Sunday at the ball field. I've recently realized that resting on the same day as my son is just painful (laughs), so the best thing is to have a day where only I can rest. This is my current request regarding "rest."

Actually, after graduating from my undergraduate program, I worked in sales at a television station and worked like crazy there. It was a 10-to-6 job. That means I went to work at 10 a.m. and came back at 6 a.m. the next morning (laughs). Thinking this lifestyle might not be very good, I re-entered university and have since been researching stress issues and mental health among working people.

I have focused my research on workplace mental health and occupational health, but I began to realize that in order to work well, one must rest well. Recently, I have been researching not only work styles but also off-job experiences—experiences outside of work. For example, how to spend leisure time, how to refresh oneself, how to manage work-life balance, and what we call "recovery," which is how to recover from fatigue.

In 2005, I went to the Netherlands for overseas research. Even though their labor productivity is very high, they leave quickly around 6 p.m. and spend the evening drinking beer while watching soccer on TV. Furthermore, in July and August, no one is at the university because of vacation. Seeing those people firsthand made me start thinking about why their performance is so high.

Regarding my own way of resting, my first child was born while I was studying in the Netherlands, and my second child was born three years later. At that time, I was affiliated with the University of Tokyo School of Medicine, and I tried taking two weeks of childcare leave. I was the first person among the faculty of the School of Medicine to do so.

I am Kajiki from Occupational Health Consulting ALC. I started my career as an industrial physician at Nippon Steel and then spent a long time as a university faculty member. Two years ago, I established a company that supports industrial physicians and occupational health activities in corporations, working with clients ranging from small and medium-sized enterprises to large corporations.

During my time at the university, which was my longest career, I sometimes had my holidays cut short because I held training sessions for industrial physicians on weekends and at night. However, since starting my company, I can choose my work at my own pace, so I take time off while managing it myself.

My current way of working is "job-based," but previously I worked in a more "membership-based" way. By becoming job-based, my time with my family has increased, and I have recently been able to take time for hobbies and physical fitness.

My favorite way to rest is an ideal lifestyle where I can secure enough sleep on weekdays while ensuring family trips and relaxing time several times a year.

I have built my career mainly in human resources and labor relations at Denso, an automobile parts manufacturer. While work style reform is currently popular, the automobile industry is also undergoing major changes, as symbolized by the term "CASE" (Connectivity, Autonomous, Sharing, Electrification). In a society where people do not own, buy, or ride cars, the question is how automobile parts manufacturers will survive when cars do not sell.

Furthermore, when we transition from internal combustion engines like gasoline and diesel, which have lasted for a long time, to electric vehicles and a hydrogen society, there will be countless parts that are no longer needed. As the industrial structure changes significantly, we naturally have to change the way we work as well.

As the times change significantly, there are structural problems with the Japanese-style personnel system. How can we significantly change the current personnel system? I am currently thinking about changing our approach.

Regarding my own way of resting, I have three children, but they have become much less hands-on, so recently I like resting alone. The best thing is to take a half-day off on a weekday, go eat my favorite ramen, and I love thinking about how to spend half a day of my own time (laughs).

Until now, it has often been said that Japanese people are bad at resting, and I would like to think about why that is. Mr. Kato just touched upon the "Japanese-style personnel system."

From a personnel perspective, in terms of the distinction between membership-based and job-based that Mr. Kajiki mentioned earlier, Japanese companies are, after all, membership-based. In other words, the scope of duties is not limited. It is taken for granted that you do your own job, and on top of that, how much "plus-alpha" you do has also been a subject of evaluation.

As a result, you cannot go home even after your own work is finished. There is a culture of working as a team, and while I think this has positive aspects, I believe the factors that make long working hours habitual are embedded here.

The personnel system in Japan is also based on a vocational qualification system, and the core of the system is to evaluate how much of one's accumulated abilities are being demonstrated in addition to fulfilling one's role. Therefore, structurally, working long hours is required. I believe there is such a systemic and social background.

