Episode 61: The Reality of Trinity’s Unique System, Part 3: Balancing a Supportive Work Environment with Results

“Real Management | The Real, Unscripted Stories of Presidents Talking Candidly About Successes and Failures in Business Management”

In this program, I, Hossy—also known as Tetsumi Hoshikawa—talk candidly about management and what goes on behind the scenes, based on my own experiences.

Real Management isreleased every Friday morning at 6:00 a.m.

Good morning. I’m Hossy, the free spirit—also known as Tetsumi Hoshikawa.

So, we’re going to introduce some of Trinity’s unique systems. Over the roughly 20 years we’ve been doing this, we’ve turned little ideas that occurred to us, or requests people made, into systems one by one and built them up over time. Looking back like this, there really have been all kinds of things. At first, I meant to talk about them lightly, but each topic ended up taking a long time, so we still haven’t been able to introduce everything.

Well, yeah, you’re right.

If this were a company with 1,000 or 10,000 people, that kind of design would be pretty difficult, but we’re a company of about 20 people. Honestly, even just comparing when we had around 10 people with when we grew from there to around 20, things changed somewhat.

For example, when you’re at a scale of about 10 people, half the members may be close to management and half may not be, or there may be a lot of founding members, so you can run things without setting detailed rules.

Once you get to 15 or 20 people, needs that you hadn’t been able to pick up before start coming out, and as more diverse people join, various “requests” and “problems” start appearing. So there was also a sense of creating rules in response to that, and things gradually changed.

Yeah, I think so.

That’s right. If I remember correctly, once you exceed 10 employees, you become obligated to create and submit work regulations. If you have 10 or fewer, there’s no obligation to create them. I think we created our work regulations right around the time we were about to reach 10 people. That became an opportunity to review our systems and internal environment.

Today, I’d like to talk about “time off.” This is from back when we had only a small number of people, but there was a Mac-related trade show called Macworld. It wasn’t hosted by Apple, but it was famous as a place where things like the iPhone were announced. We used to go to that trade show as a foothold for overseas expansion. There was also CES, the Consumer Electronics Show—often called “Sesu” in Japanese—and those two events would generally take place alternately around the beginning of January.

In the early days, we handled a lot of imported brands, so we went to look for those kinds of brands, and we also wanted to sell our own products overseas. So we used to go to these trade shows quite often. In the very beginning, or for the first few years, all of our employees went together.

There were only five or six of us.

The reason is, if one or two people stay behind and work, it’s hard for them, isn’t it?

For example, at a scale of five or six people, if three go on a business trip, only three are left, and it inevitably becomes difficult to keep the workplace running. So the trade show would usually end around January 12 or 13, and we would start business operations after coming back from there.

So if you look back at the news posts on Trinity’s website from the early days, you’ll see year-end and New Year holiday notices saying things like, “We will be closed from such-and-such date at the end of the year, and business will resume on such-and-such date.” And often, it would say that business would resume on January 15, meaning we were suddenly closed for half the month.

Well, yes. As I mentioned when we talked about the early days, we were able to finish about 100 million yen above our business plan, and I do think a big part of that was precisely because we had so few people.

Well, it wasn’t exactly a trip. Though it’s true that it also doubled as a company trip, and we did some sightseeing.

I see.

Well, yeah. From the outside, we really did only have half the month as business days, so out of the 12 months in a year, we weren’t operating for half of one of them. In that sense, you may be right. Eventually, as the number of people increased a bit, issues came up, like whether it was really okay for everyone to go on a company trip in January, and whether it was okay to start business operations in the latter half of January.

As our business with mass retailers expanded as well, from a certain point on, only the people involved started going. So that was after the number of employees had increased.

So that was a bit of a long introduction, but when we were really small, we ran things pretty casually. Once we reached around 10 employees, we decided to create work regulations, and we talked about setting some rules—or rather, properly deciding our holidays. We looked at the annual calendar and thought, “We want to fill in the gaps between holidays.”

Let’s say Saturday and Sunday are days off, and then Tuesday is a national holiday. If you take Saturday and Sunday off, come to work on Monday, and then Tuesday is another day off, it’s hard to get motivated on Monday, isn’t it?

So we decided to fill in those kinds of gaps. We looked at the annual calendar and decided that if there was a gap day, we would make it a day off. Basically, we kept the number of workdays consistent and adjusted things like whether to move days off around or not.

The big one, of course, is Golden Week. With Golden Week, if you follow the calendar as-is, there are often gaps, right?

