Redundancy - Anyone gone through the process in Japan?

[TokyoSurvivor]

Thanks Tkydon

I had not even started to think about that - but great that you raise it.

I'm putting together a timeline plan of everything that will happen. For example

- Last day in the office
- Gardening leave start/finish
- When retirement payment due
- When to approach Hello Work

This will be added to it. Let me know of anything else that springs to mind I should note.

Could even be a useful template for others.

Cheers

[hawkmoon99]

I'll be following this thread because I am going through something very similar. Currently on my "gardening leave".

[Kiro]

Happened to me 4 times in the last 5 companies I worked for in the past 17 years (it wasn’t me, just bad luck, I swear ^^; ) so i know about this subject.

In short, if you’re a full time employee and have done nothing wrong, basically they can’t do much.
With that said, if a company really wants to make you redundant, they can always find a way to make your life miserable. You may choose to not care, but I found out it’s always a good thing to negotiate.

I’ve never officially involved lawyers for negotiation (the company would need to do the same, and it can become ugly, long and costly), and always ended up negotiating with the bucho or HR (except when a Japan office was shut down, didn’t have much room for negotiations).
Usually asking for 3 months garden leave, 1 month per year of service, and 6-12 months of “signing within 3 days”.

So if you’re getting 24 months, it feels like a good deal.
But obviously it all depends of what you want.

What you should to reply in writing is that (maybe too late now though)
- You understand you’re not at fault, you’ve always done good work, and it is solely the company’s business decision
- that the business is not in such a dire state that it warrants you leaving (if that’s the case)
- That your wish is to stay employed (if that’s the case), and that all you want is to keep gambaru for the company, like you’ve always done and can prove
- That you accept to review what they’re sending, but you reserve yourself the right to ask them to withdraw their offer and keep you employed.

Good luck!

[TokyoSurvivor]

After weighing it all up, decided I'll go with it and take the "involuntary retirement" deal. Adding it all up works out at over 2.5 years salary.

With one door closing, another one opens. The many things that need to be taken care of when you leave employment.
Having been in one company for years there are many things I never had to worry about, but are now on the horizon (many of which mentioned previously by other on the this thread) including the following.

- Health Care Plan
- National Insurance
- State Pension
- Company Pension
- Local Taxes
- Unemployment Insurance

And that's before I even start job hunting, which I hear is not picnic!

[goran]

After weighing it all up, decided I'll go with it and take the "involuntary retirement" deal. Adding it all up works out at over 2.5 years salary.

With one door closing, another one opens. The many things that need to be taken care of when you leave employment.
Having been in one company for years there are many things I never had to worry about, but are now on the horizon (many of which mentioned previously by other on the this thread) including the following.

- Health Care Plan
- National Insurance
- State Pension
- Company Pension
- Local Taxes
- Unemployment Insurance

And that's before I even start job hunting, which I hear is not picnic!

Hi TokyoSurvivor,
I am catching up on old posts from this year that I missed and came across this.
Just wanted to ask how you are doing and how did things turn out for you?

[TokyoSurvivor]

Hello Goran

Thanks for asking. Yes I'm still in the game!

Things could have worked out slightly better as I made some choices a bit rash, and could have been more efficient and saved a few quid here and there. But generally things are good.

Having the extra time has enabled me to drill down and sort out things (ongoing) that I've been putting off for years. Important stuff such as pensions, and slightly more trivial stuff such as going through my entire chaotic email accounts of 25 years and cleaning out the crap and filing away what's worth keeping. Now rules send emails where they need to be and I view all unread emails from the accounts in one place.

A.I. has been a game changer, although it does slip up and hallucinate at times. No longer do I fear getting a 10 page document in Japanese and not having a clue what it's about. Scanned and output to a summary which then can be interigated for more.

The last big hurdles for me will be transfering my company pension to an iDeCo (ongoing) and then doing my own Japanese Tax return (probably the biggest one) as this was handled by my company before .

Being a full time employee in a large company shielded me from having to think about all the things that need to be dealt with in Japan. However having to learn them (and people on this forum have helped) brings a kind of peace in iteself.

Anyway, I'm optimistic.