Plus W株式会社

Plus W Inc, a global IT and HR company, has introduced a Japanese Language and Culture Program tailored for skilled Pakistani IT professionals. This initiative aims to promote job opportunities within Japanese companies. In Japan, we observe a growing demand of IT professionals, while Pakistan has been leading in the software engineering industry through elevating their IT talents to industry standards. Following a successful trial, we have seen that our students master the Japanese language and gain a profound understanding of Japanese culture, promised to excel in Japanese work environments.

What is the Key to Accelerating the Employment of Ready-to-Work Pakistani IT Human Resources?

Pakistan, a country that is making a national effort in IT education, produces a large number of excellent IT engineers every year. Despite this, the number of IT engineers working and playing active roles in Japan is lower than in other countries, as can be seen in the graph below. In Japan, where there is a shortage of engineers, we have been working hard since the establishment of Plus W, believing that matching Pakistani IT professionals with engineers who can work immediately is an effective way to solve this problem. In addition to the large number of young, high-skilled human resources in Pakistan, the country is also highly regarded by Japanese companies, which is expanding the scope of their activities. As Japanese companies expand their use of foreign human resources in IT development, we are seeking to develop a “live” Japanese language and culture program for Pakistani IT engineers to further utilize their skills, such as daily conversational Japanese and engineering terminology commonly used in Japan, which are required for communication among staff at Japanese companies. We feel that the key to accelerating the matching of human resources is to ensure that Pakistani IT engineers have “active Japanese language and understanding of Japan” to make the most out of their skills.

Source: JICA Final Report, “Information Gathering and Confirmation Study on ICT Industry Promotion through Business Matching with Japanese ICT Companies in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (August 2021)”

Based on feedback from both workers and companies, we have developed the “Japanese Language and Culture Acquisition Program for IT Engineers with Readiness to Work”, which is not a pure language program, but a program that assumes employment at a Japanese company. Shikoku University, which has been focusing on global education and human resource development since early on and boasts a 100% employment rate of foreign students, including Pakistani students, and a proven track record of actively accepting foreign students. Shikoku University has also provided its expertise in Japanese language education for the development of this program.

Based on the selection by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) for the “New Business Creation Promotion Support Program for DX in Emerging Countries,” this project is part of a demonstration program to promote the development of advanced IT human resources in Pakistan, focusing on IT, Japanese language and culture, and to promote their matching with Japanese companies in the field of human resource development in Pakistan.

Features of the program

• Program design that focuses on the Japanese language and the unique culture of Japan in the development scene, which is necessary for IT engineers to smoothly start development projects in Japanese companies.
• Program development by our bridge engineers with more than 10 years of experience as general managers of offshore companies in Vietnam
• Lectures on the advanced and innovative environment of the Japanese development scene by CTO-class engineers working for leading IT companies in Japan.

Program development by our language education and language learning consultants with more than 10 years of extensive experience in language education in Japan, Vietnam, China, Thailand, and several other countries. The program is designed to take into account not only linguistic aspects but also cultural differences. We emphasized the use of the indirect method (teaching Japanese in English) to improve students' comprehension and speed up the learning process.

Trial Implementation to Verify Level of Proficiency

Before the official launch of the program, we conducted a 5-month trial from November 2022 to March 2023 with 3 Pakistani IT engineers as students to verify the effectiveness of the program.

Although there were some requests for improvement in terms of the length of each class, the frequency of classes (once a week), and the total duration of 3 months, we decided to hire one of the students because we were able to confirm the effectiveness of the program content during the trial. Two months after the completion of the trial, the student came to Japan in May of this year and officially joined our company in June. Currently, he is working on development projects at Bewith, Inc., which has one of its offices in Nagasaki Prefecture. In addition to his achievements at work, he seems to be actively using Japanese to communicate with staff members in time beyond work.

In response to this, the National University of Science and Technology (NUST), where we have established a base for exchanges with Pakistani IT personnel, also implemented a program prior to the official launch, with 25 students participating. The first phase of the program was completed at the end of last month. We are planning to run the program four times a year with a maximum of 25 participants, aiming to produce a total of about 100 participants per year. With the official launch of the program, we also plan to start the program at other universities in Pakistan in October.

Japanese Language and Culture Program

• Official name: Japanese Language and Culture Program for IT Engineers
• Duration: 12 sessions of 90 minutes per session
• Form of implementation: Online *Offline (face-to-face) sessions may be offered in the future depending on the region.

We have received comments from the host company regarding Abdul Hanan Ashraf, who came to Japan after participating in the trial program.

Director, Alliance Promotion Department, Bewith, Inc. Yasunobu Aoki

We were in need of a highly skilled engineer for our solution development project when we learned about Plus W. We carefully selected the Pakistani engineer from a large number of candidates. Although we had some concerns about cultural differences such as Halal food and prayer, not to mention language issues, we were able to give it positive consideration thanks to Plus W’s preliminary research. The fact that the engineer had attended a Japanese language program before coming to Japan, and the suggestion that he could work as a bridge engineer helped as well. On the first day of work, he introduced himself in Japanese and was able to understand simple Japanese, which helped him integrate into the team quickly. The team is actively communicating in both English and Japanese, using translation tools and whiteboards, and having a common language as engineers help them to execute their daily tasks without failure. We have high expectations that they will continue to play a key role in the development of cloud-based solutions in the future.

Members of the development team at Digital Lab Nagasaki. In the front row, second from the left is Yasushu Aoki, General Manager. In the back row, second from left is our engineer, Abdul Hanan Ashraf, and third is Abdul Ahad.

https://www.bewith.net/
Provides contact center and BPO services utilizing digital technology such as Omnia LINK, a cloud-based PBX developed in-house, and develops and sells various AI and DX solutions. Digital Lab Nagasaki, where Pakistani engineers are assigned, was established in April 2022 as a near-shore development base for promoting digital operations. They will mainly develop “Be-mon,” a home-based contact center support tool.

According to Ms. Morimoto, who is promoting the project on Japanese language and culture learning program, "We are finally going to officially launch Plus W's original Japanese language and culture learning program, which is specially designed for Pakistani IT engineers working in Japanese IT companies. According to Morimoto, “Plus W's original Japanese language and culture learning program specifically designed for Pakistani IT engineers working in Japanese IT companies is finally ready to be officially launched. One of the trial participants, who was hired by Plus W, has already come to Japan and is working on a development project for a Japanese company. We hope that he will become a pioneer of the model of coming to Japan to work on projects, and that he will serve as a goal for Pakistani IT engineers who want to work in Japan. We will continue to promote this program to eliminate the language barrier so that we can produce many Pakistani IT engineers to follow him. We will continue to expand this program.”

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