It’s a fact that Japan needs more international developers. That doesn’t mean integrating those developers into Japanese companies, as well as Japanese society, is a simple process. But what are the most common challenges encountered by these companies with multinational teams?
To find out, TokyoDev interviewed a number of Japanese companies with international employees. In addition to discussing the benefits of hiring overseas, we also wanted to learn more about what challenges they had faced, and how they had overcome them.
The companies interviewed included:
- Autify, which provides an AI-based software test automation platform
- Beatrust, which has created a search platform that automatically structures profile information
- Cybozu, Japan’s leading groupware provider
- DeepX, which automates heavy equipment machinery
- Givery, which scouts, hires, and trains world-class engineers
- Shippio, which digitalizes international trading and is Japan’s first digital forwarding company
- Yaraku, which offers web-based translation management
According to those companies, the issues they experienced fell into two categories: addressing the language barrier, and helping new hires come to Japan.
The language barrier
Language issues are by far the most universal problem faced by Japanese companies with multinational teams. As a result, all of the companies we spoke to have evolved their own unique solutions.
AI translation
To help improve English-Japanese communication, Yaraku has turned to AI and its own translation tool, YarakuZen. With these they’ve reduced comprehension issues down to verbal communication alone. Since their engineering teams primarily communicate via text anyway, this has solved the majority of their language barrier issue, and engineers feel that they can now work smoothly together.
Calling on bilinguals
While DeepX employs engineers from over 20 countries, English is the common language between them. Documentation is written in English, and even Japanese departments still write minutes in English so colleagues can check them later. Likewise, explanations of company-wide meetings are delivered in both Japanese and English.
Still, a communication gap exists. To overcome it, DeepX assigns Japanese project managers who can also speak English well. English skills weren’t previously a requirement, but once English became the official language of the engineering team, bilingualism was an essential part of the role. These project managers are responsible for taking requests from clients and communicating them accurately to the English-only engineers.
In addition, DeepX is producing more bilingual employees by offering online training in both Japanese and English. The online lessons have proven particularly popular with international employees who have just arrived in Japan.
Beatrust has pursued a similar policy of encouraging employees to learn and speak both languages. Dr. Andreas Dippon, the Vice President of Engineering at Beatrust, feels that bilingual colleagues are absolutely necessary to business.
I think the biggest mistake you can make is just hiring foreigners who speak only English and assuming all the communication inside engineering is just English and that’s fine. You need to understand that business communication with [those] engineers will be immensely difficult . . . You need some almost bilingual people in between the business side and the engineering side to make it work.
Similar to DeepX, Beatrust offers its employees a stipend for language learning. “So nowadays, it’s almost like 80 percent of both sides can speak English and Japanese to some extent, and then there are like two or three people on each side who cannot speak the other language,” Dippon said. “So we have like two or three engineers who cannot speak Japanese at all, and we have two or three business members who cannot speak English at all.”
But in the engineering team itself “is 100 percent English. And the business team is almost 100 percent Japanese.”
“ Of course the leaders try to bridge the gap,” Dippon explained. “So I’m now joining the business meetings that are in Japanese and trying to follow up on that and then share the information with the engineering team, and [it’s] also the same for the business lead, who is joining some engineering meetings and trying to update the business team on what’s happening inside engineering.”
“Mixed language”
Shippio, on the other hand, encountered negative results when they leaned too hard on their bilingual employees. Initially they asked bilinguals to provide simultaneous interpretation at meetings, but quickly decided that the burden on them was too great and not sustainable in the long term.
Instead, Shippio has adopted a policy of “mixed language,” or combining Japanese and English together. The goal of mixed language is simple: to “understand each other.” Many employees who speak one language also know a bit of the other, and Shippio has found that by fostering a culture of flexible communication, employees can overcome the language barrier themselves.
Meeting more often
Another method these companies use is creating structured meeting schedules designed to improve cross-team communication.
Givery teams hold what they call “win sessions” and “sync-up meetings” once or twice a month, to ensure thorough information-sharing within and between departments. These two types of meetings have different goals:
- A “win session” reviews business or project successes, with the aim of analyzing and then repeating that success in future.
- A “sync-up meeting” helps teams coordinate project deadlines. They report on their progress, discuss any obstacles that have arisen, and plan future tasks.
In these meetings employees often speak Japanese, but the meetings are translated into English, and sometimes supplemented with additional English messages and explanations. By building these sort of regular, focused meetings into the company’s schedule, Givery aims to overcome language difficulties with extra personal contact.
Beatrust takes a similarly structured, if somewhat more casual, approach. They tend to schedule most meetings on Friday, when engineers are likely to come to the office. However, in addition to the regular meetings, they also hold the “no meeting hour” for everyone, including the business team.
“One of the reasons is to just let people talk to each other,” Dippon explained. “Let the engineers talk to business people and to each other.”
This kind of interaction, we don’t really care if it’s personal stuff or work stuff that they talk about. Just to be there, talking to each other, and getting this feeling of a team [is what’s important]. . . . This is hugely beneficial, I think.
