AOTS Journal 2018 AUTUMN No.13 (ENGLISH)

10/18

JOURNAL8experiencing it in person that made me improve my adaptability to different cultures.Mr. Sato: What I noticed through this internship was how much my way of working had been so passive up until then, and also I strongly felt the necessity and importance of trying proactively to nd the main gist of a job. I think I acquired the skill to create something from scratch. Recently people say that the future of the drug industry is set for increasing hardship, but we are the generation that will create that future. In my job from now on I’d like to come up with my own ideas of how we can do things better.Can you tell us about what expectations you will have for these employees who experienced the dispatch?Mr. Nakatsuka: A large outcome from participating in an overseas internship is acquiring an attitude to cut your own way through, as well as a methodology for attaining results, and the ability to do things by yourself through your own thinking. The image for our employees that our company aims for is illustrated by the two ideas of “professionalism where you handle changes by yourself and challenge yourself,” and “working for your self-improvement to raise your own value.” The recurring theme in this is the idea of “doing things by yourself”. We lay importance on being able to accomplish things independently.I think the attitudes of these two employees have already started changing from being passive to being more independent thanks to this internship; however it’s important that they continue to show this in the work place from here on too. Along with their own personal change, I’m also expecting them to be employees who create change in the organization through their own inuence. Also, although they’ve learnt particular things through the overseas internship that other employees won’t know, their experience in the pharmacy business still has a way to go. In order to conduct overseas business in the future, I want them to work to understand the overall image of the pharmacy business. Currently, they’ve only experienced one side, which is domestic sales; however they will need to deepen their understanding of the whole process that is involved with a product, all the way through to it making its way to customers. This includes research and development, production, and reliability assurance.At our company we believe that in order to gain sufcient results from overseas dispatching, a dispatch period of around six months is nonetheless required. I’ve heard that at other companies there are examples of shorter dispatches, like two weeks or one or three months, but I think in those cases the dispatch ends just when the employee nally gets used to the experience of being there. By setting the period to six months, although the amount of employees who can do it will be limited, it will be enough time to actually accomplish something there, and so I do think six months are necessary.Before the dispatching of Mr. Horie and Mr. Sato, we did an overseas dispatch as training for the rst time at a company in India. From now on too we hope to continue dispatching overseas our excellent younger staff who have been in the company for up to around ten years. By focusing on employees, who through overseas dispatch experience possess the strength and courage to create value in an unknown eld, we’re hoping to create a more challenge-oriented and innovative work culture.Finally, could you give some last comments to AOTS.Mr. Horie: As there was a good follow-up system in place and my assigned company also had a history of accepting Japanese interns in the past, I was able to participate in this program with condence. On the other hand, because the company was used to Japanese interns, I think that if I had been dispatched to a company that hadn’t taken them in before and had no knowledge of Japan, I may have gotten to experience a much harsher environment.Mr. Sato: I was also looked after rather well so I feel the same way. I felt glad that my rst ever dispatch was to the company I was assigned to.Mr. Nakatsuka: Some employees say they hoped for training in a slightly harsher environment, however dispatching to companies with such an environment in turn brings about higher risks so it’s a tricky area. If the employee can overcome those hardships it can bring about good results, however if things go south it can cause more harm than good. The GHC Global Business Internship Program has a support system in place for all sorts of troubles big or small, such as the follow up they did this time when the employee injured himself during the period, and so this gives us peace of mind. For selecting companies to dispatch to, it’s necessary to strike a balance between safety and the effectiveness of the training, and as AOTS has plenty of know-how from previous examples of dispatches we’d like to rely on them for the selection.From the left: Mr. Sato, Director Nakatsuka, Mr. HorieGHC Global Business Internship Program* is non-subsidized program of AOTS aimed at Japanese rms that want to implement OJT training for young staff who are expected to play the key role in expanding business opportunities overseas.This program dispatches young staff of Japanese rms as interns to government agencies, Industrial organizations, local companies, etc., in developing countries and provides them with internship opportunities to gain practical work experience.*GHC: Global Human Connectivity