TOKYO—Japanese advertising giant Dentsu Inc. said it would switch off all office lights at 10 p.m. and order employees to take vacations regularly, responding to an employee suicide that triggered a government criminal probe.
The steps were part of an eight-point plan Dentsu disclosed Thursday to improve its work environment and came amid a broader discussion in Japan about curbing the extreme work ethic that has long permeated many corporate offices.
On...
TOKYO—Japanese advertising giant Dentsu Inc. said it would switch off all office lights at 10 p.m. and order employees to take vacations regularly, responding to an employee suicide that triggered a government criminal probe.
The steps were part of an eight-point plan Dentsu disclosed Thursday to improve its work environment and came amid a broader discussion in Japan about curbing the extreme work ethic that has long permeated many corporate offices.
On Christmas Day in 2015, a 24-year-old woman working for Dentsu jumped to her death from a company dormitory after logging more than 100 hours of overtime in the month leading up to her death. The suicide was recognized by labor officials as a case of karoshi—a Japanese term for death by overwork—and led inspectors to search Dentsu’s offices in October to check whether illegal labor practices were prevalent.
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The criminal probe continues and no charges have been filed.
Dentsu said the steps announced Thursday would “redefine the corporate culture” to ensure better conditions for employees.
In recent weeks, it has lowered maximum overtime hours and said it would remove from company materials 10 principles encouraging hard work devised by a former president, Hideo Yoshida. These principles, written in 1951 and previously featured in notebooks issued to employees, include one that tells employees never to give up on a task. “Don’t let go, even if you are killed,” it said.
In Thursday’s announcement, Dentsu added more measures and said it would maintain a policy that it had already introduced on an ad-hoc basis of switching off all office lights between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., forcing employees to leave during those hours.
It said it would prohibit people from working overtime at home and require all employees to take at least five days off every half-year.
Dentsu’s headquarters in Tokyo.
Photo: Reuters
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe
That often runs counter to a corporate culture that stresses long hours and absolute devotion to the company.
Nearly 23% of Japanese corporations reported some employees were working more than 80 hours of overtime a month, according to a government white paper on karoshi released in October. It said that of the roughly 24,000 suicides reported in Japan last year, 2,159 could be linked to workplace issues.
“Turning off office lights isn’t a fundamental solution to the problem.”
Labor experts say overwork is entrenched in many companies and Dentsu isn’t a special case. Toshihiro Matsumoto,
“Turning off office lights isn’t a fundamental solution to the problem,” he said.
It isn’t the first time Dentsu has been accused of imposing long working hours. A young Dentsu employee took his own life in 1991, and in 2000 the Supreme Court ruled Dentsu was responsible for his death.
Other Japanese companies have faced similar troubles. A suicide-from-overwork of an employee at a chain restaurant operated by Watami Co. in 2008 resulted in the company paying a ¥130 million ($1.1 million) settlement to the family of the deceased.
Write to Alexander Martin at alexander.martin@wsj.com