Thinking About the Next Era of Work on an Island 1,300 km from Tokyo: Goto Islands Workation Report (Part 1)

Hello. I’m O from the Public Relations Group.

These days, if you turn your attention to the media, all kinds of news come flying at you every day.

While watching the news, I suddenly thought, “Perhaps the most frightening thing is the ‘anxiety’ virus created by the human mind.” To avoid being overwhelmed by the “anxiety” virus that casts a shadow over our lives, it may be just as important as managing our physical health to do “mental training” every single day without fail. *By the way, our CEO, Tsugihara, seems to have increased her personal training (the kind that builds the body) to six times a week (^^;).

When people’s minds change, their actions change—and when people’s actions change, the world as a whole changes. This phrase, which we value when spreading positive news around the world, unfortunately seems to apply to negative news as well. That is precisely why it is most important to face what we can do now, carefully and one step at a time. With that in mind, I am writing this blog.

I got off track from the start.
In early February this year, I participated in a “workation” program held in the Goto Islands, Nagasaki Prefecture. With telework, working from home, and various other “ways of working” drawing attention right now, I would like to look back on the few days I spent in the Goto Islands.

■Has it become nothing more than a superficial “work-style reform”?
“Workation” is a coined term combining “work” and “vacation.” It refers to a system in which you work in a place different from your usual workplace—such as a rural area or resort—while also taking time off. Just looking at the word, it sounds like a very enjoyable initiative (laughs).

The program I joined was called “GOTO Workation Challenge2020,” hosted by Goto City, Nagasaki Prefecture. Participants experience new ways of working and taking time off, then bring the island’s appeal back to their own cities and share it. From the island’s perspective, there are also benefits such as an increase in the “related population.” From a PR standpoint as well, it is an extremely interesting initiative.

There were two main reasons I joined the program.

1) Because I wanted to explore a “new form of telework”
2) Because I wanted to take another look at my own concept of “working”

1) Over the past few years, we at SUNNY SIDE UP GROUP have undertaken various initiatives related to telework. We have implemented efforts such as the “Dagaya Sando (Sendagaya + Kita-Sando) Telework Days,” which promotes telework in collaboration with companies around the National Stadium area near our office. As we continued these activities, I began to want to explore a “more advanced form of telework.”

2) As I have shared various “ways of working” at the company from my position in PR, I began to feel that I wanted to take a step back and reexamine “my own way of working” in a quiet environment.

Simply communicating with superficial phrases like “We are promoting work-style reform” or “We encourage telework” is not persuasive. By experiencing a “new way of working” firsthand, perhaps my own words would become more compelling and truly heartfelt…

With those feelings and expectations in my heart, I set foot on an island 1,300 km from Tokyo.

I will share the details of the workation in the second half of this blog!

Working Means “Stepping Up to the Batter’s Box of Your Own Free Will”! Goto Islands Workation Report (Part 2)
https://blog.ssu.co.jp/blog/17301/