Keywords

1 Introduction

1.1 Background

Telework is being promoted as one of new ways of working recently in Japan. Telework is a flexible way of working to effectively utilize time and place to work without leaving the company such as home or cafe using ICT (information communication technology). The merit of teleworking is that employees are able to save time in commuting and to make it easier to balance work with childcare or nursing care, for employers to spread their risks during disasters, and to lower the turnover rate by optimizing work-life balance And the like. Japan has characteristic problems such as a decrease in the productive age population due to the aging of the birthrate, a commuting rush due to population concentration in the urban areas, and many earthquakes in comparison with other countries, so the introduction of new ways of working should be promoted It can be said. In Japan, the goal of telework dissemination has been set up in the “World’s most advanced IT nation creation declaration public and private data utilization promotion basic law” decided in June, Heisei 30, and introduction of telework is being promoted. [1] In addition, following the success example of avoiding traffic congestion during the convention by incorporating telework at the 2012 London Olympics, it is being promoted towards the Tokyo convention in 2020. However, it is unlikely that it is clearly indicated at what place the business should be performed at the time of introduction of telework, and the user falls into a situation in which it is impossible to see where the business should be performed even if telework is introduced There is a current situation that may not exist.

1.2 Purpose

Therefore, in this research, we aim to clarify the introduction barriers of teleworking that the user has, and to analyze and investigate environmental factors in actual teleworking place. With the increase of choices of workplace, we aim to investigate and research what space is suitable for each work content and if so, if there is space.

2 User Survey on Introduction of Telework

2.1 Survey Method

Survey Purpose

It is the purpose of this survey to obtain opinions on current work style, office and workplace.

Survey Target

Under the cooperation of housing manufacturers, a hearing survey was conducted. We interviewed the current work style and opinion to the workplace based on the fact that free addresses will be introduced to people in work environments where working methods such as teleworking and time saving s are recognized. It was an employee of a house maker, with a total of 24 people, including 14 research workers, 6 projects, 3 management positions and 1 bookshelf. However, since it was a survey at a research facility, it is assumed that there are times when you are engaged in research on other tasks as well.

Process

We divided 24 employees into two groups and hear each hour.

There were two interviewers per group. In the interview contents of the interview, we prepared things related to how to work normally, opinions on new ways of working such as free addresses, flexible, teleworking, and opinions on the current workplace (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.
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Interview scenery

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2.2 Result and Analysis

We classified opinions that actually appeared as positive and negative with respect to introduction of new ways of working. The table below is an example of actual opinion (Table 1).

Table 1 Table 1.
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The negative opinion here is considered to be a barrier in the introduction of new ways of working and the barriers can be classified into “infrastructure improvement”, “communication”, “work efficiency”. Depending on the company and operations, it is considered that some measures can be taken depending on the barrier classification.

3 Survey for Workers on Their Work Contents

3.1 Interview on Work Experience

Survey Purpose

It aimed to clarify the work experience from the aspect of behavior and emotion and to extract intervention points of working way reform by interview.

Survey Target

The survey target was a total of 12 employees of the housing maker. Breakdown was 2 salespeople, product development 2, design 2, construction 2, after-maintenance 2, management 2.

Survey Procedure

First of all, we interviewed each work individually on the work of each industry and the work flow of the day, and the recording person wrote on the UX sheet while listening to the contents of the remarks. The UX sheet is used to summarize the work experience from the aspect of action and emotion in time series, specifically concretely fill the flow of work, place, persons involved, usage, subjective work efficiency, subjective emotional curve After that, it became a group of investigators with 2 to 3 people to be surveyed and conducted group interviews.

Survey Record

For the content of the interview, the investigator fills in the UX sheet on the spot and takes notes as necessary. With survey permitted, recording by voice recording was also done.

3.2 UXmap Analysis

UXmap is derived from the UX curve devised by Kujala et al. (2011) and is a qualitative user aimed at helping to retrospectively report on how and why the user’s experience with the product has changed over time It is one of the survey methods. In the interview, the UX sheet entered with the survey target and the information on the work contents obtained from the interview were summarized as a UX map, and the work experience was visualized (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.
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Examples of UX map created

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3.3 Categorization of Business Contents and Its Mapping

Purpose

UXmap analysis suggested that the way the user searched for depends on the content of the work, and the requirements required for telework were also different.

