background

Recently, there has been increased activity in enhancing the governance of public corporations and promoting reforms in work styles.

Public interest corporations have experienced multiple scandals due to governance failures. In recent years, this has caused a decline in public trust and impact on other public interest corporations. As a result, in December 2019, an expert panel on further strengthening the governance of public interest corporations was held under the Minister of Cabinet Office in charge of special missions.

In addition, the Labor Standards Law, as amended by the Law on work style, went into effect sequentially in April 2019. This includes a review of the working hours legislation to protect workers‘ health by preventing overwork and to achieve a diverse work/life balance. This legislation applies not only to general companies but also to public interest corporations.

In response to these changes in social conditions, there is an urgent need to review the way of business operations.

issue

Systemization was necessary to unify operational rules for expense management operations and to eliminate inefficient usage of print media.

In order to review the operations,
it was necessary to resolve the following two issues in the cost management operations.

• 1.Unification of operational rules
  There were many cases and branches that were operating under their own rules, and there was no control over whether they were complying with the rules. If this situation continued, there might be a risk of misconduct due to lack of governance, and immediate review of the rules was necessary.
• 2.Elimination of inefficient paper operations
  The use of large amounts of paper was complicated to manage, as well as postage and paper costs were high. In addition, staff members had to input paper payment documents into the accounting system, which was heavy workload and caused operational inefficiencies.

In order to resolve these issues, the decision was made to systemize expense management operations.

activity

Nationwide unification of operating rules and elimination of inefficient print operations.

In this project, we provided support for systemization. In this process, we took the following approaches.

The specific flow of efforts is shown in the figure below

consequence

The company contributed to eliminating the risk of scandals caused by governance failures and to achieving a better work/life balance.

The project was successfully completed. By systematizing and standardizing the rules of operation based on the rules, the project was able to eliminate the risk of scandals due to a lack of governance, which had been feared. In addition, we were able to create an environment in which people were more aware of the need to comply with the rules than ever before.

In addition, the reduction of unproductive tasks and the reduced workload on staff contributed to the creation of an environment with a better work/life balance, including reduced working hours and increased motivation.
These results have contributed to the creation of an environment that allows them to focus on the essential work that must be done.