Japanese middle managers bemoan ‘stress’ of dealing with foreign employees
- Complaints ranged from foreigners being too ‘assertive’ and making ‘aggressive demands for salary increases’ to having no common sense
- They were uncovered as part of a survey by a Japanese employment agency of 872 mid-level managers at firms across the country
More than one in three Japanese middle managers report feeling “intense stress” from supervising foreign employees, with almost one in five saying the experience has traumatised them so much that they would resign from their jobs immediately if they could, according to a new report.
It found that 34.3 per cent of managers reported high levels of stress from the “challenges” involved in working with foreign staff – all of which can be blamed, at least in part, on vastly different work cultures.
The most common complaint was that foreign employees are “very assertive”, the report found, with respondents also grumbling about a lack of common sense – by Japanese standards – among workers from overseas.
Managers also complained that foreigners “make aggressive demands for salary increases”, have low levels of loyalty towards their employers and are often unskilled at the jobs they were hired to do, meaning that it takes a long time to train them.