This year, in 2026, April 29 is a holiday, and April 30 and May 1 are technically weekdays. Then you have Saturday and Sunday, May 2 and 3, and May 4, 5, and 6 are public holidays, so they’re days off. After that, May 7 and 8 are workdays, and then Saturday and Sunday, May 9 and 10, come after that.

You mean whether up to two days are covered, right? Golden Week is a little special. May 1 is also the company’s founding anniversary.

We were founded on May 1, 2006, so we decided we might as well take that day off. This year, Trinity will probably have April 30 and May 1 off, as well as May 7 and 8. That is, if the system hasn’t changed. So that makes 12 consecutive days off starting from April 29.

Golden Week is usually set like that. In that way, we try to fill in the gap days a bit. Recently, though, quite a few national holidays fall on Mondays.

The number of gap days itself has been decreasing.

Mountain Day is also a national holiday, right? It falls on Tuesday, August 11, but August 8 and 9 are Saturday and Sunday, the 10th is a weekday, and the 11th is Mountain Day, so it’s a day off. In that case, we might make the 10th a day off too. That’s how we try to fill in gap days, and for Golden Week, even if there are about two gap days, we fill them in.

Yes. Our annual number of holidays is 129 days.

When I looked it up briefly, that’s 14 days more than the national average. Even compared to large companies, it’s 9 to 10 days more. The basic two-day weekend gives you 104 days off to begin with, and there are 16 public holidays, so apparently even 120 days is considered a lot for a typical number of holidays.

There was a rule like that?

Wow.

There were all kinds of companies like that back then.

Rather than having people think, “I feel sluggish,” on days they come to work, I think it’s better to have a clear rhythm: rest properly on days off, and when it’s time to work, work. So compared with something like taking time off as I mentioned earlier, then working two days, taking five days off, working two days, and taking two days off, I think it makes a big difference if you can take a solid 12 consecutive days off. Then, on the days you do come to work, the idea is, “Let’s do our jobs properly.”

Yes. In the past, there was a system called summer vacation, and in the beginning, people took time off around the Obon period. But at some point, the discussion became, “If everyone takes time off in August when everyone else is also on vacation, won’t it be a hassle no matter where you go?”

So there was the question of whether it really had to be taken in the summer. Also, our main products are iPhone accessories, and the iPhone is basically announced at the beginning of September and released at the end of September. The Obon period in August is usually extremely busy for us. It’s right before product shipments. So there was also the question of whether everyone really needed to take time off all at once during that period.

The key point is that it changed from something like a summer holiday into something called refresh leave, where people decide for themselves when to take time off throughout the year.

That’s right. The basic rule is to take three consecutive days off somewhere during the year. If you split them up, it doesn’t really refresh you, so the rule became, “Please take three days in a row.”

And if you add two days of your own paid leave, it connects with the weekends before and after, so I think most people ended up taking around nine consecutive days off.

That’s right. We tried to document things as much as possible so anyone could handle them, and people taking time off would prepare thoroughly in advance.

Exactly. The same goes for changing summer vacation into refresh leave, but because we’re a small company, we can flexibly change things according to the circumstances at the time. As a result of that trial and error, maybe we gradually developed some unique systems that other companies don’t have.

This is also related to health management, but regarding paid leave, too. Basically, we follow the law, so leave is granted every six months and can be carried over, but when that happens, people tend to save it up without using it all.

You often hear when someone resigns, “I still have 20 days of paid leave left,” and there can be talk about buying it back and so on. In reality, if you use up all your paid leave, you’ll be in trouble if you get sick, so we have a rule that people must use at least 80% of it. Even at a company the size of Trinity, people can feel hesitant about taking paid leave.

But if you make it a rule that basically everyone must use at least 80%, then it becomes not “I’m taking it because I want to,” but “I’m taking it because I have to.” We measure the usage rate every three months.

We have an evaluation system, like the appraisal system I’ll talk about in detail later, and under that system, if a manager’s team members have not used at least 80% of their paid leave, that manager’s evaluation is negatively affected.

That’s right. Whether it immediately goes down is another matter, but their raise may become smaller. Since it’s a point-based system, that one thing alone doesn’t instantly reduce their salary, but it does lower their overall score. So managers need to manage things so their team members take paid leave in a planned way and achieve at least 80%.

I wonder. It was after we introduced the evaluation system, so it’s been quite a while. I’d say it’s been about 10 years.

We may have started operating it properly across the whole company in earnest around the time of the health management initiative, which I’ll talk about later.

When you’re trying to join a company, there can be cases where “what I heard before joining was different from what it was like after joining,” and I think there are all kinds of things. But these kinds of leave-related systems are probably still continuing even now, and if you had to choose only between black and white, I think we are completely white. So joining Trinity is really good.

