Company president cites good performance, employee retention due to benefits
A tech company in Japan is offering employees unusual leave benefits in a bid to lure younger staff to the organisation, according to reports.
TrustRing, a tech firm based in the Western Japanese prefecture of Osaka, is offering employees time off for hangover and celebrity loss.
The hangover leave allows an employee to report to work at 12pm, later than the company's starting time of 9am, and even later than the company's president, the South China Morning Post reported, citing Kansai Television.
The "celebrity loss" leave, on the other hand, can be applied when an employee's favourite celebrity gets married or announces something that can make the employee too sad to work, according to the report.
Daigaku Shimada, TrustRing president, told SCMP that the benefits were effective in retaining employees and making sure they're productive.
"The company has good performance, and zero employees have left in the past three years," he said.
According to the company president, the unusual leave benefits seek to increase the company's competitiveness because they can only offer new employees a monthly salary of JPY222,000 and overtime pay for an assumed 20 hours.
Competition for talent among Japanese organisations is tight amid a shortage of labour in the country. Data from 2023 even revealed that Japan's projected labour shortage may hit more than 11 million workers by 2040, according to The Japan Times.
To address the problem, 69% of employers in Japan are beefing up recruitment activities for new graduates, while 59% are extending retirement ages and re-hiring retired staff.
Employers are also tapping the foreign workforce, which hit a record high in October 2024, with more than 342,000 workplaces employing them.