So, companies with so-called Japanese-style employment practices have personnel systems that make it difficult to take time off and prone to long working hours.

From the perspective of the workers, there are also many people who do not have a policy on what to do during their time off. When I interview long-hour workers as an industrial physician and ask, "What do you do on your days off?" many answer something like, "I sleep all day on Saturdays and Sundays to recover from the fatigue of the weekdays." Since they have no hobbies, I sometimes think that as a result, they don't know how to use their time.

Another thing is that a very large part of "resting" is sleep, but everyone's awareness of sleep is low. The day after getting good sleep, your head should be clear and your work performance should improve, but people are not educated about the importance of sleep from childhood. Even with studying, the conversation tends to be about cutting back on sleep to do it. I think that, in turn, is reflected in the low awareness of resting.

In the first place, what does it mean to rest? Suppose your working days are Monday to Friday and Saturday and Sunday are off. However, even so, if you are a researcher, you take notes when an idea comes to mind, and you read literature on your days off. It can be said that it is very difficult to distinguish whether this is resting or not.

Furthermore, there is the question of whether the body is resting or the mind is resting. Even if the body is certainly not at work, the mind is thinking about various things related to work. Can this state be considered resting? I think there is a fundamental question of what constitutes "resting."

That is certainly true.

Also, it has been pointed out that the way Japanese people view the self is a bit different compared to the West. In the case of Japan, it is an interdependent self—that is, the "self" is defined within the relationship with others. For example, it is expressed in the form of "the eldest son of the Shimazu family." I think that this interdependent self leads exactly to the membership-based way of working like a community of destiny in the case of Japanese culture.

However, as Mr. Kato said, membership-based work also has its good points. In psychological classification, there are two ways of looking at performance. One is called in-role performance, which is how well you do your assigned work.

The other is called out-role or extra-role performance, which refers to how you work spontaneously even though it is not in the job description. If your work is too strictly defined, you won't help your colleagues, and in baseball terms, there will be more bloop hits. That would also be a problem.

How to find the right balance? In Japan, we say "Kindness is not for the sake of others (it comes back to you)," and Japan has a culture where helping others eventually comes back to oneself. I think the challenge is how to find a compromise there.

That is a very suggestive point. The interdependent self is related to the membership-based model and ambiguous job duties.

I am now in my mid-40s, and I think the sense of the generation above me and the current generation in their 20s is quite different. People of the so-called old generation are indeed bad at resting.

From the perspective of human resource management, I think it was membership-based and interdependent, but since autonomy is basically not required much, they lack confidence in doing something different from others. I think this is a characteristic of Japanese business people.

This is also true for education from childhood. Looking at my own children, even in ethics classes, the teaching method is that you have to derive the correct answer. It doesn't end with "Both ways of thinking have their points."

The correct way of thinking—that is, the way of thinking that everyone will agree with—is required, and it is deeply ingrained that those who are not like that will basically lose out in society. The idea that "it's okay to be different from others" is very rarely supported.

Even I, as a manager of a company, feel a bit annoyed when a young person says, "I'm finished with my work, so I'm going home today" (laughs). There is a feeling inside me that wants to say I want them to do as much as I do, or I want them to work until I am satisfied.

That's very Showa-era.

Exactly (laughs). Since my first job was at a bank, my first work rules were those of a traditional Japanese company, but Recruit is the same; I think there is a lot of peer pressure.

In such an environment, most people cannot say, "I'm taking two weeks off in July." The value of rest and work is clearly biased too much toward work. I think this is the value system of standard business people older than my generation.

However, young people are becoming quite different. I think the time has come to do something about the value system where the idea that it's okay for oneself and others to be different, or that it's okay to rest when others are working, does not pass in Japanese-style employment.

In an era where individuals are required to have diverse ideas and generate innovation, the values of the past are probably becoming less suitable.

Previously, I conducted research on whether working hours would become shorter when people working hard in Japan were transferred to Europe. It seemed that compared to people hired locally doing the same job, Japanese people still did a lot of long and ambiguous work. However, even so, the working hours were definitely shorter than when they were in Japan.

