What is the ABeam Approach to Enhancing Employee Engagement? Going Over Our Process and Its Advantages | Insights

As the business environment has undergone rapid change in recent times, many companies have embarked upon a variety of transformations in an effort to adapt to and survive change. Driving these transformations are “human resources.” This has seen “engagement” increase in importance as a management indicator among Japanese companies. Engagement refers to the desire to contribute to the company among employees. It is an indicator that also has a positive impact on things like corporate productivity and customer satisfaction.

In Japan, the Cabinet Secretariat offered engagement as one of the items for which disclosure was desirable in relation to human capital in August 2022. Disclosure of human capital information was then made mandatory for some 4,000 major companies issuing securities reports from the March 2023 quarter in the following year. All of these companies have been called on to take measures to improve employee engagement in an effort to realize human capital management.
Related Insights: What Is Human Capital Management? An easy-to-understand explanation of the background to and advantages of an approach that is in the spotlight, and how to put it into practice and make relevant disclosures

This Insight presents the benefits of improving employee engagement and our approach to achieving this through a series of specific case studies, based on the changes underway in the Japanese labor market.

About the Author

Kazuki Sato

Director
Kiichi Hirota

Senior Consultant

What is Employee Engagement?

To begin with, we will go over how we define employee engagement and terminology for similar concepts, to ground our basic approach to the subject.

Defining Employee Engagement

Employee engagement refers to a sense of attachment to one’s workplace and a desire to contribute among employees. In recent times, it has come to be used by many companies as an indicator of how much employees buy in to corporate philosophy and policy, and how much they take pride in and spontaneously engage in their work.

The word engagement itself carries a variety of profound connotations and associations to ideas such as “marital engagement,” “contracts” and “promises.” Engagement was originally a term used in marketing to express the idea of the “degree of attachment customers feel towards a company.” From there, it was extended and spread as a term referring to the relationship between employees and their companies (see Figure 1).

Terms That Are Easily Confused with Employee Engagement

We will now go over three terms for ideas that are similar to employee engagement.

Employee Engagement vs. Employee Satisfaction

Employee satisfaction is an indicator that refers to how satisfied employees are with things like their workloads, their treatment and their workplace environments. It refers to unidirectional satisfaction with the company in terms of the gap between the anticipated workplace environment and the actual workplace environment on the part of the employee. Employee engagement, however, differs in that it is focused on the bidirectional relationship of the employee’s desire to contribute to the company.

Employee Engagement vs. Loyalty

“Loyalty” refers to the long-term, ongoing connection between employees and the company. Employee engagement, meanwhile, has a stronger emphasis on the idea of a proactive and subjective desire to contribute to the company.

Employee Engagement vs. Employer Branding

“Employer branding” refers to initiatives to improve a company’s brand value as an “attractive employer” and thus attract and retain exceptional talent. Employer branding is not only a means of increasing employee engagement but also helps create a virtuous cycle where strong engagement itself serves to show what is attractive about the company internally and externally, thereby mutually increasing brand value.

What Has Led to the Focus on Employee Engagement?

The idea of employee engagement has spread broadly in America, but, in recent years, the number of companies in Japan employing it as a management indicator has grown, and its importance is on the rise. Let’s take a look at what has led to this (see Figure 2).

The Growing Fluidity of Human Resources

One development that may lie behind the growing focus on employee engagement is the growing fluidity of human resources brought about by changes in the hiring market and in forms of employment as a result of Japan’s aging society with a low birthrate. As the working age population declines, changing jobs and restarting careers has become more common, leading to a greater focus among companies than before on retaining and improving recruitment of exceptional talent. This has accelerated movements to surface and attempt to manage employee motivation and attitudes.

Transition Away from Face-to-Face Communication

Remote work permeated Japan due to the spread of COVID-19 in 2020. Non-face-to-face work styles gave rise of communication deficits. With this leading to a growing sense that there was a risk that employees would feel less invested in their companies, the need to be able to quantify employee motivation grew.

Growing Diversity in Individual Values

In the wake of the changes to forms of employment and transformations of work styles brought about by the COVID-19 crisis, companies have come to more often permit flexible work styles such as remote work and side jobs. Amidst these developments, there has been a rise in the number of employees who find value not only in their treatment at work, but also in things like work-life balance or opportunities to use their skills beyond the company. Engagement surveys have thus grown in importance as a way of ascertaining the increasingly diverse values that employees hold.

