Our first book has been published
＊This article was originally written in Japanese by our CEO, Yoshihide Arai on his blog.
For the first time ever, we’ve published a book on work engagement.
Thankfully, the requests for publishing a book have continued to come probably because I’ve been posting my philosophy and belief on work for more than a decade.
But until this time I had been hesitating on those offers because it felt like a ridiculous idea that I, just a small company CEO who hasn’t achieved something big enough, publish a book.
However, I’ve changed my mind and decided to write a book.
Recently I’ve been very concerned about the quite low level of work engagement in Japan. Japan is one of the lowest work engagement countries in the world for several decades. Low level of work engagement means less happiness from working and weak motivation for working, which results in low productivity.
Recently the Japanese government has been struggling to improve the situation by issuing new policies, but it surely takes much more time to actually change the situation and it doesn’t seem their policies will be that effective.
This is not an industry-specific issue. This is a nation-wide issue. If we don’t take any action for it right now, work engagement in Japan will never change and Japan will have no other choice but to compromise competitiveness as a nation especially in the business area.
I think that Japanese people have great teamwork spirit by nature. As we’ve seen in the Olympics, Japanese athletes tend to achieve greater results when they perform as a team than when they do individually. We, Japanese people, are originally team-oriented.
It means we have huge potential when organizations can fully utilize work engagement and its members are truly united.
I believe that by making this change happen nation-wide Japanese companies will get more competitive in the global market and hopefully more people can feel happiness from working.
Work engagement is not a temporary buzzword. Actually, it is one of the most important factors to leverage creativity and productivity as a company. Improving work engagement might require companies big structural and cultural changes, but I believe it is the way we should pave.
This is easier said than done. Improving work engagement is so tough for many companies for many reasons. But the most common difficulty is simple: understanding the status quo PRECISELY. That is the reason why we created a service for it last year. That’s wevox.
Now countless companies have been analyzing their situation on wevox. Improving work engagement is now becoming a social movement.
To further this movement, I thought this is the right time to clarify our idea on work engagement and prompt the discussion nation-wide.
All of these were possible thanks to the people who worked with me.
I owed a lot to the cooperation from the co-author Mr. Matsubayashi and the publisher Mr. Takano.
Mr. Matsubayashi is a fellow professor at Globis Business School, who has a specialty in organization theory and employee happiness. His support was truly essential to write this book.
Mr. Takano is a publishing professional at Eiji Press. He said to me, “this publication is not about the sales, it is purely about an initiative to change the work environment in Japan for the better direction.” It kindled a fire in my heart. Thank you very much.
There were many other supports to publish this book. I deeply appreciate all of them.
I believe business organizations exist in the first place to make all the involved people happy. This is my business philosophy. I’ve put all I know about how to do it in the book. I hope it will lead to creating a society where more people can feel happiness in their work.
