The following is adapted from Too Big to Care.
In 2016, I was fired from my job.
My son had been born six weeks early, and the hospital didn’t think he was going to make it. I was getting emails and phone calls from the hospital’s administration—he was in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), and they wanted me to come right away. However, when I asked the leadership at my company (Mitsubishi Morgan Stanley) for time off, the immediate response from the human resources department was a firm “no.”
I was confused as to why they wouldn’t allow me the time off, so I did some research, and learned that even though it’s the law in Japan (where the company is based), few men take paternity leave. The reality was that if a man takes that time, he will be demoted or fired. I was told that if I left, I’d be considered absent from work, which was a fireable offense. Simply asking for paternity leave seemed an act of treason. But my son came first, so I went back to my leadership and told them I had no choice—the hospital wasn’t sure my son would survive, and I had to go to my family.
Their response shocked me. “Don’t worry about it,” I was told. “Medicine is so advanced these days, so just go back to your desk and do your job.” My first instinct was to walk out and go straight to the airport (my partner had given birth overseas), but instead, I stayed for three days, trying to negotiate with the company and to honor my superiors in accordance with Japanese traditions. Those were excruciating days. I was trying to work and talk to my leadership and HR about time off, all the while not knowing whether my son was even alive.
I finally resigned myself to the fact that my employer would never approve the paternity leave, so I just left. Thankfully, mother and son recovered. Two and a half months later, I returned to work. Unbelievably, I was treated like some kind of treasonous villain—a pariah who had betrayed the company. I was stripped of my position and someone else was given my title. Then, I was ignored. Everyone pretended that I wasn’t there. It was as if I didn’t exist. I wasn’t given a new job, or any responsibilities, or even invited to meetings. If I emailed my boss, he didn’t respond. If I called him, he didn’t pick up the phone.
It was a living nightmare—one that hundreds of thousands of people go through every day.
Fighting Back
When I tried to speak with HR about the situation, they patronized me. They told me to go to my boss—my harasser, and the one who took my job away from me in the first place—and commit a kind of hara wo watte hanasu, which is the Japanese term for “spill your guts.” Basically, they advised that I humiliate myself in front of my boss, beg his forgiveness, and see what he said. Instead, I noted that their treatment of me was illegal, and so they begrudgingly began re-inviting me to meetings on a “voluntary” basis. However, the poor treatment I suffered continued.
Mine was by no means an isolated case. Another person in the company had a son who developed a growth in his leg. The doctors suspected bone cancer, and they recommended a test to verify the diagnosis. His boss denied him leave—he was told he should sit at his desk and focus on his work tasks, because that was what was expected from “good” employees.
Eventually, my friend and his family went back to the doctor to get the test, and his son got better. But after that, the man's boss targeted him, harassing him to the point where he was forced to leave the company. This man was one of the highest value-adding members of his team. What his boss did was an active destruction of value, based on some unspoken rulebook of how employees should behave.
Backed Into a Corner
When I look back at that time in my life, it’s clear that it wasn’t just men who were affected; I believe that many women suffered similar treatment from the company. I realized that women who dared to start a family and take maternity leave left in one role and came back to work as secretaries. They were never promoted. Their careers were over.
Male or female, having a child was looked at as a betrayal of the company, and those people were punished and often forced out. Eventually, like others before me, I was fired.
In the meantime, I had suffered through nine months of trying to get them to reinstate my job title and responsibilities, all to no avail. I became physically exhausted and pushed to the brink mentally by this whole excruciating process. To make matters worse, I now had sole custody of my son and no job. Nor did I have any hopes of being hired by another financial firm in Japan, thanks to what Mitsubishi’s top management was saying about me. They had me cornered, and I think they expected me to disappear with my tail between my legs.
The Real Rulebook
Bear in mind, this is not the kind of behavior that Mitsubishi Morgan Stanley admits to in front of their investors or the world. On their website home page, in big letters, they say: “At Mitsubishi Morgan Stanley, we strive to create an environment that offers various forms of support for efforts to balance work and private life and have in place a full range of systems that enable both men and women to achieve a balance between work and childrearing.” This is their mission statement; this is what they feature in all their glossy brochures.
And yet, what they do is in stark contrast to this. They fired me for caring about my family, and they pushed out an incredible value-adding employee because he wanted to be with his family during a medical emergency.
This is why we need ESG evaluation standards. It doesn’t matter how many corporate social responsibility (CSR) brochures you print with smiling families and testimonials about “work-life balance”; every employee knows there’s a real rulebook. In Mitsubishi Morgan Stanley’s unspoken rulebook, asking for paternity leave branded me as treasonous.
Going through this experience was one of the hardest challenges I’ve ever faced. But this isn’t only about me. It’s about the some 200,000 people Mitsubishi employs locally. And, it’s about other global organizations that do the same thing. So I asked myself, how do I take this terrible experience and make something good out of it? One way was to start a company based on sustainability (which I did), another was to start a sustainable investment fund (which I did), and a third was to tell my story (which I’m doing). Believe me, telling this story is painful, but if I tell it, and if I tell other people’s stories as well, then maybe we can all see that the solution isn’t so difficult. And if we embrace the solution, it’s going to benefit us all.
The Risks and Benefits of Becoming a Family-Friendly Company
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include goals that directly impact society and the family, which can be promoted through company policy and action. These goals aren’t in any way a sacrifice that business must make to society—they are the way forward for operating and managing a sustainable corporation. Companies that fail to incorporate these goals into their business strategy will find it difficult to survive, while those that embrace them will find sustainable success.
Companies must take it upon themselves to prioritize the family, prioritize society, and prioritize their impact. As with policies and actions that cause environmental damage, those that cause societal damage lead to decreased profits and other challenges. If a company continues to operate at the expense of society, their cost of doing business is going to skyrocket. They won’t be able to get the capital they need to continue. On the financial side, it will become difficult for them to survive. The damage to their reputation will make it impossible for them to compete.
Companies that benefit society, on the other hand, have everything to gain. They will still have to create and provide a value-added product or service, and they will still have to be profitable, but they will have to do so with a strong focus on CSR. They will have to treat society as a renewable resource that needs to be nurtured, developed, and restored. Companies that do this will have lower financial costs of capital, at least in part thanks to ESG investing.
Ultimately, sustainable companies are the organizations of the future. Per the very definition of the word “sustainable,” that should go without saying. They will have better relationships with their customers. They will attract better quality employees. They will create a positive, upward spiral, increasing their competitiveness, sustainability, and profitability. They are the companies that will last.
For more advice on how building a business that prioritizes family and society will make that business stronger, you can find Too Big to Care on Amazon.
Glen Wood is the president and co-founder of Smart Vision Logistics (SVL), a company committed to the implementation of sustainable supply chains. As an authority on the economy and parental rights in the workplace, Glen has been featured on CNN, CNBC, the BBC, and in prominent publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Tatsuhiko Nakazawa is the CEO and co-founder of Smart Vision Logistics (SVL), a pioneering company revolutionizing the global landscape with circular economics. Previously the founder and CEO of TrustOne Logistics Corporation and with more than twenty-five years of experience in his field, Tatsuhiko has built a reputation as a trusted leader in the Japanese business community.