Mandated Disclosure of Human Capital Management Indicators

In Japan, disclosure of data related to human capital management was made mandatory for some 4,000 major companies issuing securities reports from the March 2023 quarter. The “Guidelines for Human Capital Visualization,” formulated by the Cabinet Secretariat in August 2022, outlined 19 items across 7 areas where disclosure in relation to human capital was desirable, with one of those areas being engagement.
For investors too, engagement is a key checkpoint. According to a survey released by the Cabinet Secretariat in February 2022 (Secretariat of New Form of Capitalism Realization Headquarters, Cabinet Secretariat, Economic and Industrial Policy Bureau, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, “Basic Materials”), “investment in personnel” is one of the most important pieces of information that institutional investors pay attention to, with the most commonly given reason being “because it allows us to trust in the future viability of the company.” This is because the idea that improving employee engagement directly ties into increasing corporate profits has permeated among investors.

The Benefits of Improving Employee Engagement

What benefits does improving employee engagement have for companies? Traditionally most companies have tended to use “employee satisfaction” as their indicator for measuring how worthwhile employees find their work. Is it really fair to say, however, that an employee with high satisfaction is automatically a high performer?

Recent research indicates that, rather than there being a correlation between employee satisfaction and performance, it can instead give rise to a “employee passiveness.” Given this, employee engagement has come to be seen as increasingly important as a new indicator (see Figure 3). Below, we will now go over three benefits that come from increasing employee engagement.

Reduced Turnover Rate

Improved employee engagement is linked to reduced turnover rates. In the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) “Analysis of the Labour Economy 2019” as well, positive correlations between engagement and both increased new employee retention rates and reduced employee turnover rates were found.

Continuous Growth

Improving employee engagement contributes to increased corporate productivity, which ties into continuous growth. A Gallup survey* found 14-point higher productivity in the top 25% for engagement compared to those in the bottom 25%.

In the MHLW statistics (referenced above) as well, there was a correlation between corporate labor productivity and engagement scores, and employees with high engagement took the initiative in carrying out their work, proactively supporting other members to enable smooth progression. This likely ties into providing higher quality services.

Improved Customer Satisfaction

Improving employee engagement also contributes to improved customer satisfaction. According to a Gallup survey, * customer evaluations were 10 points higher for companies in the top 25% of engagement than those in the bottom 25%. This is because highly engaged employees provide high-quality service, which in turn improves customer satisfaction.

*Source: Gallup “State of the Global Workplace” (2023)

Processes for Improving Employee Engagement

ABeam Consulting provides comprehensive support for improving your company’s employee engagement, covering everything from visualizing challenges, to developing strategies, defining the company’s employer value proposition (EVP), formulating and executing measures, measuring impacts, and promoting these efforts to external parties. Here we will cover our main processes for improving employee engagement, divided across five areas (see Figure 4).

1. Visualizing and Analyzing Employee Engagement

To begin with, it is important to visualize and analyze the present state of employee engagement. Based on an understanding of the business and of statistics, we construct a survey that ties into taking action, and consider suitable platforms. We then extract and analyze the relevant issues based on the results. The key point is to extract only the issues that deserve focus in terms of HR and corporate strategy. While a comprehensive analysis is necessary for understanding the business in comprehensive terms, determining and tackling the top priority issues leads to more prompt and impactful outcomes.

2. Formulating Strategy and Defining the Employer Value Proposition (EVP) in Terms of the Company as a Place to Work

We next seek to define the EVP and formulate a strategy. We position the client’s value proposition in terms of the company as a “place to work” from multiple angles, including the needs of employees and the hiring market, company policies, and competitor measures in this space. Through this process, it is important to extract the strengths of the company from within its value proposition, concentrate on and reinforce those strengths, and to properly promote to employees the company’s orientation towards transformation.

3. Executing Measures Aimed at Changing Company Systems and Employee Attitudes

Following on from the above, we next seek to formulate and execute measures to change systems and employee emotions at the client, in order to close the gap between the status quo revealed through our survey and the company’s EVP. We construct attractive systems in line with clients’ vision for their company and help permeate the EVP among employees. It is also essential to develop communications measures that create positive attitudes among employees. It is unlikely that measures that are uninteresting or unrealistic will be able to draw interest or engagement from employees. Furthermore, making and deploying creative that encourages employees to take ownership of company initiatives and helps to transform employee emotions.

