India is not only Suzuki Motor Corporation’s largest market but the Japanese automaker is now going the extra mile to ensure that its Indian workforce in Japan remains a content community.
This puts in context why it has joined hands with Kurofune, which describes itself as a life assistance app for foreigners living in Japan and is available in a host of languages including Japanese, English, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Chinese, Indonesian and Uzbek.
This joint initiative will see Kurofune conduct interviews “to understand the needs of Suzuki’s Indian employees” in Japan. As the carmaker explains on its website, this is to create an environment in which employees can work “energetically and demonstrate their motivation and abilities in a physically and mentally fulfilled state”.
The company also recognises that its competitive edge will be “enhanced by having a diverse workforce”. At present, it continues, foreign employees are active mainly in the technical departments in Japan. Suzuki plans to increase the number of direct recruitments from top educational institutions such as the Indian Institute of Technology in the future.
All in all, the coming together with Kurofune strives to improve the quality of living and “work satisfaction” of Suzuki’s foreign employees. The idea is to address their “worries and concerns” while providing “concrete and continuous” support.
In its growth strategy articulated earlier this year, the carmaker also announced a policy to strengthen its R&D structure by collaborating with overseas group companies such as the R&D Centre in India and overseas startups. “The company wishes to understand the needs of employees in their daily lives and create an even better working environment,” it has stated on its website.
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New Solutions
Kurofune will conduct interviews with Suzuki’s Indian employees in the first half of the initiative period from July to September to understand their needs. Based on the interviews, they will examine new service ideas that will provide solutions. In the second half, from October to December, the two companies will develop new services based on the ideas from Kurofune by “having discussions with Suzuki’s Indian employees”.
“Here in Japan, diverse human resources including people from India are active at our headquarters. Through collaboration with Kurofune, we will further strengthen our system to respect and embrace diversity,” says Yusuke Kato, Executive General Manager, Human Resources Development, Suzuki Motor.
According to him, the company aims to achieve sustainable growth through “cooperation of our production, development, and sales bases all over the world” with each playing their respective roles. Going forward, adds Kato, Suzuki plans to “actively recruit diverse human resources” who can identify with the company’s mission statement.
“We aim to create an environment in which the employees of the Suzuki Group can demonstrate their full potential and become a company that is needed by people and society,” he continues.
Ryo Kurakata, Founder and CEO, Kurofune says that the number of foreign workers in Japan has “increased sharply” to 1.82 million, approximately three times compared to that of 10 years ago, and is expected to increase by another five million and reach 6.74 million in 2040.
Slew Of Concerns
Foreign workers, he adds, may have a “variety of concerns in their unfamiliar lives in Japan” and this is where the Kurofune app will attempt to help them out. “Working with Suzuki is a valuable opportunity to obtain real voices of foreign workers in Suzuki and create new services. We will work to further improve our services and create a society where people feel easy to work and live as in their home country,” says Kurakata.
Industry experts believe the initiative clearly reflects a reality of the challenges in Japan where the average age is a little over 50 years, which is nearly twice as much as India’s. This explains why the county is now keen on opening its gates to more and more IT professionals from India.
The fact that Suzuki is also keen on ensuring their wellbeing is timely because Japan and India are just so different culturally. As an auto executive puts it, “Not only are they supremely disciplined but the Japanese stick to one function and keep pushing hard. Indians are temperamentally more restless and welcome more variety at the workplace.”
Japan’s image as an ideal place for work, he adds, may have just “taken a bit of a beating” following the dramatic arrest of Carlos Ghosn, the former CEO of Renault-Nissan, in November 2018. Whether he was guilty or not of financial impropriety, as alleged by Nissan, is best left to the courts to decide but people who spoke to this writer at that point in time had indicated that “no foreigner would now even think of taking up a top assignment in Japan.'
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Challenging Task
More recently, Ashwani Gupta had stepped down as COO of Nissan, which again set tongues wagging on what could have been the probable cause for his decision. A whole lot of theories have been doing the rounds but the underlying message is that the country is a challenge for an international expat even while it is an open society with tremendous levels of discipline and honesty.
Suzuki clearly wants to send the right message to its international community and the special focus on Indians is a clear indication of its interest and priority for this market. Its global tie-up with Toyota will also have its own dynamics panning out in India especially when the two are now stepping on the gas in joint product development.
This also means that the Toyota Kirloskar Motor and Maruti Suzuki teams in India will need to work more closely together which, by itself, could pose its own set of challenges in terms of putting egos aside and getting on with the task on hand. It’s never the easiest of tasks, quips an HR executive.