Japan firm offers hangover sick leave, time off for news about favourite celebrities

BEIJING (SCMP): A Japanese company has been offering its employees odd types of leave, such as time off for hangovers and the same for news, bad or good, about their favourite celebrities.

The move is designed to attract young people amid shortage of applicants in the job market.

Japan has faced a shrinking workforce in recent years, with the country’s unemployment rate remaining lower than three per cent.

Also, more than 60 per cent of small and medium-sized businesses have reported labour shortages, The Japan Times reported.

Some big companies have decided to raise the salaries of new graduates.

The average monthly salary for new employees in Japanese companies was 237,300 yen (US$1,500) in 2023, according to the country’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. The companies increased their offer to 300,000 and even 400,000 yen.

For smaller companies that could not offer higher salaries, they chose to offer other benefits.

A tech company based in the Western Japanese prefecture of Osaka, TrustRing, offered its employees unique types of leave, such as time off for people suffering from a hangover.

A member of its staff was reported by Kansai Television to have arrived at work at 12pm, even later than the company’s president, despite the normal starting time being 9am.

The member of staff said she applied for the company’s hangover leave because she drank too much the previous evening.

“I can sleep for two to three hours more and come back to work feeling a bit more refreshed, which actually increased my efficiency,” the employee said.

TrustRing also lets its employees apply for “celebrity loss leave”, when their favourite celebrities get married or announce some other news that makes them too sad to work.

One employee applied for time off in 2021 after the musician and actor she liked for over a decade, Gen Hoshino, announced his marriage to Japanese actress Yui Aragaki.

The company’s president, Daigaku Shimada, said the unusual leave benefits aim to increase the firm’s competitiveness, as they could only offer new employees a monthly salary of 222,000 yen (US$1,400) plus overtime pay for an assumed 20 hours of overtime.

The benefits turned out to be effective.

“The company has good performance, and zero employees have left in the past three years,” Shimada said.

The company also set up a drinks bar at work.

The benefits have drawn attention from online observers in China.

“Time is money. If employers cannot raise salaries, offering more days off is a good alternative,” one person said.

“If I work in such a company, I will find myself more favourite celebrities,” joked another.

A supermarket chain in China’s central province of Henan, Pangdonglai, is also well-known for its exceptional employee benefits.

One of them is so-called unhappy leave which was introduced last year.

This allows the employees to apply for up to 10 additional days off if they feel stressed or unhappy at work.

“I want every staff member to enjoy the freedom of not having to come to work if they feel bad,” the brand’s owner Yu Donglai said. - South China Morning Post