More raids at Dentsu to investigate overtime

A month after the suicide of an employee, Dentsu’s Tokyo office was raided by the labour ministry once again, Bloomberg reports. The officials were said to be looking for evidence which would prove the fact that the company’s employees were still working overtime.

Reportedly, the raid was unannounced and covered offices in Osaka, Kyoto, and Nagoya, as well as the Tokyo headquarters. In a statement to Bloomberg, Shusaku Kannan, a Dentsu spokesperson, said that the company will co-operate with the investigation.

Dentsu's Tokyo office was first raided last month by the Tokyo Labour Bureau. In an earlier statement to Marketing, a spokesperson from the Labour Bureau stated that the raid was conducted to check on the company’s labour management situation, after a young executive committed suicide due to work pressures.

In response to the investigation, Dentsu recently established the Dentsu Working Environment Reforms Commission which looks to create a comprehensive reform plan to prevent repeated overwork issues. The commission also reviews tasks around business planning and reviews the organisation, its personnel system and business flow, and implements various specific actions to curb the overworking culture.

The initiative is headed by president and CEO Tadashi Ishii. In addition, the company said it is initiating an independent review into its company’s labour practices to ensure compliance with laws and regulations.

The measures follow the finding that certain employees put in more overtime than they had agreed to. The Labour Bureau aims to determine whether Dentsu encouraged a culture in which employees routinely exceeded their maximum overtime limit.

This story was first reported by Marketing magazine.

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Photo / Dentsu