One point I’d like to add about the Skills Development Support Program is that it applies to any language. For Japanese employees, English is usually the first thing that comes to mind, while for our global members it’s often Japanese. But since we also have hololive Indonesia, there are members who want to improve their Indonesian, so of course, the program covers that too as well as Korean, Chinese, and other languages to support those who want to study other languages besides English. 

Lloyd, you’ve actually used the Homecoming Remote Work Program yourself, right?

That’s right! My family home is in rural Canada, so traveling back takes a lot of time. Thanks to this program, I’ve been able to go home at least once a year and it’s great to be able to visit without having to use up more than just a few days of paid leave. In fact, this program was one of the reasons I decided to join COVER and I also often hear from other foreign national hires that they find it to be a very attractive benefit.

For members coming from overseas to work at COVER, we help out with obtaining work visas. On top of that, we’re also considering creating a relocation support program to make the move even easier.

For foreign nationals starting work in Japan, there’s often a frustrating catch-22 – they can’t open a bank account without an address, but they can’t confirm living arrangements and an address without a bank account. It makes the process complicated and requires a lot of extra steps. 

Finding and signing a house contract in Japan can be really challenging for people coming from abroad. That’s why, as we continue to bring in more highly skilled talent from abroad, we want to enhance our programs and provide even stronger support. 

That would be C5, or the COVER Cross Culture Communication Club, which was launched in the summer of 2024.

I’m actually a part of this team. We’ve welcomed an advisor who previously served as CEO at a company with a high percentage of overseas members to the team, and other participants include members from our Localization Team/Bridge Team, as well as our Business Process Improvement Team. 

At COVER, diversity goes beyond nationality – our people also come from a wide range of backgrounds, including animation, gaming, music, and more. C5 was founded with the idea of fostering communication and collaboration to help us appreciate these different cultures and bring everyone closer together. 

There are two main areas we focus on: (1) creating an environment where work can be done in multiple languages, and (2) developing internal tools and rulebooks that support a multilingual workplace.
Regarding the first area, we’ve been promoting bilingual communication in our internal chat tools and ensuring that posts in channels, such as our company-wide channel, are written in both Japanese and English. The Information Systems Team has even introduced a bot that automatically translates messages – Japanese into English and English into Japanese – when you add a special stamp to make this even more accessible for all employees. Tools like this have made multilingual communication a whole lot easier. 

Concerning the second area of focus, this includes things like the translating of manuals. We create and manage a wide range of manuals within the company, but they inevitably are written in Japanese first of all, so to make them more readily accessible for everyone, we’ve been working hard to translate the most frequently used ones into English. 
Interpreting, made possible by our wonderful in-house interpreting team, is also available at meetings such as our monthly company-wide meetings, allowing employees to listen simultaneously in either English or Japanese.

Yes. We have the Bridge Team, which translates internal materials from Japanese to English and vice-versa, and the Localization Team, which handles the translations for content released publicly. Before these teams were in place, getting ready for company-wide meetings was a real challenge. 

Before we had these dedicated teams, the translation of internal materials and even minor communication with talents were often handled on a volunteer basis by bilingual employees in each department. Sometimes they took on these requests reluctantly, which became an added burden on top of their regular work. As well as that, since Japanese often omits subjects and objects, using machine translation sometimes leads to serious misinterpretations. Now, we have a dedicated Slack channel where translation requests can be made formally, so the whole process is much smoother and more reliable. 

Last year, we held a Lunch & Learn session where employees could enjoy lunch together while learning about communication. The idea came from employee feedback mentioning that having training on cross-cultural understanding would be helpful. 

Before C5 was launched, we had a bit of an issue with a business manners and skills training program. The problem was that most business etiquette training in Japan is based on unspoken cultural norms that are considered “standard” here, so deciding what content to include was difficult. Looking back, we also mistakenly designed the program by separating it into training for Japanese employees and that for non-Japanese employees. In reality, the content should have been tailored based on each person’s professional background and experience in Japan, regardless of nationality. It was a valuable moment of reflection on my own unconscious bias. 

