Japanese boardrooms learn to love English

January 29, 2014 5:10 am

Japanese boardrooms learn to love English

By Jennifer Thompson in Tokyo

English, the lingua franca of boardrooms and even, in some cases, factory floors from Paris to Nairobi, remains a distinctly foreign tongue for much of Japanese business.

Indeed, the workforce of the world’s third-largest economy lags behind China, South Korea and even Iran when it comes to English language skills according to GlobalEnglish, an English communication software group owned by Financial Times parent company Pearson.

This is despite the fact that many of the country’s corporate titans, such as carmakers Toyota Motor,Nissan Motor

and Honda, have just a fraction of their business in Japan – and a fraction that is shrinking.

The same applies to sectors such as consumer electronics and heavy industry, while more domestic businesses, such as drugmakers and brewers, are desperately seeking overseas acquisitions for growth.

Hence the growing embrace of English – a language schoolchildren usually spend at least six years learning – by Japanese companies including Bridgestone, Takeda Pharmaceutical, Fast Retailing and Rakuten.

Tyremaker Bridgestone announced in October thatEnglish

would become an official company language, while Takeda, Japan’s largest drugmaker, launched an English language learning service on the company intranet last year and holds board meetings in English, albeit just for the two non-fluent Japanese speakers.

While Takeda disputes any link between its efforts and the recent appointment of Christophe Weber, incoming chief operating officer who joins a tiny band of foreigners leading Japanese companies, it is likely to ease his transition.

International expansion was also the reason Fast Retailing made English the official operating language a year ago. Its Uniqlo fashion stores are proliferating throughout Asia as well as in Europe, the US and Australia, and roughly a third of its sales come from overseas.

While those working in the retailer’s Japanese stores are exempt, executives seeking promotion must score highly in the TOEIC exam, which measures English language skills. “It continues to be the common language across the region,” says Fast Retailing.

Rakuten, Japan’s biggest ecommerce group and the most high-profile advocate for the nascent movement, requires all employees to communicate with one another in English, apart from casual conversation. Low TOEIC scores jeopardise promotion opportunities.

Having made numerous acquisitions in the past five years as far afield as Canada, the UK, France, Brazil and Singapore, the company says that having a common tongue helps “share our view of the strategy”.

Yet many are sceptical that these efforts will bear fruit, or that they are even working.

Some employees question the wisdom of forcing native Japanese speakers to address each other in a language that they find difficult and suggest that while companies are keen to give the impression that they are embracing it, behind closed doors the reality is rather different.

“[Speaking English] does get trotted out a lot,” says one British employee who has xdd worked for a Japanese multinational for a decade. “But in terms of real productivity, it isn’t practical.”

An official at Fast Retailing also hints that not all senior staff have been so keen, noting that some who joined the company when it was concentrating primarily on the Japanese market have since been assigned to “domestically focused” roles as the company reorganises and looks increasingly abroad.