ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Keita Ishii, President & COO; hereinafter “ITOCHU”) announced today that it introduced its new Virtual Office initiative in April 2023, which involves employees’ forming teams online across the boundaries between departments to facilitate cross-organizational projects.

　An engagement survey we conducted in December 2021 led us to two major findings. One was the need to share ideas and resources across the boundaries between departments. The organization of our company is structured on divisions, and this has many advantages, such as quick decision making. However, the vertical division of the organization causes the efficiency of the cross-organizational sharing of personnel and resources to be insufficient. The other finding concerns the independence of young and middle-level employees in their pursuit of their own careers and their opportunities to improve. While young and middle-level employees find it very rewarding to independently broaden their careers and obtain opportunities to improve, they feel that their career path choices are limited and that they do not have enough opportunities to become involved in new businesses or challenges unrelated to their job despite their interest in doing so.
　As a solution to these problems, an online organization named Virtual Office has recently been set up. We established the 8th Company in July 2019, and, without conventional product-based departments or sections, we accelerated the integration of industries and cross-company efforts in pursuit of the creation of new businesses based on the market-in mindset. The newly introduced Virtual Office enables employees to, if they wish, spend some of their work hours on projects they are highly interested in or enthusiastic about.

　On a trial basis, Virtual Office was implemented during the three months from October to December 2022 with the goal of verifying its effectiveness. Five projects were created and employees from different backgrounds in terms of gender, place of work, age, job position and other attributes gathered from all across the company to discuss the projects to create new businesses. Despite the trial’s short period, a characteristic of this initiative was the requirement to produce results. Participants were enthusiastic as they voluntarily participated in the projects. Multiple business ideas originated from the initiative, and they are expected to bear fruit in the foreseeable future.
　According to a questionnaire survey of the trial participants, 91% of the respondents found their jobs rewarding for reasons such as their own improvements through Virtual Office and the expansion of their networks beyond the Business Companies they belong to. At first, ITOCHU was concerned about the possibility that the participants’ main jobs would be repeatedly interrupted and overtime would increase. But this rarely occurred thanks to the utilization of bits of time outside the participants core duties and their motivation which continued to be high. The participants’ superiors had similar responses, and we learned that participation in Virtual Office leads to the creation of new value beyond the boundaries between departments, the improvement of employees and greater job satisfaction.
　The initiative will maximize the capabilities of our employees with diverse values. It will also facilitate our endeavors to enhance labor productivity and corporate value challenging but rewarding workplace.