Episode 63: The Reality of Trinity’s Unique Programs, Part 5: Free Lunches and the Trinity Walk Supporting Health-Focused Management

“Real Management | The Successes and Failures of Running a Company, Told as They Are: The Unscripted Reality of a President”

In this program, I, Hossy—also known as Tetsushi Hoshikawa—talk candidly about management and what goes on behind the scenes, based on my own experiences.

Real Management isreleased every Friday morning at 6 a.m.

Good morning. I’m Hossy, also known as the free spirit Tetsushi Hoshikawa.

Now, we’ve been talking about Trinity’s unique systems up to this point, and looking back again, there really are a lot of them.

That’s right. We kept coming up with new ideas one after another and turning them into systems, and it all accumulated over time. In the end, I suppose from the outside it looks like, “You have so many interesting systems.”

Last time,I’m not sure whether anyone who listened actually applied, but we did make a point of warning people, didn’t we? That people who want to join just because the benefits are good aren’t a good fit.

In return, we also expect results, effort, and the willingness to take on challenges, so when it’s time to work, you work properly. In exchange, our stance is that the company provides a solid, well-developed environment through its systems and policies.

Up to the last episode, we talked a little about the Health and Productivity Management Outstanding Organization certification, and related to that, there’s another system. It’s called “Eruboshi Certification,” which certifies companies that promote women’s advancement, and Trinity has earned the highest rank of three stars.

For the Health and Productivity Management Outstanding Organization program, it used to be the top 500, and now it’s the top 1,000. This “Eruboshi Certification” also has various evaluation criteria related to promoting women’s advancement. Compared with the Health and Productivity Management Outstanding Organization certification, the hurdles aren’t quite as high, but it’s a system that allows a company to show externally that it provides an environment where women can thrive.

It was the wearable device “Weara.” Since we were creating a product with the goal of “making people in the world healthier,” we felt that first of all, we ourselves should be healthy. That’s what led us to work on the “Health and Productivity Management Outstanding Organization” certification.

It is. This isn’t something focused only on health management; we’re also working on it because we want to value the promotion of women’s advancement. I may have mentioned this before, but at Trinity, we don’t have a special quota for women, and we’re not particularly adjusting things with numbers in mind. But before we knew it, almost half of all employees were women.

The founding members were also two women and one man, and since then we’ve naturally maintained something close to a fifty-fifty balance. Among the female employees, there are veterans who have been with us for more than 15 years, and in the final stage when I was involved, the employee with the highest annual income was a woman.

Well, yes, though this is actually a pretty difficult topic. Is someone excellent because she’s a woman, or is an excellent person simply someone who happens to be a woman? Personally, I don’t think women are necessarily excellent just because they are women.

I wonder. It may depend on which part of the work you’re doing. In sales-related roles, for example, rather than that kind of thing, it might be better to close one solid deal properly and build from there.

Ah.

That’s true. I do think it’s good to experience that kind of sales style, where you sell through sheer fighting spirit, at least once in your life. In the past, there were futon shops that loaded products into cars and operated under the rule, “Don’t come back until you’ve sold everything.” In our industry, ultra-athletic, sports-club-style companies like Hikari Tsushin actually grew their performance that way.

That attitude of getting it done no matter what—like Nihon Densan’s slogan, “Do it immediately, do it without fail, and do it until it’s done”—means absolutely seeing it through. But if you apply too much pressure, people may start pretending they’ve done something even when they haven’t, or it can lead to misconduct.

I do feel that if you push people too hard, distortions will eventually appear somewhere.

Even when things don’t go well, you look at what kind of conversation took place and what caused it not to work. For example, one person did extremely well at a certain mass retailer. Then another person goes to that same mass retailer and doesn’t do well. But they’re selling the same product, so what’s different? There may be discussions like that.

We’ve strayed a little from the topic, but I believe health is the top priority for managers and something they should address above all else. It’s important to properly balance exercise, diet, and sleep. If you yourself aren’t healthy, then no matter how excellent your sales or manufacturing may be, you can’t make it happen if you’re off sick. Health really is the most important thing.

