Work Rules Kit

When this helps

You want work rules matching the latest legal changes, but spotting what's outdated needs a specialist

What it does

Builds a work-rules draft on top of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's Model Work Rules (December 2025 edition). If you have existing work rules, it checks whether required items are missing and whether recent changes are reflected — childcare/family care leave, continued employment to age 65, the 50% premium above 60 overtime hours a month, and customer-harassment policy. It asks about your company and your choices among optional clauses, fills in blanks from your answers, and leaves anything undecided blank rather than guessing. It produces an old-vs-new comparison table, and once finalized, the work rules to hand to employees, the notification and opinion forms for the Labor Standards Inspection Office, and how to post the rules. You can try the whole flow with a sample for a fictional dry-cleaning shop.

The fixes baked into this kit

1. Article and chapter numbers were invisible in the textThe model's numbering was an auto-number on the heading style, not literal text, and the counter reset at each new chapter. The tool now reads the style's auto-numbers — including the no-reset setting — and prepends the number to each article.
2. Changing the overtime rate didn't change the formulaThe model's formula was fixed at the example rate (e.g. ×1.35). The tool now rebuilds the formula from the rate you choose and the allowances you keep (excluding family and commuting allowances).
3. Article text and commentary alternate, hard to extractIn the model Word file, article text sits inside tables while commentary sits outside them, alternating down the page. The tool now extracts only the tables containing a heading and 'Article __'.
4. Mistook the variable-hours cap for the standard weekly hoursA commentary note reading 'cap of 52 hours/week for annual variable hours' was being misread as the company's standard hours. The tool now only picks up the literal pattern 'Weekly hours shall be __ hours'.
5. No customer-harassment policy article even in the latest modelCustomer-harassment policy became mandatory from October 2026, but the Ministry's latest model still has no article for it. The kit flags it as something to confirm, noting it doesn't have to live in the work rules.
6. Flagged pay-raise and payday rules as missing when set elsewhereFor companies that say 'wages are set out in the wage regulation', the tool wrongly flagged raise/payday items as missing. It now treats that case as something to confirm, and checks that separate regulation too.
7. Old-vs-new comparison table showed an unchanged article as 'deleted'Articles with similar headings were paired first, leaving an identically-titled article unmatched and marked deleted. The tool now pairs exact heading matches first, then pairs the remaining similar ones.

What's inside

• The flow (company info → check → choose → fill in → draft → hear from staff rep → finalize → file & post)
• A tool that checks your existing work rules for missing required items and outdated provisions
• A tool that drafts rules from the Ministry's model, filling blanks with your answers
• A tool that builds an article-by-article old-vs-new comparison table
• A tool that produces the employee copy and the Labor Standards Office filing forms from the finalized version
• A runnable sample (an old, deliberately flawed rules draft for a fictional dry-cleaning shop)
• A list of the laws and sources used, with the date checked

The first three decisions

1. Company name, this workplace's address and industry
2. Number of people working here (including part-time)
3. Whether you already have work rules (if so, the Word file)

What you need

• No extra costNode.js 18 or newerNeeded to run the kit's tools
• No extra costWord (or anything that opens .docx)Output is a Word file; a browser-viewable .html is produced too
• No extra costYour existing work rules (optional)Not required — you can also build new rules from the Ministry's model

How to use

Just paste this into your AI.

I want to use the nice to have kit "Work Rules Kit". Follow https://nicetohave.app/en/g/BRGUPX4T-•••••••••• and set it up.

Works the same in Claude Code or Codex.
Read what this tells your AI to do, before you paste it

FAQ

Is the 10-employee threshold counted across the whole company?

No. It is counted per workplace — each store, factory or branch office — and part-time staff count too. A workplace that regularly has 10 or more people files its work rules with the Labor Standards Inspection Office, together with the employee representative's written opinion.

Once the draft is ready, can we start using it as our work rules?

Drafting alone does not put them into effect. You need to hear the employee representative's opinion, and before the effective date make the rules available to employees at any time (posted, handed out, or viewable on a computer).

Can the company choose the employee representative?

The company does not appoint one. Someone who is not in a supervisory or managerial position is chosen by a vote, show of hands or similar. The representative also writes the opinion; the kit only provides guidance on how to choose them and the blank form.

Can I add allowances or company-specific leave that the model rules don't have?

The AI does not write clauses. Once the draft is ready, a person adds the text in Word and has a licensed labor and social security attorney (sharoushi) check it. The kit can then produce an old-vs-new comparison between your edited version and the draft.

Does it also create the childcare and family care leave rules?

No. Childcare and family care leave need their own separate set of rules. The kit flags, as something to check, whether those rules reflect the recent amendments.

Supporters

Once support opens, the people who backed this kit will be listed here.