Survey on companies with good working conditions

Nikkei Sangyo Shimbun conducted a survey on the personnel and labor affairs systems of large corporations. At the same time, it conducted a survey on working conditions that businesspeople placed importance on, to identify an image of a company in which employees find it easy to work.
The survey targeted 390 companies of which 160 companies sent in valid responses.

The businesspeople survey targeted 2,000 subjects, and was carried out over the Internet. Responses were sent in by 1,055 people comprising 541 men and 514 women.

In the survey on corporations, NEC was given top ranking. The company is actively implementing personnel system reforms and provides extensive mental health care programs. It was ranked high in the "workplace environment and health" category. NEC also had 22 female executives ranked departmental director or higher, the largest number among all surveyed companies.

Matsushita Electric Industrial, rated second overall, and Sanyo Electric, rated third, were highly evaluated for their personnel and vacation systems. Regarding their leave of absence systems, 94% of Sanyo's employees had taken paid vacations which was the fifth highest level, although lower than the top-rated Honda where 100% of their employees took paid days-off. A total of 312 Matsushita Electric employees took maternity leave over the course of the year, which was the second highest among all the companies.

In the awareness survey on "companies in which employees find it easy to work" targeting businesspeople, women tended to demand freedom in training/educational programs and working hours, while men tended to be strongly interested in personnel systems. By age, the younger the worker, the more emphasis was placed on vacations.

An age-specific difference was seen in the ease of taking paid vacations. While 52.2% and 53.0% of the respondents in their 20s and 30s, respectively, said that they "emphasised it very strongly," the percentage dropped to 31.9% among the respondents in their 50s. By gender, 44.4% of men and 53.9% of women said that they "emphasised it the most strongly."

The top five items which businesspeople emphasised strongly as factors constituting favourable working conditions were as follows:
1. Ease of taking paid vacations
2. Degree of freedom in working hours
3. PC usage environment
4. A system that allows employees to choose the place of work
5. A system that allows employees to choose the type of job

Companies ranked fourth to seventh easiest to work in were:
4. Tokyo Electric Power
5. Ricoh
6. Denso
7. Toyota Motor

(Nikkei Sangyo Shimbun, July)