Central Japan Railway Company

■ A general engagement survey did not fit with JR Central’s needs
JR Central adopted and carried out a general engagement survey in 2023. General surveys, however, are designed based on the idea of problematizing gaps to competitors or on improving low employee satisfaction. For this reason, the survey came up short relative to JR Central’s needs in terms of fitting with its characteristics as a railway business and in terms of contributing to realizing the company’s corporate strategy. This left many employees saying they did not understand the purpose of conducting the survey and that they struggled to understand the substance of it.

■ The need for support from on-the-ground leaders as key people for raising engagement
As part of the new engagement survey, it was important to design a dashboard and put together a manual that let on-the-ground leaders easily access information and read key points, as the survey was premised on using a SaaS in an online environment so that it could be conducted at low cost and efficiently.

■ Independently defining employee engagement indicators that serve as the driving force behind JR Central’s management philosophy of “contribute to the development of Japan’s main transportation artery and social infrastructure” and its business strategy of “reinforcing leadership fitness”
The survey is composed of a part that measures “indicators” of engagement and a part that measures “factors” that correlate with engagement.
The indicators show the degree to which the corporate culture that JR Central wants to foster has been manifested, and are comprised of a general indicator and two individual indicators. The general indicator measures employee identification with the management philosophy, which they should have, and their motivation to work based on said philosophy. The individual indicators envisage there being differences in terms of the situations where each employee will be able to realize the management philosophy, depending on the work they are in charge of. Thus, we set two individual indicators, with the aim being for at least one of them to be high. Individual indicator (1) measures identification with and practice of the company’s mission (safety and service). Individual indicator (2) measures identification with and practice of the culture of taking on challenges while maintaining safe and reliable transportation.
The factors measure employees’ sense of things like the work environment, their superiors and company systems such as the HR system, which impact those indicators. In formulating these factors, ABeam Consulting leveraged the knowledge of our strategic partner Qualtrics, and adopted EX25, their employee experience framework.
This allows on-the-ground leaders, who receive the results of the survey in numeric terms, to understand both the numbers for each indicator, as well as the factors that correlate with those indicators. On-the-ground leaders can thus make it their goals to maintain or improve the general indicator, or individual indicators (1) or (2), or both, in line with the details of their workplace, and focus on the indicators and the factors correlated with them. They can then deepen various on-the-ground activities to achieve this.

■ Building a dashboard that lets on-the-ground leaders easily access the results of analyses and see what challenges need to be addressed
We applied an ABeam Consulting original template to the Qualtrics platform to build a dashboard for JR Central on-the-ground leaders. The system was designed so that the on-the-ground leaders were granted access to the dashboard three weeks after the survey was conducted and could check the engagement survey results for their own workplaces.
The system also divided employee work domains into the operational and clerical, and displayed a dashboard showing the results of a factor analysis for each kind. The system was thus designed to allow users to easily identify factors that should be improved to raise engagement.

■ Building systems to provide on-the-ground leaders with ongoing support
ABeam put together videos explaining the dashboard manual and method of operation, as well as the full workflow from analyzing results to taking action, in order to support on-the-ground leaders, who are the key people in raising employee engagement. We also selected an engagement manager from each department and division. The engagement manager is a partner who works side by side with on-the-ground leaders, and conducts activities aimed at improving engagement in departments and divisions they oversee together with the leaders. The engagement managers thus selected learn practically useful skills in advance through workshops conducted by ABeam Consulting covering everything from analysis methods to approaches to adopt when providing support to on-the-ground leaders. They thus promote self-directed reflection and behavioral improvement on the part of such leaders.

ABeam Consulting carefully gathered information on JR Central’s management philosophy, values, business characteristics, current business strategy and the future corporate culture the company’s leadership aspired to instill. We then provided frictionless support based on this background, aimed at consolidating this by, for example, defining new engagement indicators, building a dashboard, reporting to executives and helping these ideas permeate to people on the ground. We also customized the support we provided by, for example, designing survey questions that were easy to answer, even for employees unaccustomed to such surveys, by building a dashboard that made it easy for  on-the-ground leaders to take action, even if they were not skilled at using IT tools, and by putting together manuals and explanatory videos.
Going forward, ABeam Consulting will provide ongoing support from a standpoint of backing up the JR Central Personnel Department, by, for example, providing advisory services related to internal communications and education in engagement raising activities, providing technical support reflecting systems in line with organizational restructuring and personnel movements, and dealing with issues that come up in conducting annual surveys.

■ ABeam Consulting’s extensive track record of providing an one-stop service for improving engagement
ABeam Consulting provides end-to-end, side-by-side support for improving employee engagement, from designing engagement surveys, to analyzing the results, formulating action plans to address challenges, planning diverse arrays of actions depending on the company in question, executing on those plans, and verifying their outcomes.