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：Mindset and Communication
Date：March, 24, 2020
Speaker：Takehito Naruse
Persol Process & Technology Co., Ltd.
General Manager,
Work Switch Consulting
Media Editor-in-Chief, Work Switch

In charge of planning and project managementof national and local telework-related
businesses, while also handling work-stylereform projects for multiple corporations.
Furthermore, engaged in planning andoperation design of individualized work-stylereform measures.
Also serves as Editor-in-Chief for theinformation media "Work Switch," which aims
to expand the possibilities of working.
Concurrently holds the position of Telework
Manager at the Ministry of Internal Affairs andCommunications as a second job, supporting
corporations throughout Japan that face issues
in implementing telework.

Examples of Management Practices
at All-Telework Organizations～Points of organizational operation that can be done
without face-to-face meetings～
While teleworking is rapidly advancing as a measure to stop the spread of COVID-19,
there are many concerning voices from the management level about how to evaluate
subordinates, disruption in work operations, etc. How do we update administrative
functions and adopt teleworking? The hint was in the challenges that Work Switch
Consulting, which promotes advanced workstyle within the Persol Process and Technologycompany, has been encountering.
The Work Switch Consulting division, where Mr. Naruse belongs, have only 30 desks forabout 300 employees. Even Mr. Naruse, who is the manager, does not have a desk, instead,he looks for a workspace beforehand. At the Work Switch Consulting division, teleworking isdefined as "a way of working to act autonomously according to a goal in order to improve
individual productivity," said Mr. Naruse, and it is called "ABW (activity-based working)workstyle."
Since 2015, the Work Switch Consulting division has been expanding telework based on
the existing telework regulations, and through trial and error, in 2018, almost all of theemployees in the division became subject to teleworking. Mr. Naruse shared three examples
of issues they encountered.
The first was whether or not to include new employees for teleworking. At that time, themanagement level was skeptical about it, and new employees were concerned about
working alone. Eventually the business manager suggested to try it out, and if any issues
occurred, we would discuss. Since then even new employees were subject to teleworking
from the first day. Today, new employees are expected to telework without any questions.
The second was no sense of unity. Employees often expressed concern about not being able
to know what other members were doing. It was the same for employees even within thesame department. We came to the conclusion that a sense of unity was necessary toimprove performance for the organization, and decided to try grasping the conditions of
the organization on a trial basis. The third was not being able to feel a sense of growth orpurpose. So, we linked the organizational goals with the individuals' goals, and thenintroduced a one-on-one approach with the OKR (objectives and key results) methodology
for members to be aware of daily progress. Searching for a solution for this issue is stillongoing.

Empowered JAPAN Webinar Report
From the experiences, the company learned that "digital tools, workplace, and management need to be linked and altered inorder to achieve ABW (activity-based workplace)." (Mr. Naruse) The Work Switch Consulting division currently uses chat and web
conference digital tools. A tool called Bizer Team is used to visualize and share work operations. For workplaces, they are usuallyhome, office, place where we visit, satellite office, etc. For management, the concept is to support self-reliance and -propulsion ofmembers.

"The role of management is changing as teleworking habituates. People in management often concern themselves about how toevaluate. For future management, instead of managing and evaluating results, coaching skills for promoting members' productivity
and growth will be required." (Mr. Naruse) Based on the assumption, the company is still promoting ABW.
"For organizations to produce results, creating a workplace that feels psychologically safe is essential. We strongly feel the needfor visualizing and sharing the condition of the organization. How to visualize the motivations and conditions of the members areimportant. For that reason, the frequency of communication needs to be increased. Communicating twice a week for 15 minutes
works better for teleworking instead of once a month for an hour." (Mr. Naruse)
He said these efforts strengthened the team's sense of unity. In addition, the company uses a work visualization tool called
MiTERAS to visualize application logs, and manage working hours to avoid overtime.
"People suspect that employees may skip tasks with teleworking, however, in my opinion, working overtime is riskier for bothemployees and the company, so avoiding overtime is more important." (Mr. Naruse)
One of the key points of management that we have learned through the practice of teleworking is that there is an urgent need ofshifting the style of management to support self-reliance and -propulsion.
"In order to derive results by self-reliance and -propulsion, it is important to share the same level of information from theorganization's upper level to the general members, and work promptly." (Mr. Naruse) At Mr. Naruse's group, by implementing theabove method, they share new know-hows updated through daily work via chats, release weekly management meeting on web
meetings for improving communications, and try sharing common information throughout the members in real-time.
"Teleworking not only reduces long working hours and achieves diverse and flexible working styles, but it also leads to new value
creation and promotion of innovation when it is finally habituated. I think this is the purpose of the work-style reform thatcompanies should achieve." (Mr. Naruse)
The important thing is not to adopt teleworking just as a temporally prevention measure against COVID-19. After overcoming theobstacles and habituating telework, with a new sense of values, a new environment in which individuals can freely work will beestablished. We hope everyone continues reforming workstyle.