Implementing the organization’s PDS cycle to improve engagement directly linked to corporate growth

Business overview

Mr. Moriyama:
Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance began as Tokio Marine Insurance Company, Japan’s first insurance company, founded in 1879. With over 200 locations nationwide, it has grown to become the largest non-life insurance company in Japan.

Today, the company offers a wide range of services, including non-life insurance for individuals and corporations, customized risk consulting, and collaborative business creation with client companies leveraging our own assets.

Behind the introduction of Motivation Cloud

Mr. Moriyama: 
We’ve long recognized engagement as a key factor in the relationship between the organization and its employees. In our business, which handles intangible products like insurance, we believe that the driving force behind our success ultimately lies in our people. We firmly believe that the job satisfaction of each employee is directly linked to labor productivity and sustainable corporate growth.

As the labor market evolves and the number of employees with diverse values grows, managing teams has become increasingly challenging, especially with the rise of remote work due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

We decided to introduce Motivation Cloud to improve engagement because we felt the need to establish a system that enabled us to understand the organizational health from a bird’s-eye perspective and make improvements, rather than relying on each manager’s capabilities or experience.

Although we’ve conducted employee surveys for many years, we’ve found it difficult to determine what actions we should take and how much we should do to address the issues we identified.

With Motivation Cloud, organizational issues and areas in need of improvement are clearly identified with scientific evidence. And the ability to view each item through the dual axes of employee expectations and satisfaction provides a fresh and convincing approach, which ultimately convinced us to adopt the system.

The value of Motivation Cloud

Mr. Moriyama:
We’re convinced that the hypotheses we had about our organization were not wrong. Moreover, we’ve gained new insights.

For example, some of the items we had hypothesized as potential issues turned out to have low employee expectations, meaning they were, in fact, low-priority issues. These findings were made possible because we were able to measure both employee expectations and satisfaction through Motivation Cloud. Looking ahead, we plan to continue accumulating data to improve the accuracy of our analysis.

Another advantage of Motivation Cloud is that it enables us to gather data not just on overall company trends, but also across various segments, such as organizational hierarchy, departments, and gender. For instance, it’s easier to analyze trends by segment, like looking from the perspective of promoting women’s empowerment within the company.

Ms. Ishizaka:
I was in charge of the employee awareness survey that we previously conducted, and I could clearly see the differences between the past survey and Motivation Cloud. First of all, the previous survey was based on our proprietary system, which involved a lot of complicated manual work, and it took quite a long time to share the results with everyone in the field. Motivation Cloud, on the other hand, is very user-friendly, and the results are available immediately after the survey has been completed. The speed of the survey and the effort required have changed dramatically.

Additionally, the previous survey only measured satisfaction, so it was difficult to pinpoint the specific issues that we needed to address. But with Motivation Cloud, we’re able to view results along the two axes of expectation and satisfaction, which makes it much easier to understand what the issues are.

More than anything else, I find the Focus Survey feature (surveys conducted monthly or weekly on specific areas for improvement) to be very useful. It allows each department to focus on particular issues, track the actions they’re taking, and visualize the impact of those actions. For those of us in HR, we can now monitor everything in real-time, which makes it a very effective and easy-to-use tool.

What we hope to achieve through Motivation Cloud in the future

Mr. Moriyama: 
In the process of introducing Motivation Cloud, Link and Motivation provided our executive board with an explanation of the survey and it was clear that our management team had high expectations for this initiative.

Our leadership places importance on improving employee engagement, and they are trying to communicate their vision from the top to the entire organization regarding what they aim to achieve through this survey.

As the HR team, rather than simply conducting surveys with no clear objective in mind, in response to the needs of our frontline workforce, what we feel to be of primary importance is ensuring that each employee finds purpose and fulfillment in their work, even with the new ways of working.

Mr. Matsuo:
I think one of Motivation Cloud’s greatest strengths is that it can help HR, managers in the field, and team members share a common understanding of issues. Having conducted the survey, I feel we’ve gained clarity on the issues that each department faces, which has led to a change in the atmosphere within the company.

Looking to the future, what’s important is how we approach and address these issues. As for us in HR, we plan to leverage Motivation Cloud as a valuable tool to effectively communicate with those working on the front lines.

Mr. Moriyama:
Clearly, simply conducting the survey once isn’t enough; the key is to use the PDS (Plan-Do-See) cycle for continuous organizational improvement to increase engagement as part of a sustainable initiative. We’re already implementing measures to address organizational issues and will take the results of the next survey and work steadily toward becoming a better company.

※Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Co., Ltd. was awarded 2nd place in the large enterprise category at Link and Motivation’s “Best Motivation Company Awards 2021.”