Building Bonds
Beatrust also believes in building team relationships through regular off-site events. “Last time we went to Takaosan, the mountain area,” said Dippon. “It was nice, we did udon-making. . . . This was kind of a workshop for QRs, and this was really fun, because even the Japanese people had never done it before by themselves. So it was a really great experience. After we did that, we had a half-day workshop about team culture, company culture, our next goals, and so on.”
Dippon in particular appreciates any chance to learn more about his fellow employees.
Like, ‘Why did you leave your country? Why did you come to Japan? What are the problems in your country? What’s good in your country?’ You hear a lot of very different stories.
DeepX also hopes to deepen the bonds between employees with different cultures and backgrounds via family parties, barbecues, and other fun, relaxing events. This policy intensified after the COVID-19 pandemic, during which Japan’s borders were closed and international engineers weren’t able to immigrate. When the borders opened and those engineers finally did arrive, DeepX organized in-house get-togethers every two weeks, to fortify the newcomers’ relationships with other members of the company.
Sponsoring visas
Not every company that hires international developers actually brings them to Japan—-quite a few prefer to hire foreign employees who are already in-country. However, for those willing to sponsor new work visas, there is universal consensus on how best to do it: hire a professional.
Cybozu has gone to the extent of bringing those professionals in-house. The first international member they hired was an engineer living in the United States. Though he wanted to work in Japan, at that time they didn’t have any experience in acquiring a work visa or relocating an employee, so they asked him to work for their US subsidiary instead.
But as they continued hiring internationally, Cybozu realized that quite a few engineers were interested in physically relocating to Japan. To facilitate this, the company set up a new support system for their multinational team, for the purpose of providing their employees with work visas.
Other companies prefer to outsource the visa process. DeepX, for example, has hired a certified administrative scrivener corporation to handle visa applications on behalf of the company. Autify also goes to a “dedicated, specialized” lawyer for immigration procedures.
Thomas Santonja, VP of Engineering at Autify, feels that sponsoring visas is a necessary cost of business and that the advantages far outweigh the price.
We used to have fully remote, long-term employees outside of Japan, but we stopped after we noticed that there is a lot of value in being able to meet in person and join in increased collaboration, especially with Japanese-speaking employees that are less inclined to make an effort when they don’t know the people individually.
“It’s kind of become a requirement, in the last two years,” he concluded, “to at least be capable of being physically here.”
However, Autify does prevent unnecessary expenses by having a new employee work remotely from their home country for a one month trial period before starting the visa process in earnest. So far, the only serious issues they encountered were with an employee based in Egypt; the visa process became so complicated, Autify eventually had to give up. But Autify also employs engineers from France, the Philippines, and Canada, among other countries, and has successfully brought their workers over many times.
Helping employees adjust
Sponsoring a visa is only the beginning of bringing an employee to Japan. The next step is providing special support for international employees, although this can look quite different from company to company.
DeepX points out that just working at a new company is difficult enough; also beginning a new life in a new country, particularly when one doesn’t speak the language, can be incredibly challenging. That’s why DeepX not only covers the cost of international flights, but also implemented other support systems for new arrivals.
Dippon at Beatrust believes that international employees need ongoing support, not just at the point of entry, and that it’s best to have at least one person in-house who is prepared to assist them.
I think that one trap many companies run into is that they know all about Japanese laws and taxes and so on, and everybody grew up with that, so they are all familiar. But suddenly you have foreigners who have basically no idea about the systems, and they need a lot of support, because it can be quite different.
Santonja at Autify, by contrast, has had a different experience helping employees get settled. “I am extremely tempted to say that I don’t have any challenges. I would be extremely hard pressed to tell you anything that could be remotely considered difficult or, you know, require some organization or even extra work or thinking.”
Most people we hire look for us, right? So they are looking for an opportunity to move to Japan and be supported with a visa, which is again a very rare occurrence. They tend to be extremely motivated to live and make it work here. So I don’t think that integration in Japan is such a challenge.
Conclusion
To companies unfamiliar with the process, the barriers to hiring internationally may seem high. However, there are typically only two major challenges when integrating developers from other countries. The first, language issues, has a variety of solutions ranging from the technical to the cultural. The second, attaining the correct work visa, is best handled by trained professionals, whether in-house or through contractors.
Neither of these difficulties is insurmountable, particularly with expert assistance. In addition, Givery in particular has stressed that it’s not necessary to figure out all the details in advance of hiring: in fact, it can benefit a company to introduce international workers early on, before its own internal policies are overly fixed.
This information should also benefit international developers hoping to work in Japan. Since this article reflects the top concerns of Japanese companies, developers can work to proactively relieve those worries. Learning even basic Japanese helps reduce the language barrier, while becoming preemptively familiar with Japanese society reassures employers that you’re capable of taking care of yourself here.
If you’d like to learn more about the benefits these companies enjoy from hiring international developers, see part one of this article series here.
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