Translated from 日本語 • View original Introduction
Hello. This is Ishihara, a dread personnel from Colorkrew. Last time, I wrote a blog titled "What is Culture Deck? In it, "Communication is quality × quantity, and we created the Culture Deck this time to improve the quality of communication." This time, I would like to write about what I am currently working on to increase the amount of communication.
Decreased communication due to the coronavirus pandemic
The amount of communication is directly linked to employee engagement. Various papers have verified that there is a high correlation between employee engagement and company productivity. "Engagement" refers to an employee's "attachment", "affection", and "loyalty" to the company. The reason why we can feel these feelings towards our company is because we sympathize with the corporate philosophy and vision, and we have a relationship where we can grow together as one with our colleagues and organizations. And that relationship is not nurtured without communication. In other words, a decrease in communication volume threatens employee engagement and, in turn, corporate productivity.
Now that priority measures such as preventing the spread of the virus have been lifted (as of June 18, 2022), Colorkrew has ended full remote work, and employees living in the suburbs of the company will come to work once a week, and employees living in rural areas will come to work at least once a month. However, compared to before Corona, the frequency of going to work is less than 1/5 by simple calculation.
In order to promote communication between employees, which has become critically declining, we have listed what kind of measures Colorkrew HR is promoting.
These are only measures that we are promoting as human resources. Of course, in addition to the above, various communications are carried out every day for each project, project, and job type.
Here are some of the measures that are typical of Colorkrew from the above list.
Introduction to Communication Measures
Monthly Business Review
Every month, the company-wide performance of the previous month and the results of each business are shared and explained to all employees. Everything from company-wide sales and operating profit, to personnel costs and SG&A expenses for each business, is disclosed. In addition, each business leader carefully explains why such a result was achieved and future plans and prospects. At Colorkrew, "openness" is one of our spirits, and it can be said that it is a measure that embodies exactly that. Since you can ask questions freely, it is a very important measure to ensure highly transparent management.
TGIF
This is a casual meeting where all employees can ask questions directly to Nakamura, the CEO of Colorkrew, about anything. It is held every Friday evening. Recently, many of the new members are foreign nationals, so the event is basically held in English. The questions range from business performance, management strategies, and the ideas behind the system. Since this meeting allows you to understand the current situation of the company, the direction it is aiming for, and the way of thinking, it is held once a month in Japanese for Japanese employees.
All You Can Drink
Colorkrew has a bar called Joyful Studio in the company, and now all drinks are free. You can drink soft drinks for free, as well as craft beer and canned chuhai. It is used for various occasions, such as chatting and having a drink after work, or at a welcome party when a new member joins the team. In addition, it can be used in such a way that all snacks + drinks are free by combining it with another measure, Go to Drink.
What measures will be considered and implemented in the future?
We are feeling the effects of each communication measure, including the measures picked up above, but we are currently considering implementing "measures to supplement communication that have not been covered by previous measures" and "additional measures to further promote each measure".
Power Up Camp
I felt that the measures I had implemented so far had not been able to adequately support communication such as "fully discussing strategies as a team." Of course, each team communicates in their daily work, but I feel that there is a need for a "place to raise the perspective and have a heated discussion" where we can review the situation we are in and discuss whether the goals and systems are really good as they are. Therefore, we are first planning training camps centered on the leadership level and are trying to start measures to actively support them. We hope that by sleeping and eating together in a place that is separated from everyday life and having passionate conversations, each team will become more powerful.
Joyful Friday
Even if all you can drink is free at the in-house bar, it takes courage to go to an empty bar and start drinking alone. Therefore, it is an initiative to communicate with members with little company experience and members of the company's leadership level every Friday in Joyful Studio. If there is an employee passing by while we are having a conversation, we will call out to them and involve them. In the current situation where the frequency of attendance is low, it is very difficult for employees who joined the company during the coronavirus pandemic to interact with other employees, and we hope that this initiative will help onboard such employees.
Conclusion
There is no end to improving communication. In addition, the effects of measures are often sensory, and it is difficult to judge whether they were good or bad. Therefore, it is necessary to visualize and analyze it quantitatively as much as possible. Colorkrew conducts an employee engagement survey every July. The survey consists of about 70 questions and investigates engagement with the company and team from various angles. In this context, we would like to quantitatively understand what kind of communication employees feel is lacking and flexibly consider measures to be implemented in the future.
Also, of course, all measures should be implemented after taking sufficient corona countermeasures. After giving maximum consideration to the safety of our employees, we would like to actively implement communication measures to further improve engagement.