However, when those people return to Japan, they become long again (laughs). In the end, that means they are easily influenced by their surroundings—after all, it's interdependence, or rather, they get dyed by the majority's way of working. Japan is a society where trying to take a lot of rest by oneself incurs a lot of cost and stress.

That is also closely related to how paid leave is taken, and when comparing the paid leave utilization rate by country, Japan is overwhelmingly low. There are statistics showing it is less than half of Europe's. On the other hand, there are many statutory holidays and public holidays. I think there are aspects where that is covering for it.

They are increasing rest within peer pressure.

In that sense, I don't know if it was intended, but it may have been an effective measure for increasing the rest of Japanese people.

From a business perspective, I think the way of working until now was a business model optimized for the era of mass production and mass consumption. Tasks were thoroughly standardized so that anyone could do them the same way. Then peer pressure works easily. While standardizing and promoting efficiency, we have trained many people who can think the same way and do the same tasks.

However, from now on, a completely different society will probably come. When we transition from the era of mass production and mass consumption to a more made-to-order era, or a society where sharing is fine, I think we won't be able to do business if we keep our current way of thinking.

Innovation comes from the power of diverse people, right?

That's right. In doing this in Japan, what I think is the biggest obstacle, if I may say so without fear of being misunderstood, is that employment adjustment is difficult. Now, as business changes significantly, we are hiring more and more engineers who are in short supply through career recruitment and the like. But even if technology becomes obsolete, we must protect employment.

On the other hand, overseas competitors quickly gather the necessary human resources when needed and, conversely, dismiss personnel in departments with obsolete technology. From now on, Japan has to compete with such entities, but it is overwhelmingly disadvantaged. I think everyone is probably worrying about such things at the business front.

Furthermore, because employment adjustment is difficult for Japanese companies, they keep the number of personnel low relative to the amount of work. The system is set up to adjust for economic cycles through the amount of overtime hours.

That is the so-called "overtime as a buffer" theory.

Under the pressure to guarantee employment, the tendency to want to limit the number of regular employees as much as possible has been prominent since around the 1990s, and especially from 2000 to around 2010, the ratio of non-regular employees rose sharply. And it was decided to ask overtime and non-regular workers to handle the buffer part.

On the other hand, those whose employment is guaranteed indefinitely receive silent pressure that it is natural to work long hours by pushing themselves. Then, regular employees end up taking over work that cannot be asked of dispatched workers, and various tasks fall upon them. In a state where they are doing work that is not their original duty for about 40% of the day, they are told to increase performance. Then, they can't rest.

What about long vacations, which are said to be difficult to take in Japan?

I have colleagues in Europe, and for example in the Netherlands, they mostly disappear from their country starting around the beginning of July. And it seems they play thoroughly for the first two weeks.

After that, they use quite a bit of time for themselves. They seem to prepare for the new school year or business year starting in September by doing things like self-development, data analysis or paper writing that they couldn't do during the spring semester, or developing new ideas and setting strategies.

If there is such a break for about a month to a month and a half, I think they can divide the phases well themselves and use it strategically. For the first two weeks, they don't look at emails at all. It's like they look at them occasionally starting after two weeks.

With a vacation of about one week like the Japanese Obon holiday, you probably can't do things like playing at first and then preparing for work with a bit of free thinking. As a problem in Japan, there is the fact that vacations are short.

Discussions have also begun in the government under the name "Positive Off," but we must also think about the nature of long vacations suited to Japanese people. In the case of overseas, it's a zone system where vacations are staggered by state or region, thereby avoiding traffic congestion and the like. It's about how to make schools and companies take breaks. There are also discussions about how it would be if the days off were different depending on the region even in the same company, so adjustments will have to be made there.

Even during holidays or long vacations, "being connected" is also a recent problem. In France, it is called the "right to disconnect," and there was an amendment to the labor law. For example, if there is a one-week vacation, I also end up going out with my work computer. And when a contact comes by email, I reply immediately.

