Hiroe: I believe that finding ways to help employees work with greater enthusiasm and vigor is vital to enhancing SCREEN Value—our conception of corporate value that encompasses both social and economic value. When employees bring enthusiasm and vigor to their work, business results improve. As such, I think that “well-being” is an extremely important keyword in terms of both business management and human resource management. Moreover, one must be physically and mentally fit to work enthusiastically—that is why we believe promoting employee wellness leads to improving our corporate value.
Wellness and Human Resource Strategy to Support the Growth of All Employees
From left:
Masao Tomonaga
Senior Corporate Officer, Chief Officer of Sustainability Promotion, SCREEN Holdings Co., Ltd.
Naoki Tazawa
Representative Director, WILLEE Co., Ltd.
Toshio Hiroe
Representative Director, President, Member of the Board, Chief Executive Officer, SCREEN Holdings Co., Ltd.
Yasuhito Shiraishi
Senior Corporate Officer, Chief Officer of General Affairs and Human Resources Strategy, SCREEN Holdings Co., Ltd.
Note:
The titles used here are as of the time of this dialogue.
The dialogue took place on January 24, 2024, at the Group’s head office in Kyoto.
How should a company seek to balance human well-being and economic prosperity?
Well-being—encompassing physical health, mental health, and happiness—is increasingly regarded as a key perspective in corporate efforts to achieve sustainability. This perspective comprises two main aspects: furthering the development and welfare of society through business and paying attention to the physical and mental welfare of its employees.
Externally, by offering solutions to social issues, the SCREEN Group strives to create new value for people and society and thereby contribute to sustainable social development. At the same time, internally, the Group practices health and productivity management, aiming to better motivate each employee and support their growth to create engaging workplaces.
Against this backdrop, we invited Naoki Tazawa, Representative Director of WILLEE Co., Ltd., to discuss health and productivity management initiatives and how they relate to human resource strategy with Toshio Hiroe, CEO, Masao Tomonaga, Chief Officer of Sustainability Promotion, and Yasuhito Shiraishi, Chief Officer of General Affairs and Human Resources Strategy of SCREEN Holdings Co., Ltd.
The objective of health and productivity management
“Well-being” has been identified as one of key trends for the SCREEN Group. As part of efforts in this area, the Group is working to promote employee wellness. Why did you decide that this was so important?
Tazawa: Social trends like the decline in Japan’s working-age population are drawing new attention to the importance of employees’ physical and mental health. Working to maintain and improve employee wellness, meanwhile, benefits companies in numerous ways. Individuals who stay healthy in mind and body can work and take part in society with confidence. They become better connected not only to their professional colleagues, but also their families, friends, and communities.
Moreover, they are able to engage with greater motivation and vigor not only in their work, but all aspects of their lives. For companies, this results in higher work engagement＊1 among employees and workplaces that foster enthusiasm, leading to the creation of new businesses, increased value of existing businesses, and ultimately to corporate value enhancement.
In that sense, I think that SCREEN’s initiatives to promote employee well-being make much sense.
＊1 Work engagement:
A positive and fulfilling state of work participation comprising vigor, passion, and focus
As part of its health and productivity management, the SCREEN Group has made the Declaration of Commitment to Employee Health. What do you aim to achieve for employee wellness and for the company with this declaration?
The SCREEN Group Declaration of Commitment to Employee Health
Hiroe: The physical and mental health of SCREEN Group employees, along with workplaces that support their wellness, are the foundations underlying every aspect of our business operations.
The Declaration of Commitment to Employee Health is an expression of our aims of supporting overall wellness at both of the individual employee and the workplace levels and to enhance work environments, including aspects related to work-life balance, so that everyone can work with vigor, positivity, and joy. Through such efforts, we seek to help all of our employees become solution creators so that we can maximize business performances.
Tazawa: By articulating the company’s stance on employee wellness and its goals for health and productivity management, the Declaration of Commitment to Employee Health serves as a tremendously valuable foundation for implementing health-related measures. Such declarations help to kick-start the creation of conditions that enable employees to take the initiative in enhancing their own health and well-being.
Health and productivity management initiatives and human resource strategy
What are your goals for health and productivity management?
Tomonaga: Health and productivity management is a way of developing the company’s foundations. Focusing on overall wellness—comprising mental, physical, and social aspects—we are advancing health and productivity management based on both individual- and workplace-based approaches. Through these efforts, we seek to prevent health problems, enhance work engagement, and ultimately further our human resource strategy.
Shiraishi: Employee wellness and human capital strategy are profoundly intertwined. I think that health and productivity management must be approached in terms of both work engagement and employee engagement.＊2
In implementing human resource strategy, it is essential to understand the kinds of people that contribute to business growth and the kinds of environments that enable employees to work with vigor, and then align the strategy of the entire SCREEN Group accordingly. The engagement survey launched in 2022 plays an important role in this. The results of the FY2023 (ended March 31, 2024) survey exceeded domestic averages in categories related to well-being and health and productivity management. We believe this is because, thanks partly to the Declaration of Commitment to Employee Health, employees understood the company’s commitment and stance in these areas. We will continue to coordinate with health and productivity management initiatives as we work to further enhance engagement.
At the same time, to create employee-friendly, fulfilling, and sustainable work environments, we will also advance such measures as accommodating diverse work styles and building career development and evaluation systems that encourage employees to take on challenges.
