AISAN INDUSTRY CO., LTD.

Improved employee engagement through facilitating dialogue and self-directed career development in anticipation of advancing the transformation of business portfolios
Case Study
  • Automotive
  • Human Capital Management

Contributed to strengthening employer branding and human capital management by leading a culture transformation that inspires employee emotions captured as data and integrates effective branding methods

Challenge

  • Rampant “passiveness” preventing the fostering of a challenge culture necessary for promoting the transformation of business portfolios 
  • No dialogue between employees and management due to the top-down culture, which is a factor behind the passive workplace
  • No personal career development goals for employees caused by reliance on the company to lead career development, which is a factor behind the passive workplace

ABeam Solution

  • Undertook an engagement survey and analysis to generate objective numeric data to be able to see and prove the spreading of this passive mindset
  • Company-wide rollout of “Aisan Katariba,” a forum for dialogue between employees and management that incorporates branding methods
  • Company-wide rollout of “Aisan Career Canvas,” a program that promotes employee-led career development and incorporates branding methods

Success Factors

  • Significant improvement in employee engagement - In particular, the positive response score for “trust in management” increased by over 10 points within a year
  • Transformation of communication between employees and management - The workplace atmosphere has changed, with management listening to employee feedback in day-to-day operations by asking for and praising their opinions as well as employees actively sharing what they think
  • Increase in clarity of employee’s personal career development goals - Increased the number of employees who can think autonomously and specifically about career goals upon realizing the values they prioritize in their own career

Client Challenges

How much has the mindset of giving up on improvements due to the belief that the company won’t change shifted to one of hope and expectation for change?

Aisan Industry Co., Ltd.(hereinafter Aisan Industry) is 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. However, the results of an engagement survey first implemented in 2022 highlighted that employee engagement is low. Meanwhile, there is a “passiveness” rampant in which employees wish to remain in their comfort zone and stick with their current jobs. In order to promote the transformation of business portfolios, Aisan Industry urgently needed to eradicate this “passiveness” blocking the desire for challenges and change that is required to facilitate the transformation. In addition, the survey showed that there are very few employees who think that positive changes will occur at the company. Thus, Aisan Industry faces the challenge of how it can change the mindset from giving up on improvements to that of expectation of change.
That is why, due to its extensive experience in both engagement research and analysis, as well as in formulating, planning, and executing strategies for establishing employer branding, ABeam Consulting was chosen as a partner, beginning efforts to improve engagement in 2022.

Insights brought to light from the direction of Aisan Industry’s transformation of business portfolios and the first engagement survey

Key Project Success Factors

Promoting a true employee engagement transformation focused on not only systems but also employees’ feelings

[Establishing a transformation concept that employees can understand, remember, and embrace]
With ABeam Consulting, as a partner,  Aisan Industry began its employee engagement transformation to eradicate the passive work environment. Initial considerations were Aisan Industry establishing an engaging work environment concept together with its employees and positioning it at the center of its activities. 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.” In establishing this concept, ABeam Consulting led discussions so that the client could reach an agreement as a company on how they would make their workplace unique, not only through the analysis of the engagement survey results but also through comparative analysis with competitors in talent acquisition. ABeam Consulting was also central to helping produce creative key visuals, copywriting, and video content so that employees could understand, remember, and embrace the concept.

[Aisan Katariba forum where management listens carefully to what employees really think and engage in dialogue with them] 
 Aisan Industry adopted the concept of shifting from a mindset of resignation, thinking the company would not change, to one of positive expectation, believing everyone could change the company together. To achieve this, we took the simple idea of engaging in open dialogue and got creative to create a forum for management to communicate their ideas and to encourage employees to express their thoughts too. To avoid the dialogue becoming a one-way affair like a recital or a superficial event in which management interrogate attendees, ABeam Consulting helped develop the scheme based on examples of internal communication strategies from a wide range of companies. Furthermore, ABeam Consulting assisted training for management to help them improve their listening skills as the hosts of the dialogue event. As a result, in six months, over 160 sessions were held with over 1,600 people taking part, leading to 70% of employees giving positive responses to the question: ‘Do you agree that Aisan is trying to change to create an engaging work environment for you?’
[Aisan Industry Co., Ltd. – Work Engagement Transformation Project] Learn about the Aisan Katariba program: a forum for dialogue between employees and management (Aisan Industry Co., Ltd. – Official Recruitment Channel)

[Aisan Career Canvas program for employees to take on new challenges by creating their own goals]
 A career development transformation was also planned and deployed to bring to life careers where employees can dream and continue challenging themselves. While the surveys and interviews indicated that there was a lack of career development support, we learned that, even more fundamentally, there were challenges with the absence of clear career goals to guide each employee’s development, as well as a lack of overall clarity in the career development process. Therefore, the new career program concept was made to focus on improving the clarity of career goals. Aisan Career Canvas is a program that helps employees paint a clear picture of the exciting career goals they truly want to achieve. Making full use of career theory and advanced gamification theory, ABeam Consulting assisted the program so that employees could enjoy themselves while thinking of career goals, enabling them to act with them in mind on a day-to-day basis. For example, we incorporated ideas into the program to enable employees to have fun while also being able to clearly define the core values that they wish to prioritize in their careers. We did this by creating a Career Trump card game based on the interview answers of Aisan Industry’s employees.

Engaging work environment concept created by Aisan Industry together with its employees
New methods to encourage communication that conveys the sincerity of management and gets employees to open up for the Aisan Katariba sessions
The Aisan Career Canvas program offers multifaceted support to help employees set their own career goals

ABeam’s Contribution

One-stop support to improve employee engagement

ABeam Consulting not only helped visualize employee engagement but also assisted in all aspects of the project. ABeam Consulting was there to help, whether it be extracting key challenges from analysis of the employee engagement data, formulating strategies to act as the the center of its activities, planning and executing measures from both the system and mindset perspectives to realize said strategies, or establishing an improvement cycle through measuring effectiveness.
As a result, employee engagement improved significantly, and in particular, the positive response score for “trust in management” increased by over 10 points within a year.
As a partner to Aisan Industry, ABeam Consulting aims to continue to contribute to the establishment of a company brand image that is committed to human capital management in the recruitment market and among investors. We will achieve this by sharing information about its three-part concept for an engaging work environment and its related activities with both internal and external parties.


I am extremely grateful for ABeam Consulting for doing their all to assist our engagement transformation head-on as part of our culture reform, which is a mission of the Aisan Industry management team.
Your support is important to us to continue to advance our transformation.

Aisan Industry
Executive Vice President
Shigekazu Kato

Thanks to ABeam Consulting’s highly thoughtful and attentive support of our engagement transformation, we were able to create innovative and highly actionable measures together that we would not have come up with on our own.
I am excited about working together with ABeam Consulting again in the future.

Aisan Industry
Manager, HR Department, Human Resources Infrastructure Division
Yuki Suzuki

Customer Profile

Company name
AISAN INDUSTRY CO., LTD.
HQ Location
1-1-1 Kyowa-cho, Obu-shi, Aichi-ken
Estd.
December 1938
Business
Manufacturing and sales of automobile parts
Capital stock
10,838,000,000 YEN
AISAN INDUSTRY CO., LTD.

Sep 12, 2024

Professionals

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