In that way, the fact that "not being connected" has been disappearing recently might be pushing the situation where a great burden is placed on regular employees.

Last summer, when I went to a research meeting on issues such as work-life balance called the Work and Family Researchers Network in the United States, I heard the term "boundary management." Because we are "connected," we can work at home and the way we rest has become flexible, but on the other hand, the boundary between time at home and work time has become ambiguous, and it's becoming unclear whether one is resting or not.

Previously, the company managed work time. Even if you worked overtime, once you stepped out of the office, work time was over, but now boundary management has become an individual responsibility.

From a medical perspective, which is better for health: resting for a long period or resting frequently?

I think that depends on the type of job and the way of working. The way of spending a week to a month differs between those doing shift work on-site and those on day shifts.

A longer vacation is certainly important, but humans sleep every day. If we view that as a short rest, frequent rest becomes important for any way of working. In addition, for occupations that require more creativity on day shifts, a long break for a certain period might be more important for refreshing and evoking new ideas.

However, the principle is still that daily sleep is important. I often talk about this in corporate training, but there is a paper that investigated the relationship between work productivity or the occurrence of mistakes and sleep time; comparing people who sleep only three hours a day with those who sleep nine hours a day for a week, the rate of work mistakes becomes about 15 times higher.

So there is a completely significant difference.

That's right. So I think it's important to take vacations with a slightly longer span occasionally while trying not to accumulate such sleep debt every day.

Also, some people spend their time off actively. Since you use physical strength even when playing on your time off, you need to firmly secure rest and sleep after that. In another study, it is known that doing light walking for about 30 minutes a day, five days a week, makes it easier to fall asleep and harder to wake up in the middle of the night.

Therefore, ideally, I think it's very good to take rest so that your head works properly while improving the quality of sleep and refreshing both mind and body while regularly moving your body lightly.

I have an acquaintance who recently moved to an international organization after working for a US investment bank for a long time. She said she tried taking a one-month long vacation for the first time last summer.

At first, she was very scared of taking a long break, and for the first week, she couldn't help but worry, thinking, "Is the office running okay without me?" However, by the second week, she got used to it, and the time she spent not thinking about work gradually increased. Then, during the final week, she felt truly liberated and returned to Japan thinking, "So this is what it means to truly refresh."

Of course, it is necessary to recover on a daily basis, but recovery like this—detoxing everything that has accumulated through a long vacation—is also important, isn't it?

Recovery is basically about how to cool down the mind and body that have heated up from work, but it can be broadly divided into external recovery and internal recovery.

External recovery is about how you spend time outside of work to cool down, while internal recovery is about how you frequently recover from fatigue during work hours.

In research on external recovery, looking at changes in stress indicators before and after a two-week summer vacation, stress drops sharply immediately after the vacation. However, sadly, stress starts to rise three days after the vacation ends, and returns to its original value after three weeks.

To maintain the lowered stress state without letting it rise, one would have to keep taking a two-week break every three weeks (laughs). That is quite difficult. Research is moving toward shorter terms, such as how to spend weekends or how to recover from fatigue after a day's work is over.

Furthermore, research investigating the impact of short breaks, such as how lunch breaks are spent, on health and performance has become a trend.

I think both short-term and long-term ways of resting are necessary. In addition to longer lifespans and longer working periods, the speed of technological innovation is fast, so where one or two areas of expertise used to be enough, that is no longer the case, and one must keep studying. In that sense, I think periods like sabbatical leave will become necessary.

Therefore, for people who say they have no hobbies and nothing to do even if they take a break, I tell them, "Please study to some extent," to help them prepare for long-term changes.

From my own experience, short rests are also very important. Daily sleep, daily meals, daily drinking habits, and exercise really have an effect when they accumulate. When thinking about how to work in the best condition, I think rotating through a good cycle on a daily or weekly basis is best for continuing to work for a long time. Even if you take a month off, if you go back to the way you were afterward, it won't be very effective.