4. Ongoing Monitoring of Impacts

ABeam also performs ongoing monitoring of the impacts of measures after they are executed. For example, suppose one challenge facing a client was to “remove the uncertainty employees faced over their career plans.” We would seek to quantify the increase in the number of employees drawing up career plans. To ensure the measure does not become just another formality, it is also essential to create a cycle of improvement.

5. Appealing to Internal and External Parties (i.e., the Hiring Market, Investors, etc.)

Companies also need to remember to broadcast their initiatives aimed at transformation to internal and external parties. Significant impact comes from giving employees a renewed sense of change in the company by not only broadcasting the brand image of the company as a place to work through in-house media, but also by promoting that image externally using means such as advertising. These measures would also serve as good materials for helping the hiring market and investors determine the corporate value of the company.

Ways of Measuring Employee Engagement

There are several survey methodologies available for companies seeking to measure employee engagement. There are also methods that improve outcomes by implementing these in combination with one another. Below, we present the representative ways of performing such surveys and some examples of questions they would include (see Figure 5).

Engagement Surveys

One way of measuring employee engagement that forms the basis for such efforts in many cases is to conduct an annual engagement survey. An engagement survey poses questions based on employee experience and analyzes elements that impact engagement. The following are some examples of questions such a survey could include. Select answers from among “strongly agree,” “do not agree nor disagree,” or “disagree” for the following.

My work gives me a feeling of personal accomplishment
This company motivates me to contribute more than is normally required to complete my work
I have the authority I need to do my job
I have good opportunities to learn and develop at my company・I believe that positive change will happen as a result of this survey

It is also important to capture trends in companies and individuals by cross-analyzing these surveys in combination with various other surveys aimed at capturing psychological and other characteristics of organizational culture and employees, which we will describe below.

Pulse Surveys

Pulse surveys are surveys that measure engagement monthly or quarterly. They are effective for getting a deeper picture of areas where engagement survey scores are low. They are also positioned as a means of measuring impacts, such as seeing whether companies are taking appropriate action in response to challenges, or whether such actions are having any effect.

The following are some examples that could address challenges to do with career formation.

My superiors help me get a deeper understanding of myself
I am seizing opportunities that lead to growth on my part
The company provides information that is useful for thinking about my own career
I have managed to come up with my career plan
I can visualize the challenges I need to address, for example, the skills I would need to learn, in order to realize my desired career

Surveys like the following are used to visualize the state of individual and organizations, and to get a deeper understanding of where employees are at by combining them with the results of engagement surveys.

360-Degree Feedback and Behavioral Traits Assessments

360 degree feedback and behavioral traits assessments are surveys that let individuals receive feedback from multiple perspectives, including colleagues, superiors and subordinates, in order to understand to what degree they are managing to behave in a way that leads to strong performance.

The main questions are as follows, with responses giving the frequency of the behaviors being asked about.

The person makes decisions in a timely manner
The person demonstrates strong influence
The person treats failures as learning opportunities, rather than attacking people for them
The person promotes workplace safety broadly
The person always treats others with respect even when they do not agree with them

Leadership Style Assessments

A leadership style assessment seeks to classify the leadership of the person in question based on responses to the 360-degree feedback. ABeam Consulting uses its own survey that we have developed to indicate tendencies among each style of leader, and to specifically indicate points to be aware of for each. The questions are the same as those of the 360-degree feedback.

Organizational Climate Survey

An organizational climate survey is a survey developed by ABeam Consulting that deeply probes tendencies in a company’s organizational culture, and surfaces the gap between the company’s vision for its culture and where it is currently at.

The main questions are as follows.

The company immediately takes on new ideas
Employees are expected to achieve a high volume of work in one day
The leadership seeks to manage employee work strictly
The company is very inward looking, and is largely uninterested in social and market trends
The leadership is focused on “tradition” in how it creates and advances work

The Stress Check Program

The Stress Check Program is a test for regularly checking the state of stress among employees, which companies are mandated to perform once per year in workplaces regularly employing over 50 people. Combining engagement surveys with the Stress Check Program can reveal so-called “pre-burnout demographics” of employees, who are both highly engaged and highly stressed, and can be used to perform factor analysis aimed at the ideal state of having employees with high engagement and appropriate stress figures.

