A major Japanese company has introduced a program that lets employees take on a second job within the company after regular hours and earn extra income.
Off the Clock, On to Another Team — Up to 100,000 Yen a Month
Konica Minolta, a Japanese electronics and office equipment maker, formally launched an internal side-job program called the "Skill Share" system last month, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) reported on the 24th.
The system works much like an internal job market. When a department that needs specialized workers posts the job details, required skills and work period on an in-house system, interested employees apply after obtaining approval from the head of their own department.
Those who pass the document screening and interview take on work for another department once their existing duties are done. Alongside open recruitment, the company also directly names specific employees based on their skills.
The side jobs center on tasks requiring specialized knowledge or experience, such as information technology (IT) and business planning. Assignments run for up to three months, with a maximum of 20 working hours per month. To avoid affecting their existing duties, employees may work only after their regular hours end.
Participating employees can earn up to 100,000 yen (about 880,000 won) a month on top of their existing salary. Assuming they work the full 20 hours a month, that amounts to as much as 5,000 yen (about 44,000 won) per hour. About 3,000 people are eligible, including non-managerial staff and senior employees rehired after retirement, and the company does not plan to factor participation in the internal side jobs into personnel evaluations.
Instead of Hiring Outside, Finding the "Hidden Experts" Within
A shortage of specialized workers drove Konica Minolta to introduce the internal side jobs. As business restructuring and digital transformation (DX) advanced, the number of tasks requiring specialized expertise for short periods grew, but it was not easy to secure new outside workers each time.
Previously, when short of staff temporarily, the company used dispatched workers or outsourced tasks to outside firms. The company reasons that if it has employees with the needed skills in-house, it can use them to cut outsourcing costs and reduce separate procedures such as confidentiality agreements.
The Japanese government has also revised its rules to expand side jobs and second jobs. In 2018, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare drew up guidelines on promoting side jobs and second jobs and revised its model work rules to set out a direction that permits them in principle.
The aim is to let workers gain skills and career experience by trying other work without leaving their company, while helping companies secure employee autonomy and new knowledge. It allows for restrictions, however, when problems such as long working hours, interference with the main job, leaks of corporate secrets or conflicts of interest arise.
For employees, it becomes a chance to experience a new career path. In particular, there was said to be demand among younger employees to broaden their expertise by experiencing work in other fields rather than staying only in their current department.
Pilot Matched 24 Cases, With a Goal of 70 to 80
Demand was also confirmed in a trial run conducted before the formal launch. In two pilot rounds, 33 internal job postings were made, centered on DX and software development, and 24 of them were matched with actual employees.
The company assessed that "both the departments that assigned the work and the participating employees were highly satisfied, and the quality of the work stayed at the expected level." It explained that it had confirmed unexpected demand, such as short-term tasks requiring only about five hours a month, and that the program also had the effect of cutting outsourcing costs.
Konica Minolta plans to increase the number of completed internal side jobs to 70 to 80 going forward.
Such moves also dovetail with the deepening shortage of specialized workers at Japanese companies. In a survey of 500 general managers and higher at large firms conducted this January by the staffing firm Persol Career, more than 60% said they had given up on or delayed a business project in the past year because they could not find specialized workers.
Competition to secure workers in the AI and DX fields, in particular, is expected to intensify further. Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry projects a shortage of about 3.4 million workers needed to operate artificial intelligence (AI), robots and the like around 2040. Konica Minolta's "after-hours in-house side jobs" are, in effect, a talent strategy aimed at drawing out the skills and experience hidden within the company before looking for people outside.