Personally, I started doing yoga two or three times a week a year ago, and it has been very effective.

What is it good for?

For one hour, I am completely cut off from the state of being "always connected" mentioned earlier. And as my body becomes more flexible, I feel my mind and body softening as well. People with mental health issues usually have very stiff bodies. So, I think yoga is good in the sense of resetting your mind and body.

Listening to everyone's stories, I thought it is indeed important for each person to be conscious of their own way of resting.

Perhaps the biggest problem for Japanese people is the lack of awareness regarding how to rest. There isn't much awareness about taking long breaks, nor is there much of a sense of refreshing and recovering in the short term to chip away at sleep debt.

In addition, one reason it is difficult to take long vacations is the worry mentioned earlier that the workplace won't function if one takes a long break. This is likely because work roles as a team are ambiguous and people work in a membership-based style. The fact that Europeans can take nearly a month off means that an environment has been created where it is natural for someone to be absent during that time.

I would like to ask everyone how we should change the problems that have come up so far and what is necessary.

First, I think it's necessary to decide how to design the way of working itself. Whether to go with a membership-based model, a job-based model, or a hybrid of the two. In organizations with a strong membership-based color, I think the best thing is to create an environment that forces people to take breaks.

However, as I said at the beginning, what do they do once they rest? Beyond that point, it is currently left to the individual, so it might be necessary for corporate HR or employee benefits to look after the way people rest to some extent. For example, holding seminars on appropriate ways to rest, or increasing literacy regarding how to have hobbies and how to spend holidays.

On the other hand, in a job-based model, one must continue to refine their skills, so resting shouldn't just be about resting; literacy is needed to use breaks, like sabbatical leave, to improve one's own skills.

Therefore, rather than telling all employees uniformly how to rest, I believe it should be arranged in a tailor-made way according to the work style and job type.

That's true. I believe that in the long run, Japanese society will definitely change. At our company, we have externally committed to making the ratio of women in new graduate recruitment 40% for administrative roles and 15% for technical roles. If we continue this for several decades, the labor composition will certainly change. If that happens, the way of working will naturally change as well.

For example, at our company now, dual-income households are just under 40% overall, but if you look only at those in their 20s, it's about 70%. In that case, if there are two salaries, some people might value not having to push themselves for a promotion. Child-rearing will naturally become something that two people do together.

The question is how much we can accelerate that through corporate support such as HR systems. I believe we cannot win in global competition unless we do that, so from an HR standpoint, I am thinking about removing, one by one, the various structural factors embedded in the Showa era.

Is HR also considering an approach like the one Mr. Kajiki mentioned, of first forcing people to take breaks?

I think we need the idea that it's not about doing just one thing, but rather continuing to try various methods.

Do you also conduct training on how to rest?

We do. However, when we hold a lecture on sleep, some employees ask, "Is there a way I don't have to sleep?" and get scolded by the lecturer (laughs).

Regarding daily sleep, the government is currently promoting a work-interval system that ensures a certain amount of time between the end of one shift and the start of the next.

But while there was talk of an 8-hour interval, I think it has to be 11 hours to be effective.

Exactly. It's not enough at all.

In Europe, it's 11 hours. The fact that companies are holding seminars on sleep means that management understands it also benefits the company side.

Yes. Most of the people making decisions in corporate management today are Japanese men in their 50s and 60s, and it is quite difficult to get them to understand. I think it's harder for larger companies. They are like a mass of past success stories (laughs).

Also, what's important as a system is how salaries are paid. Currently, many companies do not pay salaries for the work itself.

They pay for existence (laughs).

I think this has to change, but the only companies that have been able to change are those that have faced a management crisis. Every company knows they have to pay for work and roles, but they can't change for various reasons.

The "Equal Pay for Equal Work" rule will be introduced under the Work Style Reform Related Act taking effect in April. I think that will be one major catalyst.

I think this April's legal revision will be a catalyst in many ways. There is also the mandatory five days of paid leave, and I hope the shift in thinking that "companies make employees take time off" will become a driving force and accelerate things.