This is a bit of a side note, but regarding recruitment pages, in my personal opinion, I think it’s better to reduce the gap after joining as much as possible.

If you don’t write the inconvenient things, or you only list the good things and write everything in a vague way, I think it ultimately causes problems later. That’s why on Trinity’s recruitment site, we make everything clear with numbers. Of course, we include what we’ve talked about so far, but we also always clearly state things like the number of days off and last year’s actual overtime hours.

We also write the bonus payment conditions in detail, down to “how many months after joining you become eligible, and how much you can receive under what circumstances.” We also directly list the annual salary amount, so there’s no “to be discussed at the interview.”

We disclose all conditions and make everything transparent. So in terms of time off, things like “filling in bridge holidays,” “refresh leave,” and the “paid leave usage rate” are all properly managed.

While we’re at it, one more thing about working hours: there’s something called a no-overtime day in the world, right?

At Trinity, Wednesday is called “Suisui Wednesday.”

It’s essentially a no-overtime day. I’ll talk about this in detail later, but Trinity has a “kaizen proposal system” as one of its unique systems. It’s a mechanism where employees can freely propose things like, “I want to improve this,” or “I want to do this.”

And what came out of that was the no-overtime day.

If I remember correctly, yes.

To eliminate situations where people say, “Well, it’s supposed to be a no-overtime day, but people are still here,” we have the company’s security system, SECOM, and we make sure SECOM is properly activated and the office is locked, so people are not allowed to stay at the company.

So on that day, it’s truly impossible to remain at the office. That makes it easy to make plans for Wednesday.

Everyone must leave the office by 6:30 p.m. That’s what our system looks like in terms of holidays and working hours, but for a small company, I think it’s a fairly interesting system.

I guess so. So this time we talked about working time and resting time, but I don’t think that’s all there is. I imagine other companies may have some of these things to some extent too. But even looking back now at the environment for employees working at Trinity, I feel these are very good systems.

Like, that’s why it’s possible.

Yes. Gajirou just summarized it and said something good, but let me add one aside. People who apply only because “the company is white” generally don’t work out.

At Trinity, we say, “Let’s draw a clear line between resting and working,” but that is based on the premise that “when it’s time to work, we work.” That’s why we produce solid results, even if it means pushing ourselves a little.

Because we stabilize performance and earn profits that way, even though we take time off in a way that might cause an ordinary company’s sales to drop, we rest when it’s time to rest. But because we work when it’s time to work, we steadily generate those profits, and the company can continue for a long time even with systems like these. That premise is what makes this possible.

As Gajirou said, if we were constantly in the red, the conversation would become, “Let’s work more.”

No matter how white a company is, if it can’t continue as a business in the end, there’s no point.

Even if it’s an incredibly good company, it’s meaningless if it goes bankrupt. There’s no point if you end up in a situation where you ultimately can’t pay the employees you’re responsible for. We have built white systems, but people who want to join only because “it’s white” are not suited for us.

Exactly.

This isn’t limited to our company, but of course, black work environments are out of the question. Still, if you’re applying simply because “it seems comfortable,” then a large company would probably be better. I’d recommend that.

We can only talk about these things because the premise is that we can survive as a company. That’s exactly why we have to work hard at our jobs.

Exactly. With job ads, when someone other than me writes the listing, they tend to emphasize only the parts about us being a “good, worker-friendly company.”

But the people who apply because of that are usually not a good fit. What matters is the excitement of the business: what we create, how we sell it, and what kind of value we deliver to customers. Even though we’re a small company, we’ve captured the top share, traveled all the way to China, and created products with careful attention to materials and manufacturing methods—that’s why they sell.

We get buyers and customers to understand that story, feel convinced, and then make a purchase. It’s fundamentally different from a business that simply buys cheap products and resells them.

If someone doesn’t understand that we put passion into that work first, and then also make sure that “days off are properly protected as days off,” and they choose us only because “there are lots of holidays,” then it’s just not the right fit.

So, with that said, I hope you’ll listen to that part properly all the way through.

At this pace, it feels like we still have several more episodes to go.

So with that, we hope you’ll continue listening as we talk more about Trinity’s unique systems. We look forward to having you again next week.

“Real Management | The Real, Unscripted Stories of Company Presidents Speaking Candidly About the Successes and Failures of Business Management”

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Your hosts have been Hoshikawa Tetsushi, also known as Hossy, and

See you next week, and we hope you’ll tune in again.