Nishi-Nippon City Bank Faces Backlash After Internal Posts Expose Workplace Grievances

“We have confirmed that information relating to eight individual customers, as well as the names of 19 corporate customers, had been left in a state where they could be viewed by external parties.”

With these words, Hideyuki Murakami, president of Nishi-Nippon City Bank, bowed his head in apology at a press conference held on May 12. The apology concerned a controversy that erupted after a young female bank employee posted content on social media. The employee had uploaded a video filmed inside what appeared to be an office within one of the bank’s branches.

“The video showed a whiteboard listing business targets, along with monetary figures and individuals’ names. The footage spread online in late April, prompting widespread criticism such as personal information is being leaked everywhere and they have zero sense of crisis management. As a result, on April 30, Nishi-Nippon City Bank issued an apology on its official website, stating, ‘We sincerely and deeply apologize for causing great inconvenience and concern to so many people,'” said a reporter from a national newspaper’s social affairs department.

The incident gained widespread attention under the label of full-time employee terrorism (seishain tero). However, inappropriate conduct by employees leading to public backlash is not a problem unique to Nishi-Nippon City Bank.

A backlash from heightened awareness

“In the past, a recruitment officer at a major stationery manufacturer sparked outrage after sending university students overly aggressive emails urging them to submit entry sheets. In another case, a female elementary school teacher in Miyagi Prefecture posted and circulated a photo taken with her smartphone showing the screen of an internal school system that displayed the school’s name and the names of colleagues,” the same reporter explained.

According to a survey conducted by Teikoku Databank involving 1,355 companies nationwide, only 23 percent had established internal rules restricting employees’ social media posts. The potential risk of workplace misconduct escalating into online scandals therefore remains extremely high.

Reiji Ishiwatari, a university journalist, believes that the repeated occurrence of these incidents is partly attributable to the seller’s market in job hunting.

“As the job market has remained favorable to job seekers since the mid-2010s, companies have had little choice but to ease their hiring standards in order to secure recruits. Many firms are offering job placements to students relatively easily.”

“Problems after hiring are also significant. As awareness of compliance issues such as power harassment and sexual harassment has increased, supervisors have become less able to firmly reprimand young employees for inappropriate behavior.”

“Furthermore, due to labor shortages, training for younger employees has often been neglected. Many companies—particularly small and medium-sized businesses—simply don’t have the resources to devote sufficient time to new employee training. In some cases, employees are assigned to departments with almost no training at all, leaving education entirely in the hands of frontline staff. Under such circumstances, it becomes difficult to instill a proper sense of professional responsibility in young workers. I believe incidents of full-time employee terrorism will continue to occur in the future.”

Excessive caution in dealing with younger employees, he argues, may ultimately contribute to major incidents that undermine customers’ trust and damage corporate credibility.