Working style reform has become an urgent challenge for the Japanese government, with fewer young people wishing to become fast-track career bureaucrats.
The number of applicants for national civil service examinations held in spring and autumn, which offer a route to so-called elite jobs, totaled 17,411 in fiscal 2021 — the lowest figure since fiscal 2012, when the current recruitment format began. The figure represents a plunge of about 60% from the peak level seen in fiscal 1996.
University students are increasingly shunning careers as bureaucrats, which are known to involve tough working environments and include long overtime hours.
When the National Personnel Authority (NPA) asked bureaucrats hired in April 2021 about how to attract competent workers to the civil service, 80% suggested a “reduction of overtime and late-night work.”
National civil servants are not allowed to work more than 360 hours of overtime per year. The annual cap is higher, at 720 hours, for workers handling parliamentary affairs, such as preparing written replies by Cabinet ministers to questions from lawmakers in parliament. In fiscal 2019, 19,540 government employees worked longer than the cap figures.
A survey by the Cabinet Bureau of Personnel Affairs on bureaucrats wishing to leave the government before retirement found that many of them wanted to land “attractive jobs” enabling “self-growth.” The share of personnel who gave this reason was particularly high among those in their 30s and younger, it said.
The survey finding indicates an urgent need for the government to create working environments that personnel find challenging and worthwhile.
To tackle the issue, the bureau has prepared a textbook to improve senior officials’ management capabilities, such as how to deal with their subordinates and allocate tasks to them. It has also launched a training program based on the textbook to change managerial officials’ mindsets, in order to promote government-wide working system reform.
In an online training program launched last November, some 450 new management officials engaged in a case study on coordination between subordinates who are unable to work overtime for the sake of parental responsibilities and superiors who take overtime for granted.
The program also involved a simulation in which officials listened to their subordinates talk about worries and gave them advice. After the training, participants set activity goals at their workplaces and reviewed how many of them had been achieved a month later.
“We hope lessons learned from the training session will be used to facilitate communication in the workplace,” a senior official at the bureau said.
To attract applicants for the national civil service recruitment exam, the NPA has streamed live online seminars since last October in cooperation with Mynavi Corp., an employment website operator, in which young and middle-ranking bureaucrats talk about the attractions of their work.
Unlike past recruiting events, which focused mainly on explanations of the services provided by national civil servants, speakers discuss their honest opinions under a theme chosen for each webinar, such as “Why I decided to work for the government rather than in the private sector” and the state of work-life balance in their workplaces.
The NPA has so far held eight webinars, each viewed by more than 300 people and some as many as over 1,000 — comparable to similar programs conducted by companies popular with young people, an NPA official said. Many questions and comments have been received from viewers, while the number of repeat viewers is increasing.
The webinars are aimed at attracting the attention of students before they begin their job-hunting efforts in earnest. “We hope that honest opinions (about the civil service), including negative ones, will hit the mark with students,” the official said.