Therefore, in order to make a telework proposal suitable for the characteristics of each business, it is necessary to first grasp what kind of work is involved and what kind of properties each business is. In this phase, the purpose was to map and categorize tasks based on the nature of work.

Procedure

First of all, I transcribed several tasks listed in the work content item in UXmap as a business scene card. In the card, the contents of rough work, tools used, people involved, and what kind of situation were described (Fig. 3). About 50 to 60 business scenes cards were prepared.

Fig. 3.
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Examples of business scene cards created based on interview contents

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Following the KJ Law, categorization was carried out using a business scene card by three experts. With awareness of the nature of the work, we placed the cards so that similar things are nearby. Each group of cards was categorized and named (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4.
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Categorization and mapping using business scene card

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Result

Analysis by three experts created seven categories. The categories created are “Hearings”, “Negotiations”, “Construction Sites”, “Reports, Consultations and Contact”, “Meetings”, “Inquiries” and “Material creation”. In addition, in categorization, two axes of “diffusion - contraction” and “public - personal” were set as axes characterizing the work properties. In “diffusion - contraction”, focusing on intellectual activities conducted in the work, “information convergence” was set to “converge” and knowledge creative activities to be “diffusion”. “Public - Personal” focuses on differences among people involved in communication and workers involved in the work, “Personal” the work done by individuals, “Public” the work that diplomatically exchanges from customers and stakeholders did.

Figure 5 summarizes the results of categorization and mapping. The contents of each category created are as follows.

Fig. 5.
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Categorization of business contents and its mapping (Color figure online)

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  • Hearing (brown) …It refers to the part that mainly deals with direct customer interaction and listens to customers’ opinions.

  • Negotiation (red) …It refers to negotiating work with real estate and customers.

  • Construction Site (yellow) …On-site witness and inspection work.

  • Report/Contact/Consultation (light green) …Report, contact, and consultation with the people around the boss and the department.

  • Meeting (green) …The vertical axis varies depending on whether the aim is for decision of things, for the purpose of making ideas or discussion on the agenda, or for reporting.

  • Inquiry (blue) …Work to handle correspondence from the outside, mainly telephone/mail correspondence.

  • Material Creation (purple) …The work related to the preparation of documents and various drafts will be relatively personal work.

4 Consideration

From the user survey on the introduction of telework, users’ barriers regarding the introduction of new ways of working can be classified as “communication”, “infrastructure improvement” and “work efficiency”, but there are countermeasures respectively. Although it can be said that the barriers categorized as “infrastructure improvement” are largely dependent on corporate efforts, the barriers classified as “communication” and “work efficiency” are designs of the workplace environment and contrivances between users It can be said that we can hope for improvements by. For example, with regard to “communication”, designing a usual workplace in a low space of thresholds makes it possible to make it easier for workers to speak to each other even if opportunities to work by working way reduction are reduced.

In addition, although it was possible to categorize the user’s work by user survey on the work content, it can be inferred that proposal of workplace and workplace suitable for each job can be made by organizing the trend of work. The work done by one person can be said to be easier to introduce a new way of working compared to the work done by a plurality of people, and among them, the work to be done by a personal computer such as e-mail does not require any specific facilities, and teleworking etc. are carried out It is considered easy.

Together, you can introduce new ways of working that are appropriate for each task. For example, by designing a barrier categorized as “communication” in consideration of “diffusion” and “convergence” of business categorized into “external” when designing space, new work suitable for work It is thought that one’s work place can be proposed.

5 Conclusion and Perspective

From the above two surveys, it became clear that barriers to the introduction of telework are obstructed depending on job type and business content. Also, by investigating, categorizing and mapping the current operations, the tendency of the work content in each task becomes clear, and when introducing a new way of work, we think that it will guide guidelines for working corresponding to each.

In this issue, we conducted independent surveys on “barriers to introduce telework” and “categorization and mapping of operations”, but we wondered if we can tie together based on environmental factors etc. and work on new ways of work suitable for work Whether you can propose Place is a future task.