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F E A T U R E D A R T I C L E S Improving QoL Where and How People Live

1. Introduction

Th e COVID-19 pandemic is causing a major shakeup in

economies, politics, and value criteria around the world.

Many companies have responded to this uncertain future by

realigning their management objectives, including by mak-

ing the shift to remote working, changing their key product

range, and revising their supply chains. If a company can be

thought of as a large vessel, then the managers tasked with

its steering need their operations to be fl exible and agile.

Achieving this in turn requires that the top-down communi-

cation of management objectives be combined with bottom-

up activity by employees. Th is is because vertically structured

and command driven organizations that work from the top

down lack the ability to respond fl exibly, whereas those that

work the other way around struggle to keep up with the

pace of societal change. In other words, what is needed is an

organization where employees can quickly grasp the objec-

tives being handed down by management and act on their

own initiative to seek out, identify, and execute appropriate

actions based on their workplace knowledge.

Hitachi is proposing a hybrid approach to implement-

ing management objectives that combines top-down and

bottom-up methods that it calls “happiness management”

because of its characteristic of relying on the proactive par-

ticipation of employees. Th is article describes this happiness

management approach and the Happiness Planet solution

that provides the functions needed to put it into practice,

and reports on how it performs in actual use.

2. Happiness Management

Th e three requirements seen as vital for happiness man-

agement are the “breaking down” of objectives (translat-

ing them into a form that is meaningful for employees),

Satomi TsujiNobuo Sato, Ph.D.Keita ShimadaKoji Ara, Ph.D.Kazuo Yano, Ph.D.

While it is the role of management to formulate and pursue objectives for the future of the company, simply announcing these is not enough on its own to gain buy-in from employees. This is a consequence of the inevitable gap between these objectives and employees’ existing work, making it diff icult for them to act on their own initiative. Hitachi developed Happiness Planet as a solution for achieving three prerequisites that it has identified as necessary for achieving management objectives: the breaking down of objectives, proactive participation by employees, and risk monitoring. The solution is made up of a smartphone app for employees and a web application for management. The benefits of the solution have been demonstrated in a public PoC trial involving 4,300 participants across 83 companies and Hitachi now plans to roll out the solution for commercial use.

Happiness PlanetSupport System for Promoting Management Objectives in Partnership with Employees

Hitachi Review Vol. 70, No. 1 074–075 75.

proactive participation by employees, and risk monitoring.

In particular, having employees align with management

objectives in a way that makes them feel motivated and

energized in their daily work are both crucial factors in

whether or not these objectives will be achieved. Th is sec-

tion reviews past research into worker happiness before

going on to describes the happiness management approach.

2. 1Worker Happiness

Th is section looks fi rst at how to express what constitutes

desirable conditions for workers, which is to say feeling a

sense of motivation, considering the indices used to mea-

sure motivation and its component parts (see Figure 1).

Th e fi rst of these is the idea of psychological capital

whereby individuals are possessed of a positive mental

energy. Proposed by a group led by the US management

professor Fred Luthans, this indicator refers to having a

positive attitude toward one’s own self that takes forms

such as self-confi dence and motivation. It has been shown

that corporations staff ed by people with high psychological

capital have higher performance(1).

Th e second is psychological safety, which means hav-

ing confi dence in one’s relationships with colleagues. It

refers to relationships where people feel free to express their

opinions and concerns and has been found in an in-house

survey by Google LLC to be a common factor in successful

organizations(2). Studies by Hitachi have found that positive

relationships with the people around one manifest in the

characteristics of one’s physical movements(3), (4), and that

the social happiness index used to measure this also serves

to quantify this psychological safety.

Th e third concept is that of alignment with management

objectives, meaning employees have a tangible sense that

their work is contributing to the future of the organization

to which they belong.

Employees fi nd it diffi cult to feel motivated if any of

these three elements are missing, diminishing their produc-

tivity and potentially leading to their resignation. Equating

this to worker happiness, the prerequisite of happiness man-

agement is to manage in a way that keeps employees happy.

2. 2Happiness Management Approach

Figure 2 shows a fl ow chart of happiness management, which

pursues management objectives from both the top down and

the bottom up. For simplicity, the organization has been

represented as made up of three layers: senior management,

administrators (middle management), and employees.

First of all, the objectives laid out by management are

broken down by administrators into organizational goals

in a way that is relevant to the issues facing each workplace.

Each morning, the employees decide for themselves which

actions to pursue on the basis of these organizational goals.

