How the Strategic Tools Assist You Toward Productivity, Profits and Personal Success

With over 30 years consulting with multinational firms in Japan, TMT has created “Strategic Tools” to help your firm toward productivity, profits and personal success. The first and foremost important needs for any business to succeed is the necessary knowledge/know how, and the right human resources/staff. Our strategic tools encompass superior Executive Search results, Compensation and Benefits, Rules of Employment/ROE/Work Rules adjustments, effective Human Resources/HR strategies, Staff Downsizing Reductions, Salary Reductions/adjustments and Outplacement, and Union Relations/management in Japan.

Compensation and Benefits – Design and Change in JapanThe reward systems in place at many multinationals in Japan are out of date. They fail to take the best of Japanese practice and are often based on myths, false assumptions and the wrong assumptions and the wrong adaptations of local practice.With such a mind-set and paying practices even Japanese companies could not survive. Furthermore, what works in a large Japanese model employer may not work in your firm. It is unlikely you can break into the market unless you make some timely changes in your compensation of Japanese employees.
Rules of Employment/ROE/Work Rules – Set-ups and Adjustments in Japan
A quick reading of your Rules of Employment/ROE/Work Rules, Salary Regulations and Retirement Regulations may tell us why you don’t have people hustling, are not able to pay for performance, have unduly high fixed costs, face awesome liabilities, have the wrong people clinging on for the wrong reasons, and lose some of your best human resources. If set-up right or changed these Rules of Employment/Work Rules can be your most strategic tool to business success.
Problem Employee Solutions – Terminating Staff and Firing Employees in JapanIt is true that if you are dealing with a litigious employee, it is virtually impossible to successfully terminate staff or fire employees in Japan (without having to reach deep into your pockets and wipe egg off your face).We share with you our simple, yet powerful strategic tools which will give you complete control over hiring and firing employees at little extra cost and without terminating staff and fighting ongoing legal battles.
Staff Downsizing Reductions, Outplacement and Salary Reduction, Cutting Payroll Costs and related HR Cost Saving Programs in JapanIt may appear easy enough to reduce staff if you are willing to spend enough money on the buy-out! Attorneys will tell you that reducing salaries in Japan are legally impossible unless the employee agrees. There are grains of truth in so much that we hear. Gray zones abound, and difficult challenges, and great success with staff reductions are possible. However, if not strategically handled you will lose some of your indispensable, best performers, yet will never squeeze out the worst performers even with a big extra premium payment. Big payouts to poor performers are the wrong reward for the wrong behavior. It gives a dangerous and / or demotivating message to those who remain.We will show you how to target right, and design the program and formula to get the most for your money. It is even more important, to at the same time, check-list your practices and change Rules of Employment/ROE/Work Rules or cut unduly high benefits and personnel related costs. This can include cutting direct salary and payroll costs of at least some who are unfairly paid compared with their productivity.
Union and Staff Relations / Union Problems / Attitudes in JapanThe wrong collective action and attitudes can prevail even without a formal union structure. By managing fairly (bargaining in good faith) but not meeting union demands, making management counter-demands, and through proper employee communication, the company can win back the power that only management can give a union in the first place. Unions are not very common in most foreign capitalized firms in Japan. Where they do exist, it is often just a handful of terminally troublesome people. Although a union is legally supposed to comprise at least two members, even single individuals have been able to seek relief from the Labor Relations Commission in Japan. TMT knows unions and they know TMT. Through ‘mutual respect’, tactics and new approaches we get problems quickly solved.Remember, it is the company that provides jobs, pays salaries and retirement benefits and manages a business, not the union. Our perspective, guidance and strategic planning maintains the union free environment and modifies union / corporate culture, so you can get on with the job of decisively managing your firm as required. If desired, TMT primarily handles union negotiations which will inevitably fizzle away.

TMT has developed an ABCD – All employee Behavioral Communication Dynamic, as described in detail in our 2004 book Japan True or False and in Gaijin Boss’s Power Pill (2011). If this is employed with a good client, TMT is in a better position to deliver the results that clients want and need.