JAPAN'S WORKPLACES
Concept
The mission, made physical
“Job Seeker First” is the principle, and the office makes it hard to forget. A huge mural of We help people get jobs., hand-painted by four artists, hangs over the central stage, as it does in Indeed offices around the world.
The design concept is modern Japanese: the global real-estate team and local staff agreed the brief, and a foreign designer educated in Japan interpreted tatami, the four seasons and Zen in a way a Japanese designer might not. In Tokyo, sales and engineering are deliberately kept apart — sales in Azabu-Juban and Roppongi, product in Ebisu and Tamachi.
01 · Reception
Tatami, and an orange chair
The entrance is small for such a large office: green and black tatami and private meeting rooms to one side. Meeting rooms are named by season — the “summer” team’s rooms are named after planets — and every one has an orange Job Seeker Chair. It stays empty. In any meeting, a job seeker is assumed to be sitting in it; when in doubt, choose what helps them. The idea came from Indeed in the US, where the chair job seekers used happened to be orange.
02 · Workspace
Four seasons, no president’s office
The work floor wraps a central space in a U, split into four zones each painted with a season — sun for summer, snow-capped Fuji for winter. Desks are fixed but more widely spaced than in most Japanese offices and all height-adjustable; the representative director sits at one of them, because there is no president’s office. Phone rooms screened in washi paper handle calls, and an IT help desk is on the floor.
03 · Meeting rooms
A soundproof training room
The glass Training Room seats large seminars and becomes fully soundproof when closed; smaller rooms and standing tables are scattered across the floor.
04 · Cafeteria & events
A stage for 500, a Zen space and a gong
Under the mission mural, a barrier-free stage and floor hold about 500 people: lunch every day, a sales-wide morning meeting on Tuesdays, onboarding events on Fridays. The Zen space mixes real and artificial plants for meetings, a change of scene or TV shoots. Kitchens offer free drinks, snacks and fruit, catered breakfasts and lunches change daily, Friday evenings bring a happy hour, and a big gong is struck, with a theme song, whenever a target is hit.
05 · Welfare
Games, showers and a nursery
A game room with manga and consoles, table tennis, showers for staff back from sales calls, a nursing room, a cloakroom, and access to the Recruit Group’s workplace nursery at Tokyo Station.
06 · How they work
YOU Day and Open PTO
Five core values — Job Seeker First, Pay for Performance, Data Driven, Innovation, Inclusion and Belonging — frame the rules. Hybrid work comes with equipment and a monthly home-office allowance. Besides annual leave there is a company-wide YOU Day off every month, Open PTO for more time off with a manager’s approval, and Caregiver Leave of 26 weeks for primary carers and 6 for supporting carers at full base pay. Employee resource groups — Women@Indeed, iPride, Access Indeed, Parents & Caregivers and more — and a monthly global leadership update keep the company transparent.
