世論 What Japan Thinks

Here’s a fun survey from goo Ranking, looking at the top forty tell-tale signs that your employer may not be operating on the right side of the law or otherwise an undesirable place to work.

Demographics

From the 3rd to the 6th of August 2012 1,038 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 61.7% of the sample were female, 10.2% in their teens, 15.5% in their twenties, 27.2% in their thirties, 26.4% in their forties, 10.8% in their fifties, and 9.9% aged sixty or older. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

Looking at the list, even my employer of the finest repute scores relatively high on this list. Regarding number 5, however, it is actually the case that employees do not punch their own cards (well, fill in an intranet form) despite the company’s best efforts to get people to report their hours correctly!

However, a friend of my wife works at the Japan Post (Post Office), and she says there is, for instance, a rather significant New Year postcard sales requirement, and the latest one now is boil-in-the-bag Post Office canteen curry. She basically has to sell (or buy herself) two cases (48 bags) or she can expect a bad review come next year.

Ranking result

Q: What would make you think your employer is a bit dodgy? (Sample size=1,038)

Rank		Score
1	Employees keep quitting	100
2	When sales are bad I am forced to buy stuff myself	73.7
3	There’s a lot of criticism and nasty rumours about the company on the internet	67.5
4	Recruiting staff is a regular occurance	62.0
5	They don’t punch my time card after doing overtime	59.3
6	Excessively large amounts of overtime	56.6
7	There is weekend working but no days off in lieu	54.4
8	I’m forced to buy the company products	53.2
9	There’s no retirement lump sum scheme	51.5
10	I never see people taking their holidays	50.5
11	They hold off handing over the required paperwork to employees who quit	49.8
12	The toilets are filthy	48.9
13	I have to pay for my own stationery, etc	48.7
14	They take money out of my salary if the books don’t balance	46.4
15	Shift work doesn’t agree with what was in my contract	45.5
16	I have to get to work more than an hour before the official start time	41.1
17	Co-workers are always talking about gambling, booze and men and women	40.9
18	Telling tales on other staff is rampant	40.6
19	The managing director is surrounded by yes-men	40.1
20	The office computers are loaded with pirate software	37.7
21	The managing director’s office is very noticably expensively decorated	37.4
22	On the pretext of lunch meetings, noon-time breaks are always work	36.9
23	The company founding priciples has lots of psychological theory	36.0
24	There’s no time card	35.0
25	The company supplies sleeping bags	34.4
26	There’s an awful lot of new employees	34.3
27	My boss is excessively scary	31.7
28	It’s OK to smoke anywhere	31.1
29=	The lights are on in the office until well into the night	29.0
29=	There’s an awful lot of contract employees	29.0
31	It’s a family business	26.2
32	The managing director employs female staff on their attractiveness	25.2
33	The company theme song plays all day long	25.1
34	The managing director’s books get passed around	24.1
35	Young staff are excessively keen to get to a 10 million yen salary	20.0
36	The company checks employees’ Twitter and Facebook accounts	19.6
37	The female staff’s uniform features a rather short skirt	16.1
38	Self-deprecating humour is rampant	15.8
39	I work at a rental office	13.7
40	The company objectives are written in calligraphy	13.4