"Business Communication" Class: Company Visit (Life Support Yamano)

In the Business Communication class (taken by 14 Japanese students and 12 international students), students learn business communication skills needed in business environments such as Japanese companies and Japanese-affiliated companies overseas through project activities. In the project activities, students discuss actual problems faced by companies in Ibaraki Prefecture and propose solutions to the companies based on research and pilot cases.

On Friday, May 9, seven students visited Life Support Yamano, one of the companies cooperating with the project. Life Support Yamano's mission is to build an online part-time job platform that connects Indonesian university students with small and medium-sized Japanese companies in Ibaraki. Mr. Eiji Yamano of Life Support Yamano, while accepting foreign personnel and giving lectures for university students at Indonesian universities, noticed that there were no part-time jobs for university students in Indonesia, so he wanted to provide online part-time job opportunities at small and medium-sized companies in Ibaraki.

During the visit, Mr. Yamano first spoke passionately about why he wanted to engage in this activity, from the perspective of Indonesian students, from the perspective of small and medium-sized enterprises suffering from a shortage of human resources, and from the perspective of PR to better inform overseas students about "Ibaraki. They then brainstormed about what kind of part-time jobs are possible. During the exchange, Mr. Yamano gave them his real opinions from the perspective of a business owner, such as the relationship between the demand for part-time jobs and sharing, whether seeking only efficiency would really make local people happy, and how to create value in the form of products.

Mr. Yamano also gave us warm words of encouragement, saying that it is important to listen to the voices of various people in the course of a project, so please do not hesitate to express your opinions without hesitation and without being dismissive of the fact that you are students.

Thank you, Life Support Yamano for the cooperation!