Th ey use the app each day to select which actions to take

and participate in measurement of the social happiness

index. Th is information is automatically passed on to the

administrators who use it to provide individualized support

and as a basis for recognition and rewards. An important

point is that this information from the workplace be used

to analyze the outstanding issues that bear upon manage-

ment achieving their objectives so that it can be taken into

account when making decisions on budgeting and per-

sonnel reallocation to support the workplace. Th is avoids

situations where management objectives fi zzle out, instead

getting them achieved through practices that take account

of the actual situation in the workplace.

Two features of this approach are: (1) employees choose

what actions to take for themselves, and (2) IT is used to

communicate the issues and needs of the workplace back

to administrators and management.

For the former, an “action” is something that explicitly

indicates how to go about the day’s work. While possible

examples might range from simple actions such as “smile

I have a positive attitude of belief in my own capabilities

awattitude

wn

Positive attitudeSelf-confidence and motivation

I have a tangible feeling that my work is contributing to the future of the company

Engagement and purpose

I feel confident from being part of a team

Trusted and frank

Psychologicalcapital

Trustedrelationships

Psychologicalsafety

Sharing vision

Alignment with management

objectives

Figure 1 — Worker HappinessA summary of past research indicates that feel-ing a sense of motivation equates to sharing the organization’s vision while experiencing both a positive attitude and trusted relationships. There is a need to manage organizations in a way that keeps employees in this state.

76.

when greeting colleagues” to more diffi cult actions such as

“present to customers with overseas deployment in mind,” in

all cases an action is a verbal expression of how employees

should go about the tasks they recognize as making up their

daily work, one that has been reinterpreted in a way that

aligns with the organizational goals. Past management was

frequently based on superiors instructing their employees

on what to do. Th e problem is that the people who under-

stand the situation in the workplace best are the employ-

ees themselves. Moreover, employees are more likely to be

enthusiastic about activities for which they are internally

motivated. Th is makes it desirable for employees to decide

for themselves how to go about their work. On the other

hand, because changes in management objectives can shift

the basis on which past work has been undertaken, they can

cause workplaces to temporarily get out of sync, increasing

the risk of stress or miscommunication. Th is creates a need

for appropriate support to be provided to employees while

also monitoring their circumstances and concerns. Th e roles

of administrators, then, are to take corrective action should

the way employees go about their actions get signifi cantly

out of step with the goals, to use rewards and recognition

to motivate employees, and to off er individualized support

when monitoring indicates heightened risk.

With regard to (2), the use of IT to provide feedback

to administrators and management, the information that

employees enter into the app is extremely useful for under-

standing what is happening in the workplace. While many

companies already use employee questionnaires or satisfac-

tion surveys, because these tend to be conducted at yearly

intervals, they can only be interpreted in retrospect and are

diffi cult to put to use in the achievement of management

goals. Use of IT, on the other hand, means that the daily

record keeping of employees can be put to timely use as

monitoring information.

In this way, the proactive participation of employee is the

key to happiness management and should lead to the rapid,

fl exible, and reliable achievement of management objectives.

Th ere are a wide variety of management objectives

to which happiness management can be applied, such

as onboarding of new recruits or an interdepartmental

approach to sales from a customer standpoint. Th e example

used in Figure 2 is a shift to working practices based on

remote work. Th e COVID-19 pandemic has prompted

a decision by Hitachi to make widespread use of remote

work(5). With the shift from traditional offi ce work toward

a central role for remote work having been forced upon

the company, workers and administrators have experienced

some confusion in the process of adopting the new practices.

As an example, the following section tells a story from the

perspective of the people involved. For ease of understand-

ing, some fi ctional material has also been included.

2. 3Example

Having made the transition to remote work in response to

management objectives, issues arise with employees being

unsure about when they are meant to consult with their

seniors and experiencing concerns about duties not being

allocated in a balanced way. Th e hypothesis is that this is

High level of employee concern regarding training of new recruits, fall in happiness in support departments

Use of groupware, assignment of more personnel to support

departments

Use action statistics to review level of achievement and understand

employee concerns

Use management tool to identify high-risk personnel

and organizations

Recognize employees who have undertaken

unique actions

Listen to concerns and adjust work allocation

Plan for today: Hold study session for new recruits

How are you feeling today: A bit short of sleep

Hold small daily information sharing sessions

Diminished communication within team

Example: Shift to working practices based on remote work

Management

Administrators

Employees

Formulation of management objectives

Survey workplace issues

Break down into organizational goals

Daily actionSelect, share, perform

Social happiness index measurement

Performed as part of daily routine

Targeted support Recognition and rewards

Analysis of outstanding issues

Achievementmonitoring

Happinessmonitoring

Budgeting, human resources allocation

Figure 2 — Happiness Management ApproachA feature of this approach is that it works from both the top down and the bottom up. The key is for individual employees to select for themselves which action they want to perform, taking into consideration their work for the day and the organizational goals. This ensures that management objectives permeate all corners of the organization and are carried out in a way that suits the particular circumstances of each workplace.

