News room

ITOKI CORPORATION (Headquarters: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; President: Koji Minato) is currently focusing on developing DX human resources and improving DX-related digital skills. As part of this, at the beginning of this year, we joined the ifLink Open Community, a general incorporated association that provides an IoT platform. We will launch a joint venture with people from different industries to take on the challenge of open innovation and update WORK-Style by allowing people to spend their breaks in a more comfortable way.

At our company, we recommend ABW (Activity Based Working), a work style in which office workers themselves choose the place, time, and partner in which they can work most productively according to their work activities, and we propose this as a work style strategy. I am. As specific activities, 10 work-related activities have been set, such as ``concentrating on individual tasks,'' ``sharing ideas with others,'' and ``relaxing.''

In this workshop, we focused on "recharge," one of the 10 activities, or "breaks" in the general sense. We believe that by making breaks more fulfilling, productivity and relationships with workers can be improved, bringing Advantage to both individuals and organizations.

This workshop was independently planned and implemented by ITOKI as an activity of the ifLink Open Community. Together with community members, we carried out group work to reconsider the relationship between work and breaks and to seek ways to realize ideal breaks. As a result, it became clear that issues regarding breaks have become apparent due to the recent establishment of hot desking in offices and new work styles centered on hybrid work.

In addition, unique ideas were born to solve various problems using IoT. For example, ``In an office where relaxation is lacking, the accumulation of fatigue is automatically measured by sensing body data, and virtual animals of various patterns appear depending on the degree of fatigue, allowing you to relax.'' The idea is that in an environment where it is difficult to invite people to take a coffee break, each person can indicate their intention to take a break using the sub-icon of the work tool, and the results of random matching will be automatically displayed to encourage the pair to take a break.

In the end, regarding breaks during work, the results were summarized into two issues and requests: ``encouraging breaks'' and ``improving the quality of breaks.'' In the former case, the most obvious issues were adjusting schedules to ensure time for breaks, creating time to refresh during long meetings, and encouraging people around you to understand the importance of taking breaks. For the latter, there were notable issues such as wanting to make more acquaintances within the company but not having an opportunity to do so outside of work, wanting to talk to people from other departments during breaks, or wanting to talk but feeling like there are hurdles to starting a conversation.

In the future, we will use the results of the workshop to conduct discussions with members of the ifLink open community to solve the problem of breaks. With a view to service development, we plan to promote more detailed idea design, prototype development, and verification efforts. Additionally, we will work to develop DX human resources through internal and external networking and cross-border exchange in the technical field. Information regarding the progress of this IoT project will be provided in future press releases.

ifLink https://iflink.jp/
ABW https://www.itoki.jp/solution/consulting/abw/