You're listening to Roundtable, I'm Steve Hatherly together with Lai Ming and Ye Hong Lin.
Coming up, the perks of work.
Well health benefits, health insurance, paid holidays, those sound good, but those are pretty standard benefits and they may not attract new talent.
Companies now, as a result, are apparently looking at what's important to potential Gen Z employees and are adjusting their benefits accordingly.
After that, recycling rules vary from town to town, city to city, and in fact country to country.
And some rules in some places are stricter than others.
Fukushima Japan is going to the extreme to make sure that their citizens follow the rules and yes, it is indeed very strict.
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Now let's dive into the world of Gen Z work benefits.
Everyone needs some time away from the office for one reason or another.
The obvious ones would be to take a sick day here and there, maybe a day off to take care of a family member in need or perhaps the use of maternal or paternal leave.
But what about this?
A day off to bond with your puppy.
Or even better, your favorite band is playing tonight and oh my, you just can't miss them.
Well, as ridiculous as that may seem to some, tech firms in India are coming up with creative ways to attract and retain Gen Z staff.
Why is there such a need for this?
Does this represent a shift in workplace benefits?
And will this paint Gen Z in a bad light with potential employers?
What is going on here?
Wow, I feel old. I have a pet.
I have a lovely cat.
How old? Tell us. Seven already.
A black cat, gorgeous, long hair, and I used to wish that I can bring my cat to work because I think I have read news about different companies allowing pet in the office.
Bring your pet to work day.
Yeah, or just bring your pet to work.
Whenever you want. Whenever you want and keep a pet in the office.
That definitely has been my dream.
But later on when I grow older and maybe wiser, I've started to realize that I barely have time for my cat when I am already at home, let alone talking about talking to my cat or being with my cat when I'm in the office.
But definitely this started to be a topic.
There was a survey conducted in India called the India Technology Industry Compensation Benchmarking Survey, 2004.
The survey was conducted across over 200 tech companies nationwide.
So this is not just a small thing or just something only one or two companies are thinking about.
It's true. It's not a small number of companies, but they are all tech companies.
So let's keep that in mind as we discuss.
Of course. And these benefits are aimed at preventing employee burnout and ensuring a sustainable workforce while enhancing overall well -being and productivity.
And the other focus areas are helping employees grow by integrating skills, improving women's representation and offering reward programs that align with the new generation.
But yes, we are talking about live music days.
We're talking about Grandparents Day, Journaling Day and Journaling Day.
Yeah, journaling day and definitely we're talking about to pet to leave or poll -turn -ity to leave.
Yes, I love that term.
By the way, paw -turn -ity, that's a day where you can go.
OK, so wait, let's make sure we understand these clearly.
So paw -turn -ity day is a day to bond with your pet or puppy train your pet or your dog or take them to the vet if need be.
All of those things would be included.
Journaling Day would be, I guess, a day to take off so that you can write down your thoughts and your feelings about various issues going on in your life.
Grandparents Day would be to spend some time with your grandparents, either hospital or hopefully non -hospital related.
And live music day, if your favorite band is playing, you can take a day off so that you don't.
That makes sense. Do you have to make a list of your favorite bands?
Don't you say that makes sense.
You're the last person who would agree with these policies.
Well, I changed my mind.
Have you really? OK, please go on.
I changed my mind over the period of the intermission.
I think it really varies from culture to culture.
We were talking about the Pets Day or Pets Live in India.
And now we're talking about paw -turn -ity live.
And according to Darkster .com, a whopping 63 percent of Indians own a dog and India also boasts a 42 percent cat ownership.
So in a country where the majority of the population owns a pet, then it perhaps makes sense for the employees to demand or perhaps expect a day off or several days off when their pets needs a company or any kind of attention.
So whereas the other thing that got me changed my mind was my memory about a singing contest in Southwest China's Guanshi drone autonomous region.
Did you win? No, I didn't.
I wasn't I wasn't raised there.
I wasn't raised there.
But during my my trip there, I was told of a tradition where I think at a particular time of the year, they the locals will host a singing contest.
It's very important, in fact, a contest between different villages within the same community.
And they really care a lot about winning and losing.
So during that period of time, it was natural for employees or even civil servants to ask for a particular leave.
And the excuse was, well, I need to be back with my my my village and my people.
Otherwise my people could lose in the singing context.
So that makes a lot of sense, because in that cultural context, I mean, when it means a lot to a particular and also a large member of the population, then perhaps it makes sense to have some special days they set out for them.
I don't know. I'm still not buying this, partly because some very practical reasons that might sound a little too harsh or too strict.
But please hear me out.