Hitachi Review Vol. 70, No. 1 076–077

F E A T U R E D A R T I C L E S

77.

due to a lack of sharing of the sort of minor information

that does not meet the threshold of being part of formal

reporting, such as trivial concerns or the sense of how well

things are going that naturally gets passed on through

casual conversation. Accordingly, holding brief daily gath-

erings to consult about these minor issues is set as one of

the organizational goals. As a result, the list of actions that

employees can choose from each morning include such

options as announcing what work they have planned for

the day or telling people how they are feeling or about an

interesting book, allowing for comments to be entered in

the manner of casual chat. Th e aim of this is to improve psy-

chological safety within the team, creating an atmosphere

where it is easy to raise matters with other people. To allow

for monitoring, employees also keep their smartphones in

their pockets so that these devices can measure the social

happiness index. Th e collated records of this are reported

to administrators and management to facilitate the early

identifi cation of people or groups at high risk as well as the

understanding and support of workplace needs.

3. Happiness Planet

Happiness Planet is a solution that supports happiness man-

agement. Th is section describes the associated application.

3. 1Application for Employees

Figure 3 shows the application that employees use to enter

and view information(6). Th e organizational goals derived

from management objectives are shown in large text at the

top of the screen. Each morning, employees select which

action they want to perform while thinking over their

work for the day. Functions include earning points in the

app, sharing comments with other team members, and the

anonymous passing on of thanks, with the aim of improv-

ing worker happiness being an objective of its design. It is

hoped that with extended use the app will help to boost

psychological capital and the team’s psychological safety.

Th e function for measuring the social happiness index also

presents employees with their own daily score on the index.

Th is score value is only visible to the person concerned,

with administrators and management only having access to

combined scores at the organizational level or for specifi c

choices of action.

3. 2Management Tool for Administrators

Figure 4 shows an example screenshot from the manage-

ment tool that administrators can use to check what is

happening in the workplace (a web application on a per-

sonal computer browser). Th e psychological weather chart

translates the situation for employees into numerical values

that express stress risks in the form of a weather report. As

noted earlier, the social happiness index is not the person’s

subjective happiness but rather represents the positivity of

their relationship with those around them. When this is used

in a statistical manner to collate a social happiness index for

a number of colleagues with close relationships, it becomes

possible to express the positivity of an individual’s situation

as a number. Th is result is then displayed in the form of a

Share selected actions on timeline

Announce today’s action, earn points in app

Select from a list of actions based on organizational goals

Measure by carrying smartphone in pocket and provide benefits of performing action as feedback

Establish a new team

Onboarding program for new recruits

Start measuring

Number of people

150 10

Try working somewhere a little different

Stay on track even when stressed. This keeps you moving forward even when you can’t see where you are going.

Teams

Establish a new team

Onboarding program for new recruits

Number of people

150 10Teams

Vision-oriented Proactive Foster empathy Social happiness index measurement

Time line

Alignment with management objectives

Improve psychological safety

Improve psychologicalcapital

Feedback using objective indices

Review artificial intelligence case studies

Whole-body awareness and progress of nearby movement

Challenge undertaken.Message received. Message received …

Matsumoto Happiness temperatureLV. 39

Hanako

Become a pirate king!

LV. 25

Negotiator

Measurement duration: 1h 30m

Recommendation rating (happiness benefit)

(out of 125)50%

4%15%

6%20%

54321

134

Change onprevious

Kohapi points124Report: Started researching on the web. Next step is to go and talk to people.

Report: Thinking about new product ideas in the morning when I have a clear head. Before starting on my e-mail.

Look for ways to help teamSubmitted new challenge.

YujiLv.39

Think of a new idea first thing in the morningAnnounced challenge.