＊2 Employee engagement: A state in which employees understand and personally resonate with corporate goals and are motivated to proactively contribute to their achievement
Tazawa: The two essential elements for realizing high levels of professional fulfillment for employees are employee-friendly work conditions and strong work engagement. Human resources tend to focus primarily on enhancing employee friendliness, meaning that the role of increasing work engagement falls to health and productivity management. For this reason, integrating health and productivity management into human resource strategy is essential.
Current initiatives and challenges going forward
Where do specific wellness measures and strategy currently stand?
Tomonaga: Currently, we are implementing comprehensive wellness education across a wide range of topics to enhance health awareness and health literacy among employees. At the same time, we are advancing data-driven measures based on analyses of health-related KPIs we have designated for our wellness measures. Each employee’s health issues are different, so we strive to tailor our approaches to specific challenges. This has led to improvement in health literacy indicators, as well as increased participation in the wellness programs.
In addition, we have created a set of nine catchphrases aimed at promoting nine types of healthy practices to improve well-being. We have also been trying to find creative ways of lowering barriers that keep employees from developing greater health awareness, such as by creating logo and pictographs for the catchphrases and establishing an internal portal site that offers information on physical and mental health. Rather than imposing new obligations upon employees, we are looking for ways to encourage employees themselves to take the initiative in thinking about their own health challenges and try out new health-related initiatives.
Going forward, what challenges remain in further advancing health and productivity management?
Tomonaga: I would like to create tailored support frameworks for providing the right measures to those who need them in order to better empower employees to take ownership of their health and proactively adopt healthy habits. To that end, we must first strengthen data collection and analysis to better understand what the actual issues are. From there, we can work on developing and rolling out measures.
Tazawa: A crucial aspect of encouraging employees to proactively practice healthy habits is removing barriers while providing motivation and an impetus to get started. Building motivation, such as by offering health checks other than annual health checkups, is especially important. Also, I think that reinforcing measures through a check-act-plan-do cycle, rather than the traditional plan-do-check-act cycle, will be increasingly important in such areas as strengthening data-driven initiatives and advancing appropriately personalized measures.
Shiraishi: As for human resource strategy, I think that a major challenge will be effectively connecting the company’s vision for the future with that of employees. We will work to do this through, for example, engagement surveys and the town hall meetings being implemented in the current fiscal year as part of the corporate philosophy awareness project, in which President Hiroe personally visits Group companies in and outside Japan.
This project also includes workshops targeting junior to pre-management-level employees. One opinion that has come out of these workshops is that the company could be improved if employees in managerial positions spent 10% of their time thinking and talking about what their team members do and what challenges they are facing. As this suggests, I think we will also need to focus on the roles and mindsets of managerial employees as part of efforts to align the aspirations of the company with those of employees.
Hiroe: When we engage in our work with enthusiasm, vigor, and enjoyment, we are able to consistently provide solutions to client. Doing so requires a positive, proactive mindset.
By analyzing wellness data and engagement surveys and through dialogue with employees at town hall meetings, we will strive to identify and then solve issues. I believe that, by doing so, we can better enable everyone in the Group to stay healthy in mind and body so that they can work toward the future, in turn enabling us to provide solutions to clients.
Shiraishi: At the moment, the cafeteria of our Head Office is under renovation. In addition to offering nutritionally balanced lunches, the revamped cafeteria has been thoughtfully designed to be a vibrant, fun space where employees can gather casually throughout the day, fostering interaction across departments, Group companies, and levels. This concept for the cafeteria was developed based on employee requests through discussions between management and project team members from various workplaces. We are confident that, as a place of employee connectivity, it will help give rise to new chains of innovation.
Tazawa: Until now, the typical model of health and productivity management has been for the company to develop measures, which employees then follow. However, just as it is important for individuals themselves to consider how they want to work and what they want to achieve at their company, actively considering how to manage one’s own health is an important part of an individual’s life. Given that importance, for employees to proactively improve their own health, I see a need to shift toward a model in which employees communicate to management the kind of support they need, and management responds accordingly.
Building such a relationship between employees and management through health and productivity management could also positively impact business more broadly by helping develop solution creators who proactively make suggestions to management.
SCREEN’s vision for health and productivity management
What are your aims for implementing health and productivity management as an integral part of human resource strategy?
Hiroe: As I said at the start of this discussion, wellness is the basis for everything else. The physical and mental health of employees is the crucial foundation that underlies business performance and growth. We must therefore seek to practice more sophisticated and effective health and productivity management for the sake of employee well-being as well as to increase our corporate value.
By doing so, we will achieve our 10-year vision of becoming a solution creator and advance onward to the next stage beyond. Approaching these issues from the angles of work, workplaces, facilities, and other perspectives, we will create sustainable environments where everyone can work with health, enthusiasm, and vigor.
External Expert Invited to Today’s Dialogue
Naoki Tazawa
Representative Director
WILLEE Co., Ltd.
Naoki Tazawa is a representative director of health and productivity management consulting company WILLEE Co., Ltd. Based on systematic expertise, WILLEE provides comprehensive support for health and productivity management, from strategy formulation to system operation, measure implementation, effectiveness verification, certification, and external PR, helping companies enhance their corporate value through human capital management.