49% Of Japanese Companies Have An “Old Man Who Does Nothing” According To A Survey

People don’t want their weakest link to become a part of a chain.This is why people often avoid joining new companies.

Some people, however, find the sweet spot where they can do enough not to get fired. This is often to the dismay of their more hardworking colleagues.

To learn more about this phenomenon, consulting company, Shikigaku interviewed 300 employees at over 300 companies and asked them if they knew of any “old guys who don’t work.”

They use the Japanese term ojisan, which implies an age gap between the person speaking and the speaker. Shikigaku surveyed people of age 20 to 39, a wide range that could place “old guys” anywhere above 40’s.

So when these young employees were asked if there was anyone “older who always sat around doing nothing,” about half of them said that there was.

These positive responses led to the following question: What were they doing?

The majority of the answers fall into three options. The most popular said that these do-nothing employees took too many smoking breaks. The second most voted answer says they were just staring into the space. And the third-most voted answers reveal that they spent their time idle chatting. Surprisingly, the most expected response of them just browsing the internet all day came only fourth.

Shikigaku asked respondents their thoughts to help them understand why the older men have chosen to be lazy. The most common theory among respondents (45%) stated that these men simply had no motivation or desire to work.

Other reasons included complaints that companies did not provide enough incentives or a stick to encourage these men to work harder. They recommended that the company should review employees more often and that there are more transparent policies about what grounds for dismissal.

These people are a threat to the workplace, according to 90% of respondents. A whopping 59% said that having these people around the workplace lowers their morale, and 49% of them claim that their workload increases a lot due to these people. 35.3% claim that they were just a burden to the office and a waste of salaries.