Abstract
Employee engagement has become a critical issue in Japanese companies. One way to develop it is to improve the relationship among employees through gratitude expressions. In the post-COVID-19 remote work environment, digital devices are essential. This paper confirms that expressions of gratitude delivered via digital devices enhance the relationship between employees. We experimented in a small-town government office where participants (n = 88) were asked to (1) use the Thanks App, an app we developed to express gratitude, for two months and (2) respond to an engagement survey we developed before and after the experimental period. Through cross-analysis of the data from the app and questionnaire, we found that the “trust in colleagues” factor had a strong correlation (r = 0.80, p < 0.001) with our new index computed by the app’s data. The results suggest that the use of the Thanks App may help visualize the trust relationship among teams. This study has a practical value in providing a new team management tool for visualizing team trust. In addition, it provides a new research method for emotional and social psychology using digital devices.
Highlights
Since Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace Report 2017 pointed out that employee engagement in Japan is far lower than in other countries, employee engagement has been a critical issue for Japanese companies
According to the investigation, when we developed the questionnaire, we confirmed that this factor was significantly correlated with Work fulfillment (WF)
From the findremind-and-bind theory, it is known that gratitude strengthens the relationship
Summary
Since Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace Report 2017 pointed out that employee engagement in Japan is far lower than in other countries, employee engagement has been a critical issue for Japanese companies. In the recently released 2021 edition of the same report, the employee engagement score in Japan worsened by one point. Japan ranked last out of 141 countries, along with Italy and Algeria. The COVID-19 pandemic forced Japanese employees to resort to telework. Telework made it apparent that there are challenges in building trust, employee engagement, or well-being in the work environment without face-to-face communications. Building trust, employee engagement, or well-being in online work became tangible problems
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