That's true. I also think setting target figures is very effective for moving Japanese business people.

When the Act on Promotion of Women's Participation and Advancement in the Workplace was enacted in 2016, the moment the ratio of women in recruitment and the number of female managers were released as numerical targets, the level of seriousness changed.

This is clearly a trait of business people. If it's publicized that they "failed to achieve it," it's quite embarrassing, so everyone works hard. I think this coercive power should be used wisely.

A company called SCSK set a goal for everyone to fully take all 20 days of paid leave, and they have mostly achieved it. I heard that in order to take 20 days off, they make all their plans at the beginning of the fiscal year. By making plans, managers can decide who to assign work to. This increases the manager's sensitivity to how much time things take. I think this is wonderful.

If it goes that far, I think long vacations and men taking childcare leave will also become possible.

If you know in advance that it will be difficult to manage if a certain person is gone, you can respond, and doing that becomes a major part of a manager's job.

Numerical targets certainly seem suited for Japanese people. As a government initiative, if "Resting Style Reform" is made into a slogan and numerical targets are included in the law, I feel awareness will change significantly.

I think a law that simply says "investigate the actual state of leave and publicize it properly" and "submit reform plans regarding leave" would be enough. Regarding sleep as well, if it is clearly stated that companies have a duty of care regarding the quality of sleep, things might change in an instant.

There are already 12,000 companies that have made their action goals public in response to the Act on Promotion of Women's Participation and Advancement in the Workplace. It was 3,000 at the time of enactment. I feel the same can be done for the way people rest.

When told by the government, thinking stops, but companies and employees do agree with the act of resting itself. If the government takes the lead in some measures to take leave systematically using a bit of coercive power, I think even membership-based Japanese companies can do quite a lot. Considering that background, Japan might have many national holidays.

The rest is the benefit of resting. Can we convey that "if you rest, such good things will happen to both the individual and the company"? I think we can enlighten people if we properly analyze and utilize data such as the ideal way to rest when taking three weeks off, sleep duration during that period, and job satisfaction on the first day back at work.

Thinking from the perspective of behavioral change in psychology, in a sense, "resting" is also a behavior. Resting because you were told to is extrinsic motivation, but to maintain it, it needs to be changed to intrinsic motivation—that is, "resting leads to such good things."

It starts from indifference, then moves to thinking "I'm glad I rested," and then to a phase of "I want to rest more." I think it's divided into about three phases, but in the indifference phase, people feel the disadvantages of resting more than the advantages.

They probably think, "Leave me alone."

Exactly. So, it's important how to emphasize the merit that "resting is a good thing." At the same time, it's important how to convey the message that the disadvantages are few.

In lectures for managers at companies, when I ask what they would want to do if their leave increased, middle-aged male managers initially only say things like "I want to walk or run to maintain my health," "I want to go to a gym," or "I want to use it for self-improvement."

When I say, "Why don't you do what you like, not for the company?" hobbies they used to have come up, such as "I want to ride my motorcycle because I haven't been able to at all lately," "I want to learn guitar," or "I want to read books thoroughly."

In this way, since the image of what they want to do if they have a break comes to mind with just a little prompting, I think it's possible to move them from indifference to being somewhat interested.

First, individuals change. On the other hand, I think the majority of management, who are set in their ways due to past success stories, still think, "If we increase leave, won't profits go down?"

If management styles change to make the company one where people can take leave, that should trigger improvements in the way people work. Then, there will likely be benefits for the company as well. While verification is needed, is the idea emerging that if the way of resting improves within a company, performance will also improve in the long run?

Yes. Currently, we have to conduct sustainable management, so we cannot allow unreasonable ways of working. In the business world, there are both long-term and short-term battles, but as human lifespans extend this much, the long-term battle becomes more important for individuals. Management thinking should also change, but companies still have many Showa-era parts.

