In Japan, embarrassed employees pay agencies to quit for them

Tokyo, Japan – Several years ago, when Toshiyuki Niino wanted to quit a job he was unhappy about, he struggled to muster up the courage to confront his boss.

Having worked in several other Japanese workplaces, Niino knew his decision would be met with resistance.

“If you try to stop, they make you feel guilty,” Niino, who lives in Kamakura, a coastal town about 40 miles south of Tokyo, told Al Jazeera.

“They’re trying to make you feel ashamed and guilty that you quit your job in less than three years, and I’ve had a really hard time.”

Niino’s experience gave him and childhood friend Yuichiro Okazaki an idea: What if you could avoid the ordeal of quitting your job by having someone else do it for you?

That’s how Exit started, a startup that deals with the tedious work of filing your notice on behalf of Japanese employees who are too embarrassed or embarrassed to do it themselves.

For a fee of 20,000 yen ($144), Exit will contact the client’s employer to inform them of their decision to quit so that the employee can avoid terrifying confrontations with his superiors.

Since its launch in 2017, Exit’s business model has been adopted by about two dozen other companies, creating a niche industry of redundancy outsourcing in Japan.

Niino said most of his clients are men in their 20s and his company receives about 10,000 inquiries annually, though not all people who reach out end up using the service.

“The two main reasons I see are that they’re afraid of their boss so they can’t say they want to quit, and also the guilt they have for wanting to quit,” he said.

Niino believes the service’s popularity may have something to do with aspects of Japanese culture that discourage disharmony and promote the idea that success requires a long-term commitment.

“It seems if you quit or don’t finish it, it’s a sin,” he said. “It’s like you made a big mistake.”

Japan, where lifelong employment was the norm for most of the 20th century, has long been known for a punitive work culture that encourages both long hours and long-term employment.

Although on a downward trend, the share of workers working more than 60 hours per week – about 6 percent – ​​is among the highest in the OECD.

“Karoshi”, a term coined in the 1970s to describe death from overwork, is officially recognized as the cause of hundreds of deaths from cardiovascular disease and suicide each year.

While Japan’s traditional system of lifetime employment has weakened in recent decades, Japanese workers still change companies less often and rely more on seniority-based pay compared to their counterparts in other countries.

In 2019, the average length of service at a Japanese company was 12.4 years, compared to the OECD average of 10.1 years. Japan also had the third highest wage premium for at least 20 years of continuous work at the same company, after Turkey and South Korea, according to a 2018 OECD study.

While Exit has responded to a demand in Japan that was previously unmet, not everyone is impressed with the industry it spawned.

Koji Takahashi, a manager at an engineering firm in Tokyo, was so surprised when he received a call from an agency telling him that a junior employee had quit after a few days’ notice that he visited the employee’s parents to confirm the news .

“I gave the parents my business card, introduced myself as the senior manager of the company whose son had just joined the company, and explained the situation,” Takahashi told Al Jazeera.

“I told them I would accept the resignation as he wished, but I would like him to contact me first to confirm his safety.”

Takahashi said the employee’s decision to use an outsourcing firm for layoffs had negatively affected his impression of his character.

“I thought that if someone can’t retire without using this kind of service, it’s his own loss and he’s an unhappy personality who sees work as nothing more than a means to get money.”

Niino said his company received a frosty reception from some employers, but others were grateful to get honest feedback about conditions in their workplace.

“They usually don’t say the real reason why they wanted to quit, like they didn’t like the boss,” he said.

“They usually give a lame excuse, like they have to leave to take care of the family. But through our service, the person who quits their job gives their honest opinion as to why they want to quit.”

Niino acknowledges that the ideal would be for Japanese people to feel more comfortable being their authentic selves, which he says is difficult in a “closed society” where harmony is paramount.

But until that happens, he says companies like his provide a valuable social service.

“Some clients have said they had suicidal thoughts about working for their company, but after getting help from us, they stopped thinking about it,” said Niino. “I have received a lot of appreciation.”

“Our world is not so easy to fix or change,” he added. “We’ve been running this business for six years and the number of customers is increasing, so I don’t think anything has changed. I don’t think it will change in the next 100 years.”

Shiori Suzuki contributed to this article