The questions mainly cover the following.

I have to do an extremely high amount of work
I have been highly energized over the past month
How easily can you speak to your superiors?
How much can you trust those around you?
Are you satisfied with your work and family environment?

Measures for Increasing Employee Engagement in Organizations

Next, we will present some case studies of specific measures ABeam Consulting has actually undertaken to improve employee engagement at client companies, in terms of their impacts and points to be aware of.

Organizational Leaders Disclose Results and Promote Actions to Their Team Members

It is important for the results of engagement surveys to be transparently disclosed to employees and for them to lead to the promotion of specific ameliorative actions. Disclosing the results of survey to the leadership alone can cause employees to treat surveys as mere formalities, as they will not be able to have any expectations around how their company will change based on their answers, possibly meaning the exercise will lose its very purpose.

In one systems operator, engagement survey analysis reports were created for each department. The company also presented its strengths and the strengths of each of its departments as discovered through the survey in the form of the President’s Message. It gave credit to employees for their daily efforts and, while, at the same time, presented engagement scores for each question. This approach made clear the points to improve in the future operation of the organization. The organizational leaders at each department shared these reports with their team members, formulating and advancing ameliorative actions. Come the following year, this led to a significant improvement in engagement.

Creating Places for Frank Dialogue Between Management and Employees

Companies need to create places for dialogue where leadership can communicate frankly to employees and employees can convey their true feelings to them. Often raised as an issue at companies is an internal mindset of resignation about improvement, expressed in the idea of “even if I speak up, the company doesn’t change.” If employees cannot have any hope that their company or leaders will change, there is likely little hope that their sense of attachment or desire to contribute to the company will improve. It is important for the leadership to take the initiative in listening to employees in order to dispel that the mindset of resignation.

Implementing Career Development Programs That Increase Clarity of Employee’s Personal Career Development Goals

A lack of clarity around career plans on the parts of employees themselves can also be another factor pushing down engagement. Employee careers are a challenge that come up time and again in surveys of employee engagement. If employees lack clarity over their career goals, it is easy to imagine that they will struggle to see how to apply their strengths to their work, that they will lack opportunities to consider how to build relationships with colleagues and clients, and that they will find it difficult to stay motivated in their work. While there are many measures for increasing clarity of employee’s personal career development goals, depending on what step of the process the company is at, it is important to implement centrally managed programs for different measures. We will describe such measures in detail in the next section.

ABeam Consulting has developed and deployed diagnostic and dialogue support tools that serve as starting points for thinking and talking about these issues, with these serving as tools to deepen understanding over what motivates employees to work on the parts of both employees themselves and their superiors. We were also central to helping produce creative contents that engage employees in a fun and positive-thinking manner, and executed measures to change employee emotions, for example, creating tools to diagnose motivation for work in the form of tarot cards, worksheets for deeply probing the results of diagnoses, and creating dice marked with themes that serve as starting points for conversations.

Carrying Out Extracurricular Activities to Recognize a Sense of Achievement in Work

Low engagement among employees who fail to get into their preferred departments is also frequently raised as an issue. In this context, there are also examples where employees can be made to get a sense of what is good about their company’s brand by having them participate in extracurricular activities, leading to a greater sense of fulfillment in their work.

At one manufacturer, there was an issue with employees who, despite having joined the company out of a wish to work in the department responsible for its most famous product, were assigned to a different department, and thus had a lower sense of accomplishment towards the work they were currently responsible for. The company could not simply transfer such employees to their desired departments all at once. The company thus had them take part in planning and running events where they worked with products aimed at children. These employees were able to get a sense of the purpose behind their company’s brand through running these events, contributing to them having improved engagement.

Success Stories in Improving Employee Engagement: Aisan Industry Co., Ltd.

Finally, we would like to present the case of Aisan Industry Co., Ltd. (hereinafter Aisan Industry) as a case study of how ABeam Consulting helped a client improve employee engagement.

