Every April, Japanese workplaces welcome new employees and reshuffle staff. But behind these seasonal changes lies a deeper issue: many organizations operate with no room to absorb maternity leave, parental leave, or illness. That rigidity may be one hidden cause of Japan’s declining birthrate.
With April came a major reshuffling of doctors at my hospital.
From full-time physicians to residents, many new faces arrived, and at our departmental meeting the newcomers introduced themselves.
The meeting is usually held in a hybrid format, and I normally attend online from my desk. But at the beginning of each fiscal year, I make a point of going in person to see the faces of the new members joining our department.
Many new clinical laboratory technologists also joined the laboratory division.
Our organizational structure changed this year, and recruitment was larger than usual.
I imagine the nursing department, administration, and many other sections also experienced their own turnover.
It has been nearly a month now. I wonder whether everyone has settled in.
Leaving aside new hiring, one issue that often causes headaches is how to manage when staff members take maternity leave, parental leave, or sick leave.
Even if staffing cannot be doubled, I often think that if there were a little extra capacity from the start, covering for absent staff would be far easier.
Any organization probably begins with some room to spare. But once its work is recognized and operations become established, demand grows, workloads increase, and staff shortages appear.
Of course, in a shrinking Japan, labor shortages are often discussed as inevitable. But one cause has also been the long delay in properly addressing maternity and parental leave.
Having children is increasingly seen as a burden. Yet many people still want children.
Even those who still wish to have children despite difficult circumstances may find it hard to do so because support systems remain inadequate.
If it is impossible to prepare twice as many workers simply because demand may someday reach full capacity, then perhaps organizations must also learn not to pursue maximum capacity at all times.
From the perspective of the laboratory department, if we tried to meet every request coming from clinical services without limit, collapse would only be a matter of time.
Doctors, after all, can be demanding, and some behave as though medical resources simply fall from the sky.
As a result, more and more tests are ordered, and patients become buried in examinations.
I am not arguing against the tests themselves. But unless requests are kept to what is truly necessary, the laboratory inevitably reaches its limits.
Then when someone takes maternity leave, parental leave, or sick leave, the whole system quickly begins to fail.
Yes, people can be reassigned from elsewhere. But then the department losing those people suffers in turn.
To avoid this, organizations must be able to expand and contract with changing realities.
Why have we failed to build such organizations?
One reason, I believe, is the long dominance of a male-centered way of thinking.
If society had better understood the wishes of women who want to have children and raise them, we might have built a happier society in which people supported one another more naturally.
Flexible organizations with a little room to breathe are the true foundation of a society that can nurture both people and children.
Organizations with a little room to breathe are the true foundation of a society that can nurture both people and children.
・・・
Vocabulary for Learners
- reshuffling = 人員の入れ替え、配置転換
- newcomers = 新しく入った人たち
- hybrid format = 対面とオンライン併用形式
- maternity leave = 産休
- parental leave = 育休
- extra capacity = 余力、余剰能力
- workload = 業務量
- inevitable = 避けられない、必然的な
- reach full capacity = 最大処理能力に達する
- a matter of time = 時間の問題
- reassigned = 配置転換される
- male-centered = 男性中心の
- room to breathe = 余白、ゆとり（比喩表現）
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