Japan's largest banking group is urging staff to knock off work early in order to enjoy 'family time' in a bid to boost the country's ailing birth rate.
Management at Mitsubishi UFJ emailed its employees on Monday, according to The Times newspaper, encouraging staff to vacate the office by 5.10pm, rather than the usual 7pm finish.
The bank is thought to be one of just a few Japanese companies taking the national campaign to boost the population seriously, The Times said.
Japan suffers from the one of the lowest fertility rates in the world - with a birth rate of just 1.3 percent in 2007 for the average woman between 15 and 49.
The market for incontinence briefs used by elderly Japanese, and that of baby nappies, drew level during October.
A female trader at MUFJ told The Times that the bank hoped that leaving work early would leave staff with more energy at the end of the day.
"The company is constantly telling us to do things, but I think this is the first time the corporate agenda has made its way to the bedroom", she told The Times.
"I'm not sure how many more babies will be conceived this week, but the bar next door to the headquarters should do well."
Previous campaigns to boost Japan's birth rate have included computer simulations of unborn children for young couples.
However, combining parent's faces proved to be too crude and frightening for many.
Meanwhile, the town of Ota - where not a single day of paternity leave was taken by bureaucrats until 2004 - now forces its male bureaucrats to take 40 days
off in the first year of their offspring's life.
http://money.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=973288