The first thing is that we do already have some leaves that are with reasons that you do not have to specify.
In Chinese, we call it leave because something I need to deal with.
It can be your I don't know your day to bond with your pet.
It can be a day that you want to fix the heater in your house.
What's the Chinese term for that?
It's Shih Jia. So I have a thing and I need to take a leave.
So it's like a like a taking a personal day.
Yes, but it's not your annual leave.
Your annual leave is more like paid.
It's paid. And also the annual leave is more like for you to travel around or anything.
But a leave because I have a thing is already there.
The reason I like that more is because if we have to specify a paternity leave for those who do not have a pet, they're going to have to cover for you when you are taking the paternity leave.
What if they do not want to sing?
Then they cannot enjoy the My Favorite Band is in Town Leaf, but they want to enjoy a My Favorite Swimming Pole is opening day.
There's no such day.
And it's unfair for them.
Hold on. Writing that one down.
That's a good one. You have to specify everything.
My favorite author is in town.
I have to go meet him and have him sign my book.
My favorite restaurant is given discount on Thursday.
My son is my son is singing in the kindergarten song contest.
You cannot have a list of all the reasons.
In China, you can enjoy the idea of what is parenting day?
Yeah, but, you know, you know what I'm saying?
What I'm saying is I have a thing.
So I need to take a leave makes more sense to me.
Lai Ming, what were those statistics again?
The pet ownership in 60 something.
Sixty three percent of Indians own a dark and 42 percent of them own a cat.
OK, at least one cat.
So those were the statistics that changed your mind.
Right. Saying that this is not ridiculous.
Right. I think from a company point of view, you know, I'm not disagreeing with what you said.
What what you just said is completely and utterly reasonable.
But if companies are having trouble attracting new talent and they're trying to figure out ways to figure that out, well, we just talked about advanced analytics and podcasts.
This is, in a sense, looking at advanced analytics of potential employees.
And if companies are aware that 60 percent of the citizens in this country, perhaps more so.
Yeah, right. And not the people who didn't report if they know that and they also have the knowledge that people who own pets, your cat to you is like a family member, right?
Sure. Yeah. So if they know that, then introducing a policy like this, though on the surface, seems insane.
It doesn't actually sound insane when we look at it a little bit more deeply.
In New York City, pet leave is becoming a thing.
There's a bill, as a matter of fact, it's one zero eight nine dash two zero two four.
And it's sponsored by City Council member Sean Abreu.
And it would amend New York City's Earned Safe and Sick Time Act to allow employees to take care of a pet that needs medical treatment or care.
This is a bill. This is legislature in New York City, one of the biggest cities in the world that's that's potentially going to be inactive.
Here's something else that might sway you.
There was a survey conducted by pet wellness plan provider Wagmo, and they found that 75 percent of employed pet owners missed at least one day of work within the last year to care for their pet.
Twenty six percent missed six or more days.
If three quarters of your pet owning employees are taking time off, then why not just put it out there as a job perk for potential employees?
If you're a Gen Z, right, and you're looking at Company A and Company B and Company A has health insurance and paid vacation and all the typical things that you get with a standard job.
Company B has all of those things, but they also say, hey, look, we know there's a lot of pet owners out there.
We get it. We got you.
And if you need to, you take a time off, a day off to bond with your new puppy.
Which company are you?
You as a cat owner, you know, which company are you going to choose?
OK, you got me. I mean, now.
Thanks for joining us on Roundtable.
See you tomorrow. I'm going to help out here.
I'm going to help out with this one.
If I were an employee who doesn't own a cat or a dog or any pet, I'm looking at Company A who offers paternity leave and the other company who doesn't own paternity leave.
My decision, perhaps, is to adopt a dog right away and then go for Company A.
I may not be the most responsible pet owner.
I could leave my dog starving at home.
But who cares? I enjoy access to, you know, paternity leave.
No, no, no. The reason I that I said you got me was not entirely because I think this is a good policy, but more like I feel like it's a good advertising strategy because I mean, it's a stunt.
Yeah. For a company, you can easily calculate whether or not you're making the efficient choice.
Maybe what you're doing by giving your employee one day or two days of paternity leave, you have boosted their productivity by 20 percent.
In that case, definitely the ultimate goal would be making money or earning profit, encouraging your employee to do a better job.
And if that does the trick, why not?
But at the same time, I still feel like this is more of a point to attract employees instead of really taking care of their needs and their mental health, because I feel like when it comes to that, the real action to improve the happiness level of anybody in the workplace.
It's a it's a case by case scenario.
You have to talk about or talk to each and every employee and figure out what they really want.
