Empowered JAPAN Webinar Report

Empowered JAPAN Executive Steering Committee was established in 2018, “To realize a world where everyone canwork and learn, from anywhere, at anytime.” To promote the true value of workstyle innovation including telework, the committee
has been coordinating symposiums in both Tokyo and regional cities. And in collaboration with various local governments,
Microsoft, and partners, the committee has been serving as an advisor to provide telework training for both corporate andindividuals. In response to the spread of infection of corona virus (COVID-19) and the government announcement on February 25,2020, which included the request to citizens to telework, the steering committee made the decision to launch a series of freewebinars starting from March 17, 2020, to provide practical information for individuals and organizations across the nation, totelework and/or practice online education.

Category：Learning from case studies companies
Date：March, 30, 2020

Introduction of Know-how: Practical Example ofCorporation Implementing Telework

Speaker：Anri Miyano
General Manager, Retail Business Division, ECommerce Business Headquarters, HP Japan Inc.
Director, Women Impact Network Japan (officialcertified organization of HP)

While many workplaces are rapidly adopting telework, there are concerns and questions about
the new workstyle, and they need to be resolved. Under the corporate culture to believe thatcreative work can be achieved in a proper environment, HP Japan Inc. has been reforming
workstyles based on the "respect and trust" motto and adopted telework in 2007. The idea ofusing telework as a means for each and every employee of the company to achieve objectives
and increase productivity will be key to promote a new workstyle in the future.

HP Japan has been working to improve productivity by introducing flextime in 1977, freeAt the E-Commerce Business Headquarters,

address in 2001, and then telework with new systems and an environment. Ms. Miyano, who has

develops the consumer market, and manages theestablished a group to promote the advancement of women called "Women Impact Network

sales and planning departments under herJapan” certified by HP and is a representative of the group, has been working to reform workstylesupervision. Furthermore, as an initiative forthrough telework. The reason why she started to telework was to "make time" to balance workdiversity and inclusion, founded "Women Impact

and private life. When she started, she made four rules: never give up on achieving goals,

Network Japan," an organization that is certified by

distinguish between work and private hours, try anything, and not to be bounded by stereotypes.

HP and promotes the advancement of women.
In order to expand the career formation options
available to women, focuses on personal growth,
the advancement of women, and related work-stylereforms

Based on the premise that "the system called telework is just a method, and not an objective"(Ms. Miyano), she tried teleworking with these rules. As a result, she found key points to promoteteleworking. Now, we will divide these key points into four categories: communication, control,condition and community, and look at her experience as an example.

Empowered JAPAN Webinar Report
First, in terms of communication, for example, with remote meetings, it has advantages of improving the facilitator's skills and giving
opportunities to those who were too shy to speak during in-person meetings to share their opinions. Also, for lack of communication due totelework, which many people are concerned, she prepared multiple communication tools and "chose the most suitable tool for each personat that time." (Ms. Miyano) As a result, it helped to build better relationships in some cases. For example, when she replaced a part of thecommunication tool, email that had become complicated, with groupware Teams' chat feature, communication became quicker and wassimplified. Through the chat feature, management and employees started having more casual conversations, and it created a space to bringout new ideas.
Second, in terms of control, when Ms. Miyano analyzed how her time was spent for self-controlling, she found that a lot of time was spenton emailing and meetings, which was affecting the planning and analyzing tasks which were her core work. Then she allocated the morning
hours for important work, and created an efficient timetable including time for emails and breaks. "Regarding time management, bychallenging myself to finish tasks within a time limit, it helped me to finish work faster with no time to waste." (Ms. Miyano)Also, it is necessary to reform awareness because when people telework, they often lose the boundary between work and private life, andwork longer.
"Once a female manager at HQ in the U.S. said to me that I cannot balance between work and private life unless I value a plan with myhusband as much as an appointment with a V.I.P. client. It was shocking and an eye-opener for me. Thanks to her, I value them equally now."(Ms. Miyano)
Third, in terms of condition, think about creating an environment where you can work comfortably. For example, Ms. Miyano connected
three additional monitors to her PC at home. She uses each monitor for different purposes, i.e. one monitor for communication including
emails and chats, another monitor for work using Excel and PowerPoint, etc., and it helped her concentrate on work.
Last, in terms of community, it is about management of the teleworking members. At HP Japan, work objectives are set through discussions
with each employee, and Ms. Miyano subdivides the objectives and checks progress in a short cycle. For jobs in which employee's work
progress cannot be expressed in numbers, she checks "what, when, how progress is made" and evaluates. According to her, it helps tounderstand what other members are doing, and eliminates the misunderstanding of evaluation criteria of both parties with mutual agreement.
"Meeting one-on-one is also important. Before commencing it, check the members' desired meeting frequency, strengths, and weaknesses
first. In some cases, you can have a 10-minute daily meeting, and find any changes in the member's situation and motivate the member. I
think it allows you to support the members efficiently." (Ms. Miyano)
From the examples that Ms. Miyano has been practicing at HP Japan, we can see that they have a foundation motto of "action rather thanperfection." (Ms. Miyano) With all individuals having different life stages, even if any of the examples do not apply to you, as long as you try,
the merits of telework will grow.
Even if you are not progressing perfectly, remind yourself that "trying new things and making errors means you are progressing" (Ms.
Miyano), overcome obstacles one by one, and find a way to succeed.