Visualization and Analysis

We began by visualizing employee engagement and analyzing the challenges facing the company. Aisan Industry is a manufacturer of automotive components. At the time, the company was in the middle of the transformation of business portfolios from its existing powertrain product business to new business such as electrification system products and clean energy technology utilization.

While the engagement survey revealed high scores for “desire to continue working at the company” and “comfort at the company,” scores related to motivation for work such as “sense of accomplishment” and “transformation” were uniformly low. There was a passiveness rampant among employees, which was revealed to be a barrier to reorganizing the company’s business portfolio. This led the company to realize it should move from transformation aimed at “ease-of-work” to transformation aimed at “motivation for work,” leading it to start on initiatives to improve engagement (see Figure 6).

Formulating the Company’s Positioning as a Place to Work

ABeam next sought to formulate the company’s positioning as a place to work. Based on the results of the employment survey, we charted the needs of workers along the three axes of purpose, career development and innovation, and environment and teamwork.

While the company had a strong position in terms of environment and teamwork, it was in a weaker position when it came to purpose and career development and innovation. This led uso clarify Aisan Industry’s EVP and define the value Aisan offered as a place to work. Three parts to the concept were chosen:“(1) Change in the company starts with you,” “(2) It’s your career, make it about you,” and “(3) End each day with satisfaction.”
The position the company aspired to was defined through comparative analysis with competitors in talent acquisition.

Formulating and Executing Measures

As a measure to turn the mindset of resignation that said, “the company would not change” into a positive expectation that “everyone could change the company together,” Aisan Industry planned “Aisan Katariba” (“Aisan forum for dialogue”) as a meeting place for talks between employees and management (see Figure 7). Such meetings were held more than 150 teams in a year, with over 1,600 participants.
The company adopted a “Collage Talk” method for these talks in order to avoid them becoming a one-way discussion, or from becoming superficial. Employees spoke openly, while enjoying the fresh initiative, about how their workplaces could create “motivation for work,” intuitively choosing images that closely resembled their own ideas, and thus putting into words and expressing their thoughts.
The leadership who hosted the dialogues also received training on how to listen to everyone. This means that the leadership took the initiative in learning how to bring out the true feelings of their employees.

The company also deployed a new career development program, “Aisan Career Canvas,” with a focus on increasing clarity of employee’s personal career development goals (see Figure 8).
The program began with the implementation of a simple diagnostic feature that served to get employees interested in their career stories and inspired them to think about their careers. The feature diagnosed their career values based on their responses to a survey, then provided guidance as to a recommended career story.

The atmosphere at events for employees to discuss their careers can have a tendency to wind up becoming rigid. We thus held workshops where employees could think through careers in dialogue with their team members. To do this, they made use of a Career Trump card game created for this specific program. Each card was marked with a variety of visual representations of values such as “I want to contribute to my organization,” “I value my work-life balance,” and “I want to support someone in realizing their dream.” By repeatedly drawing cards that they valued and then discarding cards until they got to a set number, employees were able to put into words what they wanted to do or what they wanted to become in a gamified manner. The game was thus a means of enabling employees to have fun while also being able to clearly define the core values that they wish to prioritize in their careers.

The above initiatives led to a 3-point increase in employee engagement at Aisan Industry. * Within this, there was a 15-point increase in “items related to the viability of the company” and a 12-point increase in “items related to trust in leadership,” which are standout results.

For further details, see the Case Studies page.

*Source: Aisan Industry, “Integrated Report 2024”

Summary: Seeking Improved Employee Engagement

In this Insight, we have so far presented ways to improve employee engagement. It would be fair to say that the most important driver of such efforts is the mindset of leadership. How seriously leadership takes the results of surveys and whether this spurs them to take material action is a key factor in deciding the success of such projects.
Improving engagement contributes to lowering turnover at companies, and to improving sustainable growth and customer satisfaction. To achieve greater outcomes, it is important for companies to carry out measures through an appropriate process. On top of systems, the key to this is formulating and executing communications measures that inspire employee emotions.

ABeam Consulting provides clients with total side-by-side support for improving engagement, covering everything from visualizing engagement at the company, to extracting key issues, defining an EVP, formulating and executing measures and helping broadcast the appeal of such efforts externally.
We hope to continue to work with our clients to achieve genuine human capital management as a corporate transformation partner.

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