I agree. However, young IT engineers and others for whom demand is growing enormously in the labor market and who can easily change jobs do not want to be in a boring company or a company where they cannot take leave. They move to companies that have a lot of leave and allow flexible working styles.

So, I think it's no longer possible to maintain excellent employees while expecting them to work with the same values as in the past.

I also tell management, "With the current way of working, global talent won't come." This is the most effective. For employees, I have to say it differently: "Work style reform can be fun too" (laughs).

One of my research themes is "work engagement." It refers to a state of working vigorously with enthusiasm, and it is determined not only by workplace factors but also by private factors. One theory is "spillover," where a fulfilling private life leads to positive effects flowing into work.

What flows out are things like values, behaviors, and emotions. For example, if you refresh yourself by diving on your time off, that mood carries over to work, and you can work again with a fresh feeling. The way you use your off-time is not disconnected; it overflows.

The opposite also happens. If your off-time is not fulfilling, the negative impact flows into work, and you have to head to work while carrying stress. Naturally, performance drops, and it's not good for health.

Therefore, companies should also be aware that how off-time is spent is important and can affect work, and they should consider it as part of the HR domain.

Do industrial physicians ever appeal to companies from the perspective that "the way you rest is important"?

Yes. What I talk about most is the relationship between sleep duration/quality and the incidence of industrial accidents. Humans are animals, so we need to sleep for one-third of the day. In that case, improving the quality of sleep leads significantly to daytime performance.

For example, people with stiff shoulders or back pain often report mental health issues, and if they do exercises to fix their back pain, their mental health also improves, sleep quality goes up, and work performance can improve.

To reset the fatigue of a day's work and build up energy for the next day, doing stretches or light exercise improves sleep quality. Then, they can come to the company the next day feeling energetic again.

How do business owners receive this?

What has an impact is when I show a graph showing that if a pattern of 3 hours of sleep continues for a week, sleep debt accumulates. Even if you rest on Saturday and Sunday, the debt doesn't fully go down and remains accumulated.

Professor Seiji Nishino, Director of the Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences and Medicine, says, "Please think of the start of the day not from when you wake up, but from when you go to sleep." Then, the quality of daytime hours differs between a day when you only slept 5 hours and a day when you slept 8 hours. When I tell them, "Thinking of going to bed as the start of the day changes your view of life significantly," business owners also say, "It was eye-opening."

Finally, I would like to touch upon the subject of "working mothers." The state of mothers working in companies who are unable to rest has become quite dire. No matter how many women enter the workforce, if men do not do housework, women end up handling both childcare and chores. Naturally, they cannot work as much as men, and as that proportion increases, overall labor hours decrease. However, the solution is simply for men to share the burden of housework.

Alternatively, there is the question of how much of the housework burden can be solved with money. I think investment in appliances like robot vacuum cleaners has started to take hold almost everywhere, but there is also the question of whether housework can be outsourced.

We need to improve literacy regarding rest and properly understand that a lack of sleep or time off increases risks to one's productivity and health. We must reach a point where people don't have to spend their entire Saturday and Sunday doing housework.

Most working mothers probably don't have the luxury of coming home and sitting on the sofa to watch TV. They are definitely getting less rest than men. Including that aspect, I believe we should investigate whether people are getting proper rest for the sake of recovery.

I see, that is true. Until now, I think we have taken various approaches focusing on "how we work" in both policy and research. Partly because of that, ways of working are finally starting to change recently, but it feels like those approaches have mostly been exhausted. However, by shifting our perspective and approaching it from "how we rest," I realized in today's discussion that there seems to be much more we can do, which was a very significant takeaway.

People who are good at resting are likely very talented individuals. If perspectives change in that way, I think that idea will spread. Furthermore, companies that are good at letting their employees rest will come to be evaluated as good companies.

By thinking through the lens of how we rest, I believe we can find clues to solve many issues, such as the working mother and nursing care problems mentioned by Ms. Ishihara, as well as disability employment and diversity issues. Looking at it that way, I am getting excited that good things will happen through the reform of how we rest.

Thank you very much for today.