I feel that in Japan, many people are used to a high-context culture, where communication often relies on shared assumptions and unspoken understanding. The challenge is that this style doesn’t always work with people who don’t share the same background. 

In a low-context culture, communication needs to be clear enough to understand even without shared background knowledge. Since much of our communication here is text-based, people from a high-context cultural background might assume “I don’t need to include everything – they’ll get the idea.” But that’s where pitfalls lie.

Take this simple example for instance – when you ask someone to do something in Japanese, they might reply with “chotto muzukashii” (a little difficult). After working in Japan for a while, you realize this actually means a flat out “no,” but in low-context cultures outside Japan, since the word “no” isn’t explicitly said, people may take this to mean that there’s still a possibility, or that a request might even be accepted. 

 That’s why we realized how important it is to create opportunities that encourage cultural understanding and foster a more inclusive environment. With so many of our members working remotely, we also noticed that when communication is limited to text, you lose the ability to see each other’s faces, which can create barriers between people, so to break those down, we thought it would be great to have more casual opportunities to connect with each other, and that’s how our TGIF event was born.

 TGIF stands for Thank God It’s Friday – similar to what we call hanakin in Japanese, the idea of celebrating Friday night. Google famously made TGIF part of its culture with company-wide meetings under that name, and many IT companies have since adopted the practice. At COVER, our version of TGIF is a casual gathering held at the office, with food and drink provided so people can relax and connect with one another. 

 Simply put, TGIF is a social gathering. Since so much of our communication takes place on Slack, we don’t get many chances for face-to-face interaction – especially outside of work. TGIF was created to change that, giving international staff members, Japanese employees, and colleagues from different teams a chance to come together. One of COVER’s core values is coming together without boundaries, and we believe events like this are essential to realizing such a mission. 

At TGIF, the opening toasts and hosting are done in both English and Japanese – we want it to be a place where people can connect comfortably in either language. At the very first event, many Japanese members weren’t yet familiar with the idea of TGIF, so most of the participants were those from overseas, but from the second edition onward, we made sure to let everyone know that it’s an open invite to everyone, which encouraged many more Japanese members to join as well. 

At our second TGIF, around 120 people joined – so many that the food we’d prepared wasn’t nearly enough. And when we say “global members,” that includes people from all sorts of regions, from English-speaking countries to those across Asia, so even among them, we saw plenty of new connections being made. It isn’t just about sharing food and drinks – we also make sure to include activities like “communication bingo” to get people talking and make it easier for staff members to connect. 

Many of our international members share a strong passion for Japanese entertainment and content, such as VTubers. What I see is that they’re not only interested in enjoying this culture themselves, but also they want to share it with people everywhere. That’s why they resonate so strongly with our mission, “Together, Let’s Create Culture Loved by All” connecting people around the world through this culture. 

From an HR perspective, I see COVER’s mission as creating an environment where anyone, no matter their background, can fully embrace and love this culture. Our goal is to continue building a workplace and company culture where people from all kinds of backgrounds can feel a true sense of unity. 
When it comes to cross-cultural understanding, I believe the first step is getting to know oneself. That’s something I’d like to create more opportunities for across the company, including through training programs. Understanding yourself will always help when engaging with people from different cultural backgrounds. 

Japan is often described as a high-context culture, where people are expected to “read the air.” Communication centered around shared assumptions can feel easy and natural for those who are used to it, but if we just remain in our comfort zone, we’ll never fulfill our mission of creating a culture loved by all. Achieving such a vision requires going beyond what’s familiar and creating a workplace where people from all kinds of cultural backgrounds can feel comfortable and thrive. We want this to be a place where everyone has the chance to shine, so if you feel that this is you, we’d love for you to join us.