Yeah. And not everyone agrees with this.
Yeah. If I'm allergic to cats or dogs and I could not adopt a pet in my own home, then I have no access.
You've given this more thought than I originally considered.
Here's a quote from one company president.
I apologize. I don't know the name of the company.
This is what the company president said.
Needing an hour or two to run to the vet is one thing, but it's not fair to the other employees on the team for someone to be out because of a personal decision that their coworker made, other people support it.
Employees should be this is another comment online.
Employees should be able to be able to should be able to use their sick leave in any manner they see fit, including sickness, pets or children or family members.
The Internet seems to be divided, but it is a thing for sure.
But here's my next question.
Why is this necessary?
You know, why why is it that companies are going to this extreme?
You know, if you think about this, board members, perhaps, have sat around in a in a meeting room and come to this decision to include these types of benefits in their packages offer offered.
So what do you why do you think this is a necessary thing?
Well, we do have some surveys supporting the conclusion I'm about to give here.
That is, a lot of companies are losing their young employees by different reasons.
Some of the younger generation believe they are experiencing workplace burnout.
Some just decided that they do not like the job they have.
They want a different career path.
And we see that from New York Post, close to what?
This is a survey attended by close to 1000 business leaders.
And six in 10 employers said they have already let go recent college graduates this year, while one in seven said they are inclined to refrain from hiring new graduates next year.
And in the survey, 75 percent of companies reported that some of all of their recent college graduates were unsatisfactory.
Half of employers said Gen Z workers were most likely to display a lack of motivation, while 39 percent said they lack communication skills.
They're just not very happy with their young employers.
And they do want to attract better ones.
So the question does this paint Gen Z in a bad light?
Kind of the tune in this short term, I think the post -COVID boom might have some explanation, might have something to do with people being eager to leave their current position and looking for something that they think are better.
That's the short term.
But in the long term, overall, I think is the same case in China and around the world as well.
And that is the Gen Z years are not exactly the same as the former generations who really attaches a lot of importance to their career.
I think that I sense more attention being given to the sense of happiness or the sense of achievement, whether they are enjoying the workplace, really matters a lot than the previous generation where they think, well, I get paid, I do what I'm told, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
And I don't think it's a generational thing.
It's more like because in this day and age, we share and we overshare a lot of what we think through internet.
And maybe our previous generations went through the exact same thing.
It's just they do not have a means to to express their feelings.
So maybe we can just give the Gen Z a little bit of time to see whether or not they're, you know, doing a better job in the workplace.
Yeah, I think it's just a sign of the times.
It's a reflection, perhaps, of what's important to people now.
My dad's 84 years old.
He was a high school vice principal for 34 years.
The idea of my dad saying he needs to take a day off to spend time with his cat would not have entered the conversation.
But for someone in 2024, that might be the reality.
You're listening to Roundtable and coming up next.
If you were ever considering breaking some recycling rules thinking it's OK.
Nobody's ever going to know.
You might want to rethink that, particularly if you are in Fukushima, Japan.
Stay with us. Looking for passion?
How about fiery debate?
Want to hear about current events in China from different perspectives?
Then tune in to Roundtable where East meets West and understanding is the goal.
You're listening to Roundtable.
It's myself, Steve with Nyonglin and Lai Ming.
And we all know that recycling rules are there for a reason.
Recycling itself reduces the amount of trash that ends up in landfills, conserves raw materials, cuts pollution, saves wildlife, the list of reasons.
Yeah, I could be here all day.
But what should happen?
Here's the question.
What should happen to those of us that break the recycling rules?
One city in Japan certainly has their answer.
Residents and businesses in Fukushima will risk having their names published to the public for not abiding by the laws.
Is it too far? And I wonder if there are other cities that take this as seriously as Fukushima is about to.
So what's going on here, Lai Ming?
What's going on is contradiction.
Here in the news, we see that the city of Fukushima is really attaching a lot of importance to recycling and if they are to recycling and if they don't, if residents fails to fail to comply, then the city will is planning to dispose the names of businesses and individuals that fail to comply.
And that's one side of the story.
And on the other side, we also noticed that in Japan, we know that they're having problems dealing with their radiation contaminated water and they're discharging it into the Pacific.
So when you think that is a nation that cares a lot about recycling and then on the other hand, they don't really care about the environment.
So I don't know. If we look at Fukushima itself, it's got a population, I think, of roughly 290 ,000 people.
And last year, they had over 9000 cases of noncompliant garbage.
So what does that mean?
What are they doing at the moment?
How are they handling it currently?