Kathy Tucker

Activity

Everyone Teams

Log Challenge Program

30 minutes ago

40 minutes ago

30 minutes ago

Lv.39

Taro HitachiLv.39

Recommendation for cases like this:• When you want to adopt a wider perspective• When stuck for ideas

Utilize opportunities for people to get together and share their wisdom

Now that work is just getting started, take a look at the big picture

Recommended challenge

Activities for Jun. 28

No. of declarations

# Communication # Teamwork

Figure 3 — Happiness Planet ApplicationThe screenshots are from the smartphone application used by employees. By facilitating the selection, sharing, and reporting of a daily action, the applica-tion provides the core functions for improving worker happiness. It also provides feedback, using an accelerometer to measure the social happiness index.

78.

weather report icon for sun, cloud, or rain. Th e variation over

time is also shown as a trend chart enabling the early iden-

tifi cation of subordinates whose situation is deteriorating.

Th e happiness characteristics map for an organization

shown in Figure 5 provides a graphical means of compar-

ing organizations in terms of the two axes of psychological

capital and psychological safety, the two aspects of worker

happiness from Figure 1 that allow for such comparison.

Organizations that perform highly on these two scores

can be thought of as being in good psychological condi-

tion to take on new challenges, with individual employees

experiencing both a positive attitude and trusted relation-

ships. Th e graph on the right of Figure 5 also shows an

example of the changes that accompanied the introduction

of a management objective (in this case, remote work) in

diff erent departments. A sudden change in management

objectives tends to place a burden on certain employees and

departments. In this example, the changes in the fi nance

and administration departments were in an undesirable

direction (toward the bottom left), indicating a need to

prioritize support for those areas.

Happiness Planet for Managers

Logged in

Name (roll call order) ▼ Local weather ▼ Change ▼

Data: As of Wed. Jan. 8, 2020

Wed. Jan. 8, 2020

* Social happiness index for colleagues (mean value for this person’s colleagues over preceding two weeks)Tanamari

Mariko Tanaka

SuzukiChihiro Suzuki

HayashiTakahiro Hayashi

TsudaTomoyuki Tsuda

MatsutaroTaro Matsuda

Taro Matsuda

KurobeeYasue Kuroda

OperatorTaro MatsudaExplorer

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31January 2020

1 2 3 4 5 66.0

6.5

7.0

7.5

8.0

8.5

9.0

9.5

10.0

7 8

Chihiro SuzukiMoodmakerTomoyuki Tsuda

NegotiatorMaho Takada

BalancerYu Sasaki

No responseHisashi Katsuta

8.8°H

8.1°H

8.1°H7.2°H

Local weather (psychological weather*)

Your subordinates (8 people)

* Colleagues chosen by this person as people with whom they work closely (selected on November 30, 2019)

Characteristics of nearby people

10.1 °H

7.2°H

7.7°H

Figure 4 — Psychological Weather Chart (Management Tool)The chart provides a weather report on how employees are getting on. On the basis of social happiness index statistics from a group of people who are closely involved with one another at work, the chart shows fine weather when relationships with others are positive and rain when negative. This provides early warning of when subordinates are in need of support.

Psychological state in which people feel uncertainty, having a positive attitude but having yet to establish trusted relationships with those around them

Psychological state in which people feel disempowered, lacking a positive attitude and having yet to establish trusted relationships with those around them

Psychological state in which people feel passive, having trusted relationships with those around them but not themselves having a positive attitude

Prior to remote workAfter remote workintroducedOther companies

Psychological state in which people feel engaged, having a positive attitude and trusted relationships with those around them

= ongoing happiness

24

22

20

18

16

14

12

1050 60 70 80 90 100 110

Uncertainty Engagement

Passivity

Uncertainty

Disempower-ment

Engagement

Passivity

SalesDevelopment

Administration

Psychological safety (social happiness index)

Changes in company’s happiness characteristics

Finance

Positive attitudePsychological capital

Trusted relationshipsPsychological safety

Psychologicalcapital

Figure 5 — Map of Organization’s Happiness Characteristics (Management Tool)The map shows a graph of psychological capital plotted against psychological safety on which anonymized data from other companies has been super-imposed. The ideal is to make changes that shift people toward the “engagement” square at the top right. The map provides a way to identify early on which departments need assistance with the process of implementing management objectives.

Hitachi Review Vol. 70, No. 1 078–079

F E A T U R E D A R T I C L E S

79.

