In November 2018, ITOKI TOKYO XORK (now ITOKI DESIGN HOUSE) was born as Japan's most cutting-edge office, with spatial quality that meets the WELL Building Standard™ standard and where Activity Based Working can be put into practice. Our mission is to let our customers see our approximately 850 employees taking on new work styles here, and over the past three years, we have had over 25,000 visitors from 7,000 companies come to see us. The reactions of those who visited were varied, with some expressing surprise that "there is such a way of working!" and others expressing concerns about the difficulties of operation and management.
For visitors, our employees will talk openly about what results we have achieved with this work style and what challenges remain, sharing their own experiences. However, in order to give a wider audience, we would like to use this column to talk about our progress and achievements over the past three years, as well as the challenges we face going forward.
Perception of productivity improves year by year
First, regarding the percentage of workers who feel that they are able to work productively in the office (hereinafter referred to as "productivity perception"), in the 2021 survey, it was 32.4% before the relocation to ITOKI TOKYO XORK (now ITOKI DESIGN HOUSE), and it has increased significantly to 77.0%. What is noteworthy here is that it has continued to improve year after year even after the relocation. When an office is relocated, various indicators improve significantly immediately after the relocation due to the elation of the office being clean and comfortable, but the numbers tend to stagnate or even decline after that. Unlike this trend, we believe that the reason why ABW is still continuing to improve is because "ABW is a way of working that requires mastery."
There are many things that workers and managers need to know when practicing ABW. For example, for workers, this may include the process of "breaking down your work and actions into activities*1," the habit of working in a place that suits your activities and its efficiency, etiquette for not interfering with the activities of others, advance scheduling to work efficiently, and how to work paperlessly. For managers, this may include methods to remotely grasp the situation of subordinates and management based on trust. The necessity of these things is explained in advance through e-learning and information sessions, but it is only by actually practicing them that one can understand the method, necessity, and effects. At first, everyone feels confused by the new way of working, and not everyone can do it well. There are individual differences in the speed of adaptation. Patience without expecting immediate results is necessary for the success of ABW.
*1 For details about activities, please see here.
Quickly responded to the pandemic's recommendation to work from home
Another major achievement is that we were able to smoothly respond to the recommendation to work from home following the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020. We notified our employees of the recommendation to work from home on February 27, 2020. We were able to transition to a system centered on working from home early on, more than a month before the first state of emergency was declared (April 9 of the same year). Since then, the frequency of office use has changed somewhat due to the infection situation, but we have continued to operate while limiting the number of people in the office.
In a survey conducted in 2020 targeting workers at ITOKI TOKYO XORK (now ITOKI DESIGN HOUSE), many people said, "Practicing ABW in the office made the transition to working from home smooth," and "I didn't feel any particular inconvenience." Reasons for this include "an environment was already in place that allowed employees to work on mobile devices and go paperless," and, as mentioned above, "we were already accustomed to communicating and managing a distributed team." Practicing ABW in the office and working from home are simply different places to work. There was no significant difference in the IT environment or mindset needed to get the job done.
Even after this pandemic subsides, BCP will always be a corporate issue in Japan, where natural disasters are common. If you have a system in place that allows you to work anywhere, you won't have to go to work exhausted on a typhoon day or wait for a train that doesn't arrive for hours because of an accident.
Employee collaboration is only half-way there
On the other hand, when it comes to collaboration between employees, the percentage of workers who answered that "it's easy to share knowledge and ideas" is 63.4%, which is a big improvement from before the relocation, but the numbers are still sluggish. Regarding this result, we speculate that although the collaboration that was previously necessary has become much easier, the amount of collaboration itself has not increased.
There are two reasons for this. The first is that there has been no significant change in the percentage of 10 activities *1 since before the relocation, and the second is that there are still many workers who do not feel that collaboration-related activities are necessary.
Below is a graph showing the percentage of the 10 activities before and after the relocation in 2021. Looking at this, we can see that the percentage of collaborative activities ("Duo," "Dialogue," "Create," "Coordinate ," and "Inform") has slightly decreased. Of course, it is possible that work remotely has replaced face-to-face conversations and collaboration with phone calls, but we believe it is safe to say that "collaboration has not increased significantly."
Regarding the second point, "workers do not feel that collaboration activities are necessary," we would like to explain it. In our regular questionnaire surveys to measure effectiveness, we focus on "how many activities workers consider important for their work." Of the 21 types of activities in the Leesman Survey that we use, the global average is 10.2, while the average for XORK workers is 4.9 before the relocation and 5.5 after the relocation, both of which are low levels.
The top five activities that workers most frequently choose as necessary are "personal focused work at a desk," "personal regular work," "scheduled meetings," "phone calls," and "collaborative creative work." This shows that workers generally consider personal work, phone calls, and regular meetings to be important. In other words, it is likely that they do not need collaboration in the first place, or do not recognize that collaboration leads to better results. This is an issue that also relates to the assignment of work to workers, and we believe it is a problem that cannot be solved overnight.
Organizational solidarity requires further examination
Regarding the sense of solidarity within the organization, the number dropped once after the relocation, but in 2021 it exceeded the level before the relocation, but it still remains at a low level. From the beginning, we have been aware of this issue, and we positioned the office as a "place to foster solidarity," and created a prototype space where teams can gather and work comfortably. However, as the pandemic has continued for longer than expected, there have been long periods of situations where "even when you come to the office, there are hardly any colleagues there," and we cannot deny the possibility that a negative force is at work on the sense of solidarity. We believe that this is an area where we will need to reconsider and verify measures once the infection has subsided.
How are workers feeling now in the post-COVID era?
As we have said so far, there are areas where the practice of ABW at ITOKI TOKYO XORK (now ITOKI DESIGN HOUSE) has produced great results, but there are also areas where the expected results have not been achieved and progress has been sluggish. Based on this, we surveyed the awareness of current workers in the post-COVID era, and the following points emerged.
- Demand for flexible work styles even after COVID-19
- More than 60% of workers feel that their quality of life has improved since their previous working style
- Practicing flexible working practices motivates employees to continue working for the company
- Intention to do activities at the office/home varies depending on the activity
- While they prefer face-to-face communication, they do not want a significant increase in people coming into the office
We will introduce this in more detail in the second part. ITOKI TOKYO XORK (now ITOKI DESIGN HOUSE) is taking thorough measures to prevent infection and is accepting office tours. Please consider it.
