How a Japanese manufacturing concept could add value to hybrid working

As employ­ers and employ­ees alike adjust to hybrid work­ing pat­terns, many have found it chal­leng­ing to strike the right bal­ance between home office and head office. While many peo­ple have enjoyed the flex­i­bil­i­ty offered by this mod­el, there are fears that it’s hav­ing a detri­men­tal effect on cul­tur­al cohe­sion.

Sun­to­ry, the 123-year-old Japan­ese con­sumer goods com­pa­ny best known in the UK for drinks brands Lucozade and Ribena, has added a third place of work to the mix. Its sub­sidiary in the UK and Ire­land, Sun­to­ry Bev­er­age & Food GB&I, is ask­ing its staff to work three days a week at home and two days at HQ — one of which can be in gem­ba. 

The con­cept, which trans­lates rough­ly as ‘the true scene’, refers in this con­text to the loca­tion where real val­ue is cre­at­ed. 

The term has its roots in the kaizen (’change for the bet­ter’) approach of con­tin­u­ous improve­ment that was pop­u­larised by Toy­ota, a lead­ing expo­nent of so-called lean man­u­fac­tur­ing. Senior exec­u­tives at the auto giant are encour­aged to under­take ‘gem­ba walks’, in which they step away from their desks and vis­it the fac­to­ry floor to under­stand the prob­lems fac­ing assem­bly-line work­ers and seek out poten­tial improve­ments. 

Sun­to­ry has picked up this method and tak­en it sev­er­al steps fur­ther. Unlike Toy­ota, it requires its entire 700-strong work­force, not just senior man­agers, to prac­tice “pur­pose­ful gem­ba”.

The firm’s COO, Car­ol Robert, explains: “For us, this is real­ly about being where the action is hap­pen­ing. For some employ­ees, that might mean talk­ing to peo­ple on the fac­to­ry floor, or it might even mean fol­low­ing shop­pers at the super­mar­ket shelves.”

An early warning system

Robert reports that con­sumer behav­iour has changed rad­i­cal­ly over the course of the Covid cri­sis, which means that it’s become more impor­tant than ever for the busi­ness to keep abreast of their evolv­ing pref­er­ences. 

“Being clos­er to shop­pers enables us to be more agile and adapt more quick­ly to changes in our mar­ket,” she says. “Sim­i­lar­ly, the peo­ple work­ing at our fac­to­ries can inform us which lines are run­ning well. They’re able to tell imme­di­ate­ly whether a prod­uct is going to be a hit or not, even before we have the sales data.”

Robert’s own day in gem­ba this week involved vis­it­ing super­mar­kets and con­ve­nience stores to see whether Suntory’s com­peti­tors had any­thing new on their shelves and, if so, how these were sell­ing. She says that she will always pick up “nuggets of infor­ma­tion” from speak­ing to store man­agers about the lat­est shop­ping trends that she wouldn’t have iden­ti­fied from look­ing at all the data gath­ered by the com­pa­ny.

The ben­e­fits of this approach became evi­dent ear­ly in the pan­dem­ic when Robert’s col­leagues noticed that rival firms were sell­ing larg­er mul­ti­packs in super­mar­kets. Because con­sumers were hav­ing to spend so much time at home dur­ing the lock­downs, they were buy­ing their drinks in bulk. Sun­to­ry respond­ed by pro­duc­ing cans of Lucozade in packs of 12 and 24. 

“If we’d wait­ed to obtain the data to tell us to do that, we’d have been too late,” she recalls.

With the aid of gem­ba, Sun­to­ry has also devel­oped clos­er rela­tion­ships with cus­tomers. Dur­ing the lock­downs, it iden­ti­fied that many were seek­ing a healthy caf­feinat­ed drink to help them sus­tain their focus while study­ing and work­ing at home. This result­ed in the devel­op­ment of the Lucozade Alert range, which first hit the shelves in Sep­tem­ber 2021.

“If you become too inter­nal­ly focused, the mar­ket can change around you at a real pace and you will soon find that you have not kept up,” Robert says.

She adds that gem­ba incor­po­rates a much wider set of actions than being con­sumer-cen­tric. “This is about con­nect­ing all the dots between con­sumers, your cus­tomers and your employ­ees – and about how you get mean­ing­ful insights from each.” 

How applicable is gemba in other contexts?

Robert believes that any busi­ness can find appli­ca­tions for gem­ba, although some may have to break old habits in the process. “Peo­ple are accus­tomed to being busy all the time at work, but those are the types of things that get in the way of gem­ba,” she says.

While adopt­ing the new approach has been a learn­ing expe­ri­ence for the com­pa­ny, it has found that the more deeply that peo­ple get involved in the process, the more they realise how ben­e­fi­cial it is in focus­ing the busi­ness on the fac­tors that mat­ter most. 

“Through gem­ba, you spend more time on things that the cus­tomers actu­al­ly want, rather than look­ing inwards and try­ing lots of things that they don’t,” Robert says.

After near­ly two years of hav­ing to work inside in rel­a­tive iso­la­tion, employ­ees can also ben­e­fit from step­ping away from their desks and mak­ing exter­nal con­tacts, she adds. “It’s much bet­ter for our well­be­ing for us to be out there with curi­ous minds, meet­ing new peo­ple out­side the com­pa­ny.”

One of the chief aims of Suntory’s hybrid work­ing pol­i­cy is to empow­er peo­ple to find the right bal­ance. To this end, it has removed core hours, mean­ing that there is no peri­od of the work­ing week when every­one must be on the premis­es. 

That has been “lib­er­at­ing” for every­one in the organ­i­sa­tion, accord­ing to Robert, who adds: “We’re try­ing to encour­age peo­ple to be less busy and more effec­tive.” 

After all, being too busy stops employ­ees from reach­ing their gem­ba, which is, by def­i­n­i­tion, the source of true val­ue to the busi­ness.