4. Performance in Practice

Hitachi has already demonstrated the benefi ts for psycho-

logical capital in a public proof-of-concept (PoC) trial using

the Happiness Planet app for changes in working practices

that involved 4,300 participants across 83 companies(7). As

shown in Figure 2, the key to success with management

objectives lies in proactive participation by employees. Th e

results of the PoC indicate that the game-like format of

the app and its functions for encouraging easy interaction

between those involved have succeeded in achieving just

that, with a majority of participants responding that they

were “happy”(6). Th e solution has now started to be rolled

out to a number of companies as a commercial service for

pursuing management objectives, where it is being used for

purposes such as getting new recruits onboard or improving

sales performance. A new company, Happiness Planet Ltd.,

was established in July 2020 with plans to expand delivery

of the service more widely(8).

5. Conclusions

Th is article has described an approach to achieving manage-

ment objectives that works from both the top down and the

bottom up. A feature of this approach is that employees

feel a sense of motivation as they participate proactively in

putting management objectives into action. Hitachi devel-

oped the Happiness Planet solution, which is equipped

with the functions needed to achieve this, including the

app for employees and management tool for administra-

tors described here. Hitachi intends to continue developing

this business with the aim of creating a society in which

everyone working amid a whirlpool of great change can feel

motivated to put their capabilities to good use.

References1) F. Luthans et al., “Psychological Capital and Beyond,” Oxford

University Press Inc., New York (Mar. 2015).

2) C. Duhigg, “What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team,” The New York Times Magazine (Feb. 2016), https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html

3) K. Yano et al., “Measuring Happiness Using Wearable Technology,” Hitachi Review, 64, pp. 517–524 (Nov. 2015).

4) S. Tsuji, et al., “Eff ect of Personal Data Aggregation Method on Estimating Group Stress with Wearable Sensor: Consideration of Group Dynamics in Workplaces,” 2017 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC), Banff , AB, pp. 1523–1528 (Oct. 2017).

AuthorsSatomi TsujiCenter for Exploratory Research, Research & Development Group, Hitachi, Ltd., Happiness Project of Future Investment Division, Hitachi, Ltd., and Happiness Planet, Ltd. Current work and research: Service development of Happiness Planet. Society memberships: The Academy of Management (AOM).

Nobuo Sato, Ph.D.Center for Exploratory Research, Research & Development Group, Hitachi, Ltd., Happiness Project of Future Investment Division, Hitachi, Ltd., and Happiness Planet, Ltd. Current work and research: Development of measuring technology and business start-up of Happiness Planet. Society memberships: IEEE, The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE), and the Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ).

Keita ShimadaCenter for Exploratory Research, Research & Development Group, Hitachi, Ltd., Happiness Project of Future Investment Division, Hitachi, Ltd., and Happiness Planet, Ltd. Current work and research: Development of IT platforms of Happiness Planet.

Koji Ara, Ph.D.Intelligent Information Research Department, Center for Technology Innovation – Artificial Intelligence, Research & Development Group, Hitachi, Ltd., Happiness Project of Future Investment Division, Hitachi, Ltd., and Happiness Planet, Ltd. Current work and research: Business start-up of Happiness Planet. Society memberships: IPSJ and the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI).

Kazuo Yano, Ph.D.Hitachi, Ltd., Happiness Project of Future Investment Division, Hitachi, Ltd., and Happiness Planet, Ltd. Current work and research: Business start-up of Happiness Planet. Society memberships: IEEE Fellow and member of IEICE, the Japan Society of Applied Physics (JSAP), the Physical Society of Japan (JPS), and JSAI.

5) Hitachi News Release, “Promoting Work Style Reforms with Telecommuting as a Driver of Change” (May. 2020) in Japanese, https://www.hitachi.co.jp/New/cnews/month/2020/05/0526.html

6) N. Sato et al., “Enjoyably Sustaining Motivation for Work Style Reforms through Digitalization,” Hitachi Review, 67, pp. 682–687 (Oct. 2018).

7) Hitachi News Release, “Confirming the Eff ect of Increasing ‘Psychological Capital’ as a Measure of ‘Confidence in Work’ and ‘Work Motivation’ of Workers Utilizing the Smartphone App ‘Happiness Planet’ Supporting Work Style Reform” (Nov. 2019) in Japanese, https://www.hitachi.co.jp/New/cnews/month/2019/11/1115.html

8) Hitachi News Release, “Established a New Company based on ‘Dejima’ approach, which Aims to Create New Industries with Technology for Visualizing Happiness” (Jun. 2020), http://www.hitachi.com/New/cnews/month/2020/06/200629.html