Well, instead of collecting rubbish that does not comply with disposable rules, workers usually paste the stickers on the bags, informing residents of the violation.
Like a warning. Yes, like a warning.
And under this new rule, if the rubbish remains unsorted for a week, city workers can go through it and try to identify the offenders via items such as mail and the violators will be issued a verbal warning followed by a written advisory before the last resort, having their names published on the government
website. And I have to tell you, this is not that novel to me.
I am from the city of Taiyuan, which is the provincial capital of Shenzi Province, a little southern than Beijing in the center of the country.
And we didn't exactly have this publishing your name on websites if you do not sorting your garbage the right way.
The naming and shaming.
We do have another way of naming and shaming for another matter.
That is, if you broke a red light when you were walking the pedestrian part of the road, jaywalking, jaywalking, then instantly your photo would be taken.
And put where? Exactly at the crossroads, big screen.
That that was the name and shaming I experienced.
And did you have please tell me I'm not I dare not to.
I don't think I look good enough for that jaywalking moment.
So I never go to the salon before you do.
Exactly. And again, this is not the only example we get to see here, actually in Changshu, which is the city again here in China.
They also have in Changshu province.
Yes. There is another way that is because for a different for example, residential areas, you would have a designated garbage leaving area with a lot of different, let's say, categories of garbage you can leave to the different positions, different dumpsters.
And they have a little room when you're leaving the garbage.
You go into the room.
There is a big screen on the room.
If you are putting your garbage into the right dumpster.
Good job. No problem.
If you're putting in the wrong way.
It's gamification for recycling.
This is great. AI would again put your picture, your face and your wrongdoings on the screen instantly.
Wow. Your neighbors will know.
Your neighbors will know.
You're the guy who, yes.
And guess what? AI is super smart.
When they're not doing that, they would replay the kind of different types of videos so that workers in that dumpster would be able to fix the problems.
Help them, you know, a warning system.
That's very smart. Yeah.
Having been through that, is it effective?
Do you think? It's actually quite effective because first of all, no one likes their pictures being posted.
And also with this warning system, actually the workers in the dumpster could do their jobs better because in China we don't have this naming and shaming policy everywhere yet.
In almost every dumpster we do have someone responsible for helping residents dealing and sorting their garbage instead of saying, you're doing a bad job and I will be putting your name.
Well, that's not what Japan is doing either.
We know there are several steps, but this person responsible would educate those who do not know how to sort their garbage.
That's the case. Yeah.
In my neighborhood, just two days ago, in the middle of the night I was out there getting rid of some batteries and the lady sitting there told me that, oh, you can do the alkaline battery here and then the other lithium -ion battery, the other dumpster.
Is that her job or was she just?
That was her job. Oh, wow.
Oh, see now that that's effective.
Right. I question the efficacy of this in Japan.
I think from a personal point of view, of course, I always want to do the right thing and recycle the way that I'm supposed to be recycling.
But if the threat is, hey, we're going to put your name on the local government website, who visits the local government website?
I'm not hanging out there checking the latest news.
You know what I mean?
How effective is this going to be?
Posting your picture at the crosswalk when you've jaywalked illegally.
Well, then that's, you know, that's kind of really putting it out there.
But then again, it's a different country.
And they have a different culture.
Maybe they care a lot more about their names and their honor than...
And having some strict roles when it comes to protecting the environment and the planet is definitely not a bad idea either.
What do you think, Lyman?
Just quickly, you know, some of the challenges that cities face with the recycling programs, I guess education has to be one of the challenges because even you going out to throw away your batteries, you were not educated on how to properly throw away the batteries.
So this is how this has to be one of the bigger challenges.
Yeah, awareness, I think that's the major obstacle here.
I think people when they know that they're doing the environment a good thing, they're doing the future generations a good favor, then perhaps they're willing to do it.
But they like the know how.
And I think the details can be a little, a little specific and too, too overwhelming when you really want to learn about the details as to what to do with what type of waste.
I think it really matters if there's a smart system like Newholing described earlier, AI perhaps, that could help people to make the decisions which one should go into which dumpster.
And that really is helpful in correcting people's honest mistakes.
Yes. And everybody do realize that when you mistakenly place non -recyclable items into recycling beans, it actually contaminated the entire atmosphere and it will make it harder and more expensive.
Yeah. So if you think, oh, it's not a big deal if I don't wash out my ramen cup properly or something like that, it's actually creating a bigger and actually more expensive problem for the city as well.
All right. That will bring us to the end of today's roundtable.
Thank you, Laiming.
Hello. Nice to be on the show.
You say that at the beginning.
You say goodbye now.
Goodbye. Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
