Iwata Chizaki Inc.

Iwata Chizaki, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2022, is one of the largest general construction companies in Hokkaido. With a broad presence not only within Hokkaido but across Japan, and with operations overseas as well, the company has pursued its mission—“To contribute to the creation of a reliable and enriched social environment”—through the development of social infrastructure. “Reliable” reflects the company’s commitment to sincere and steady craftsmanship that supports people’s safe and comfortable daily lives. “Enriched” embodies its determination to take on regional challenges head-on and to enhance value for all stakeholders in the spirit of sanpō-yoshi (benefiting all parties). Backed by this mission, Iwata Chizaki’s high level of technical expertise and proposal capabilities has earned strong trust from society at large.

At the same time, results from an employee engagement survey brought to light challenges related to ways of working and communication, suggesting that an organization-wide response is essential amid environmental changes such as tighter overtime regulations and increasing workloads accompanying business expansion. Sustainable value creation is underpinned by people, and construction management engineers in particular are central to the company’s value proposition, as they ensure safety, quality, schedule, and cost control. It was therefore broadly recognized internally that an inadequate response to these changes could lead to declines in both engagement and technical capabilities, potentially hindering the company’s ability to fulfill its core mission.

Against this backdrop, Iwata Chizaki selected ABeam Consulting as its partner, drawing on ABeam’s proven track record of providing end-to-end support—from strategy formulation through implementation—to achieve both higher on-site technical capabilities and stronger engagement. In June 2024, the company launched a company-wide organizational transformation initiative involving both leadership and on-the-ground employees.

Under the leadership of ABeam Consulting, the company advanced and implemented the following initiatives.

Identifying “building a mechanism to expand the capacity for training on-the-ground employees” as a material human capital issue, and launching a development reform driven jointly by leadership, field employees, and office staff

The employee engagement survey revealed significant variation in development opportunities and employees’ perceived growth among on-the-ground employees. In response, as the company pursued company-wide transformation, the leadership team recognized the need to transform themselves and engaged in extensive discussions around the company’s MVV (Mission, Vision, and Value) to reaffirm its roots and clarify its future direction.

In formulating the human capital strategy, the company emphasized alignment with the business strategy and examined how to focus limited resources on priority areas. As a result, it identified “building a mechanism to expand the capacity for training on-the-ground employees” as one of its prioritized material human capital issues. Thoroughly analyzing and debating the issues based on the MVV, while also considering changes in the internal and external environment, and shaping the agenda in a way that enabled company-wide buy-in became the first step of the development reform.

Establishing a new organization-wide model to support “teaching and learning” as an urgent priority

Due to tighter overtime regulations and the need to respond to increasingly diverse employee values, managers on-site—those responsible for teaching—found it more difficult to conduct traditional on-the-job training (OJT), and even the time available for teaching itself became constrained. As a result, the situation grew more serious: “employees find it hard to grow, and managers struggle to develop them.”

Against this backdrop, the company clarified its desired future state as one in which managers, team members, and office staff think together, support one another, and learn from each other, based on the idea of strengthening not only managers’ mindsets and behaviors but also those of employees being trained, and having office staff provide close, hands-on support to field managers and their teams. To bring this vision to life, leadership, on-the-ground employees, and office staff held extensive discussions and prepared OJT manuals for field managers and their team members, as well as an office staff support manual, thereby aligning mindsets and behaviors related to their roles in people development.

Establishing a mechanism to “grow” the manuals by refining them through use in the field

The OJT manuals and the office staff support manual were positioned not as “one-and-done” documents, but as living tools to be improved through real use on-site. The manuals are operated on the premise that they will be continually refined through dialogue between on-the-ground employees and office staff. By repeatedly improving the manuals based on clearly verbalized development know-how, the company enabled the accumulation and deployment of previously individualized knowledge across the organization.

ABeam Consulting provided end-to-end support—from conducting the employee engagement survey and formulating the human capital strategy to supporting implementation on the ground. To deliver tangible results, the project went beyond design support and placed emphasis on ensuring genuine ownership and action by those involved, engaging leadership as well as field and office staff from the earliest stages.

Specifically, ABeam worked with leadership to clarify the company’s future direction through discussions on the MVV (Mission, Vision, and Value). ABeam also visualized on-the-ground realities through a survey of several hundred younger employees and interviews with dozens of employees, creating an environment in which leadership, field employees, and office staff could discuss issues on an equal footing. By fostering a shared understanding of the challenges and enabling fact-based decision-making, the company built momentum to drive transformation. No matter how strong a strategy or set of measures may be, it will not translate into practice without buy-in from the owners responsible for execution. For this reason, the project deliberately embedded mechanisms to foster motivation and commitment during the strategy formulation and measure design phases.

Within the human capital strategy, the team refined and articulated a material human capital issue—“building a mechanism to expand the capacity for training for on-the-ground employees”—from both top-down and bottom-up perspectives to increase specificity. In terms of measures, the company prepared OJT manuals for field managers and their team members, along with an office staff support manual, to make new values and ways of working explicit and actionable—thereby aligning mindsets and behaviors related to their roles in people development and enabling each stakeholder group to act with a sense of ownership. True organizational transformation has only just begun. ABeam Consulting will continue to work side by side with Iwata Chizaki as its partner in pursuing the company’s mission.