Japan’s earliest year-end workday!? Introducing “Premium Holiday,” encouraging employees to take paid leave and enabling up to 16 consecutive days off over the New Year period!
Hello everyone—how are you spending the final year-end of the Heisei era? This is O from the PR Group.
As part of our “reform of how we take time off” (rather than “work-style reform”), we will implement “Premium Holiday,” which encourages employees to take paid leave and other time off at year-end, enabling an extra-long year-end and New Year holiday of up to 16 days!
Although the term “work-style reform” became widely established in 2018, the International Paid Leave Survey 2018 (19-country comparison) found that Japanese people’s paid leave utilization rate was 50% and the number of days taken was 10—both ranking last for the third consecutive year. With the Work Style Reform Act taking effect in April 2019 and requiring at least five days of paid leave to be taken, the reality is that many challenges remain in how Japanese people work and take time off.
Against this social backdrop, we decided to implement “Premium Holiday” to support year-end and New Year holidays. Our standard year-end and New Year holiday period is from Saturday, December 29, 2018 to Sunday, January 6, 2019; however, we will designate the four weekdays from Tuesday, December 25 to Friday, December 28 as days on which we encourage employees to take paid leave and other time off, thereby implementing “Premium Holiday,” an extra-long year-end and New Year holiday of up to 16 consecutive days. By taking the lead—despite the busy image associated with the advertising and PR industry—and promoting “reform of how we take time off” to improve the quality of work, we will help ensure that the current “work-style reform” becomes even more valuable.
Today, Friday, December 21—the day before “Premium Holiday” begins—we held what may be “Japan’s earliest!?” year-end workday. In preparation for the start of the extra-long year-end and New Year holiday, we put away the Christmas tree and set up kadomatsu decorations!
We also held a member-participation mochi-pounding event. Each person pounded mochi while sharing their goals for the coming year.
Even members who just joined this year…
Even our President, Tsugihara…
Even mid-level members…
Even the executive assistant…
With each pound, cheers erupted from the crowd!
Timed to coincide with the “final year-end and New Year holiday of the Heisei era,” this initiative challenges the status quo of work-style reform. It is also scheduled to be featured on TV Tokyo’s “World Business Satellite” starting at 11:00 PM today, Friday, December 21!
With that, everyone—although it is a bit early—please have a wonderful New Year!
