[Real Beat] Working Moms and Working Dads Do Not Expect Special Privileges

Japanese Major Insurer Provides Allowances to Colleagues on Parental Leave
Eliminates Favoritism and Discrimination Among Employees, Gaining Strong Support

Editor's Note[Jjinbit] is a shortened form of 'Jung Hyunjin's Business Trend' and 'Real Business Trend,' a segment that showcases trends in changes in work.

From the very beginning of the new year 2024, various ideas to address the low birthrate issue have been pouring in. Articles covering diverse work-family balance policies, such as shortened working hours during childcare periods, often feature comments like these: "The colleague next to me is dying" and "Even if there are policies, I can't use them because of the pressure." In the situation where every Korean office worker is struggling with heavy workloads, complaints continue that working moms and working dads receive special benefits, or "privileges," due to the low birthrate issue, while employees without children suffer disadvantages.

In Japan, where so-called "pressure issues" also prevent active use of childcare-related policies, a childcare-related corporate policy that gained significant attention last year is the "Childcare Leave Workplace Support Allowance (Congratulatory Money)" introduced by the large Japanese insurance company Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance in July last year. This system provides a one-time payment of up to 100,000 yen (about 910,000 KRW) to team members when an employee goes on childcare leave. The unique idea of compensating the surrounding colleagues rather than the person taking care of the child caught everyone's attention.

This policy, which was warmly received by the public, did not appear overnight. According to the behind-the-scenes story revealed by Takehiro Maruyama, a senior official in the HR department who proposed the system to the company in an interview with the Japanese edition of the Huffington Post in October last year, the review of the policy began in December 2022 under the direction of the CEO, who was interested in the low birthrate issue. At that time, the CEO initially proposed a method of giving 1 million yen for the birth of one child, 2 million yen for two children, and 3 million yen for three children, and the HR department even considered raising the support payment for the third child from 3 million yen to 5 million yen.

However, within the HR department, there was already an opinion that sufficient policies for working moms and working dads were in place within the company. Concerns were raised that if more benefits were concentrated on them, employees without children might become dissatisfied, leading to division within the workplace. Ultimately, they sought a way to prevent division while allowing existing policies to be used without pressure, deciding to provide benefits to colleagues who take over work during childcare leave, resulting in a mutually satisfying solution.

This system underwent another change. Initially, the company planned to differentiate the payment amount by gender: up to 100,000 yen for colleagues of female employees taking childcare leave and up to 30,000 yen for those of male employees. This was based on the judgment that since the average childcare leave period is 17 months for women and 37 days for men, a longer period would mean the employee would feel more pressure from colleagues. However, this raised concerns about gender disparity, and eventually, the payment amount was decided based on the length of the childcare leave rather than gender.

The reason Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance's support allowance system attracted great attention is that it expanded the focus of work-family balance measures beyond the usual framework of employees with children and women to include colleagues and men. Through this, it created the perception that differences among employees do not equate to privileges or discrimination. It addressed the root cause of the "pressure" that prevented the use of good policies. We hope such a shift in awareness will also occur domestically.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.