Junansei: the power of flexibility in Japan

Japanese managers often cite junansei as one of the most important qualities in an employee. Directly translated into English, it means “flexibility” – specifically, the willingness to take on additional job responsibilities as needed by the company.

In most Japanese companies, employees are hired to join the company as a whole, rather than for a specific position. When interviewing potential hires, the human resources staff looks at their general intelligence, personality, and character – including junansei – rather than specific skills, experience, or qualifications. The candidate is then made an offer to become an employee of the company, rather than to take a specific position. They typically won’t find out their first assignment until after they complete orientation. In this way, junansei is built into the basic expectations that employees have about their jobs. This is in direct contrast to American hiring practices, which are heavily dependent on job descriptions to define the job requirements and identify appropriately qualified applicants.

As Japanese employees work their way up in the company, their career path is determined by the human resources department. Even if an employee has a specific interest in a certain area, they don’t necessarily have the power to make that desired career path happen. For example, one of my Japanese friends had his heart set upon an a career in international finance, and joined a large bank. He ended up being put into the domestic area, where he has stayed so long that it’s now clear he is not going to have the chance to do the international work that initially interested him. Once I asked him how he felt about this, and he just shrugged his shoulders saying that you have to nami ni noru (go with the flow) – a true statement of junansei if there ever was one.

From an American perspective, the junansei that is valued by Japanese firms can often seem puzzling. An American headhunter working in Japan once told me that she used the question “What are your career goals for five years from now?” as a way of identifying which of the Japanese businesspeople she interviewed was ready to make a move to a foreign-owned firm. The majority who answered “I’ll do whatever it is that my company needs me to do” she felt were best suited to staying in a Japanese company.

In contrast, in American organizations, employees are expected to be self-directed, to have career goals and to work to make them happen. Employees do this by applying for positions that are posted internally, and by moving to another company if that offers a better opportunity to pursue their desired path. It also means that employees may resist internal transfers that are not in line with their personal goals. One Japanese bank was quite surprised when it offered some of its American loan officers the opportunity to switch to back office work as an alternative to losing their jobs, and they refused. Back office work was not their chosen path, and they would rather find a new job than move into an area that did not interest them.

On a more micro level, the issue of junansei comes up when someone is requested to do something that is not part of their normal job duties. The typical Japanese employee will happily accept nearly any task no matter how unrelated to their usual work, whereas an American might say “that’s not my job.”