(By Olivier van Beneden, Managing Director JCO)
I recently returned from a visit to Japan at the end of April, where I had the opportunity to meet with a wide range of JCO clients – from large corporations to mid-sized and growing companies.
Many of our conversations focused on the evolving challenges and priorities in Japanese HR. Since it’s important to me personally that HR leaders outside Japan also benefit from these insights, I’ve summarized the key trends and takeaways below.
Visiting Japanese HQs in April 2025: HR Challenges, Trends, and Initiatives
- Human Resources Planning and Management:
– Recruiting and HRIS: Companies face major challenges in human resources planning. The focus is increasingly on global talent management and the integration of various HR systems.
– Global Mobility: There are efforts to promote global mobility, but effectively leveraging the experience gained by expatriates during international assignments remains difficult.
– HR Transformation: Many companies are implementing HR transformation projects to harmonize systems and strategies across global units.
- Learning and Development:
– Regional Training Programs: Regions often develop their own training programs to address specific needs. Coordinating and aligning these programs globally remains a challenge.
– E-learning and Language Courses: There is interest in e-learning and language courses to support global HR initiatives and improve intercultural communication.
– Intercultural Training: Companies are investing in intercultural training to promote international collaboration and understanding. The focus is very much on increasing efficiency by eliminating misunderstandings and bottlenecks.
– Corporate Values: Establishing and communicating corporate values is a priority. The main challenge lies in how to communicate those values in a way that resonates across cultures and keeps them alive in daily operations, rather than having them remain abstract or symbolic.
- Organizational Changes:
– Reporting Structure: Significant changes in reporting structures are being implemented to increase efficiency and information flow across all levels.
– Global Leadership: Efforts are being made to increase the number of non-Japanese managers and executives. However, in many companies — despite the fact that their largest markets are now outside Japan and the majority of their global workforce is non-Japanese — the leadership level remains overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, Japanese. This presents a strategic challenge in aligning global perspectives with decision-making authority.
– HR Management Systems: Investments in global HR management systems are underway, but companies are still determining which processes should be unified across regions and which should remain locally managed. This is particularly challenging for Japanese organisations, where distinctive HR practices often do not align easily with global standards.
– Global Talent Management Platforms: The implementation of global talent management platforms is underway, although usage and integration vary greatly across organizations.
During these meetings, I also had the chance to present concrete JCO solutions to address many of these challenges.
We are very grateful that we are allowed to support Japanese organizations on their journey to fully unlock the potential of their international teams — where cultural differences are embraced as a source of innovation, collaboration is seamless across borders, and efficiency, trust, and engagement drive sustainable global success.
