Parental Leave and Flexible Time Off Come to Cloudflare Japan

Cloudflare's Japan office is rolling out revised employee benefits aimed at giving staff more control over their time, both in and out of the office. The changes include a flexible paid time off policy, expanded parental leave, and greater latitude in setting daily work hours.

The adjustments are designed to break from a legacy of long hours and under-used vacation time in the Japanese workforce. While Japan's labor code sets a legal ceiling of eight hours per day and 40 hours per week, a 2015 OECD study found roughly 22% of Japanese employees work 50 hours or more per week. That rate is double the US figure and more than three times Spain's. Annual leave policies grant at least 10 days of paid vacation, typically rising to 20 days with tenure, but a 2017 Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare survey showed employees only used 8.8 of those days on average.

Cloudflare's new approach includes three core benefits:

  • "Take what you need" time off for all employees
  • 16-week gender-neutral paid parental leave
  • Flexible working hours

The parental leave stance reflects a broader philosophy: the company believes parents should have equal opportunity to bond with a new child without being forced to declare one person the "primary" or "secondary" caregiver. Cloudflare argues those labels create a false dichotomy that doesn't reflect modern families and tends to disadvantage women's careers more than men's.

The shift in Japan comes amid broader workplace changes touched off by the pandemic. A Cloudflare Zero Trust survey conducted locally found 74% of IT and cybersecurity decision-makers plan to adopt a combination of remote work and time in the office. The expectation at Cloudflare is that teams will decide what mix works best for the task at hand — for instance, coming in to collaborate with colleagues or attend workshops, then returning home for focused work.

Office design is intended to match that fluidity. Cloudflare redesigned and renovated its San Francisco and London offices with experimentation in mind, using those spaces as a model for reimagining its other global locations.

These benefits come as Cloudflare marks a longer and deeper presence in Japan. The company expanded its network into Tokyo in 2010, months after launch, and currently operates seven points of presence across four cities. Its Tokyo office opened in 2020.

Network activity figures also highlight the scale of that footprint. In Q4 2021 Cloudflare blocked an average of 1.9 billion attacks per day in Japan; Q1 2022 saw that number jump to 3.8 billion daily blocked attacks, a 100% quarter-over-quarter increase.