Exchange Rate and Talent Shortage (6)

Central Japan Industries Association (ChuSanRen), which I’m working for, published “Check over wages in Japan” (NIKKAN KOGYO SHIMBUN,LTD.) in 1993. In the book we offered opinions about the development of new personnel systems considering the 21st century. We proposed to seek for “innovative staff who vitalize their organizations by showing their personalities in the organizations and with flexible minds and power of action”, and then to aim to develop human resource systems for promoting conversion from “worker’s mind, sense, and ways of thinking” to “peer-group member’s mind, sense, and ways of thinking” and “owner’s mind, sense and ways of thinking.”

Concrete directions of the development of the systems were (1) diversification of newly “expected employees at companies”, (2) necessity of individual recruitment in order to respond to the diversification, and approaches for each individual about evaluation, ability development, and treatment, (3) “policy and management by objectives” for each individual and cooperation in development and evaluation, (4) conversion of the quality of “vocational-qualification systems” that serve as bases, and (5) freeing from unified wage increase by “the annual spring wage round.” These were going ahead of the times.

As proposed, the development of human resources who do not have worker’s mind (those who are given instructions and satisfied with executing only “what are told”) but have owner’s mind (“participants” who work on things voluntarily) has been proceeded during these 20 years or has not? I would like you to value how much it promoted the improvement of companies’ business results. At the same time, there still is a big problem about how to maintain existing team play.

In order that Japanese companies may coexist globally, it is necessary to develop systems by utilizing people and from comprehensive viewpoints, in other words, systematically. I would like to make this point an overall conclusion of human resources utilization.

For future development of human resource systems, it is necessary to make systems of human resources development, evaluation, treatment, and problem solving work together and function, setting basic systems as cores. (See the diagram.)