Against that background, Trinity has also carried out various initiatives based on the idea that “employee health is what raises productivity and becomes the foundation for company growth.” Some of you may have heard about it because we’ve introduced it on the Trinity blog and elsewhere, but we held “Trinity Walk.” The name was inspired by the smartphone game “Dragon Quest Walk.”

We took the name from that and called it “Trinity Walk.” As the name suggests, it’s a project where everyone walks together. There are various theories, but as a health guideline, people often say that “8,000 steps a day” is good. Of course, you shouldn’t overdo it because injuries can happen, but the purpose of this event is to set a period and aim for 8,000 steps.

People inside the company today may not know this, but we actually held a step-count event in the past as well. There was a device called “Nike+,” created through a collaboration between Nike and Apple, that could measure your steps. It worked by embedding a sensor inside your shoe to automatically count steps, and rankings were displayed on Nike’s website. It was extremely popular at the time.

It might still exist.

As a community, maybe it’s something like that. I don’t know the details of how much they’re using technology, but I think the trend now is that you’re not tied to a specific device and can use any wearable device you like. Back then, it was a dedicated type that you attached inside Nike shoes.

I didn’t like the fact that Nike shoes were the only option. Nike shoes were designed so that the sensor would be embedded in a hole in the sole, or the lower part of the shoe. So Trinity sold an accessory that allowed you to attach that sensor to the shoelace area of ordinary shoes. That way, you could use it regardless of the manufacturer. It got quite a response at the time and sold really well.

So at Trinity, we decided to try it ourselves and see how fun it actually was, and held it as an internal company event. I think the period was about one or two weeks, and during that time, we offered a prize of around 50,000 yen to the person who walked the most.

And I won.（笑）

I don’t remember the number, but I won.（笑）

So I ended up providing the prize money myself and then receiving it myself.
Behind the scenes, there was a system where you could see each other’s step counts, so there was some psychological maneuvering, like, “Oh, that guy’s trying to rack up steps now.”

That’s how it became a competition. At first, I kept my numbers moderate and gave off the impression that I probably wouldn’t increase them much, but on the final day I just kept walking like crazy and won by a landslide based on that day alone.

It may not have been very good from a health perspective.（笑） But it was a competition, so I couldn’t lose.

Since we still had only a small number of people back then, Trinity Walk was basically done by all employees. The format changed in various ways over time.

At first it was an individual competition, but partway through we switched to a team competition. I think it’s probably still done as a team competition now, but the good thing about teams is that it creates a sense of solidarity. People are divided into teams of around three to five and compete on total steps, so they start thinking, “How can we support the members who aren’t walking much?” They also balance the teams based on previous step counts and things like that. I think there was also an individual award, more or less.

You know, people who don’t walk really don’t walk.

And people who walk really walk. There was even someone who walked from Shibuya to Yokohama.

It’s like, “That’s a different story altogether.”

Hey, that’s crazy, right? It gets really exciting, with some people putting up outstanding numbers like I used to. If I remember correctly, the current system gives out something like a catalog gift worth 10,000 yen. So everyone seems to be able to enjoy taking part.

In fact, when we first started, the average was around 6,000 steps, but as we kept it going, everyone’s average came to exceed the target of 8,000 steps. Since we had a goal of wanting to get past 8,000 steps, I think you could say it was effective in terms of raising health awareness.

Right, right. This is a bit of a different topic, and I end up going off on a tangent every time, but I really think walking meetings are good.

Basically, it only works for one-on-one meetings. Once there are three or more people, it becomes hard to walk side by side and the conversation doesn’t flow smoothly, so first of all, it has to be one-on-one. Also, it has to be a topic where you don’t need to look at data. It’s not suited for discussions where you have to check numbers, but things like feelings, mindset, small concerns, or complaints.

Or, I’m not saying we’re the kind of organization that can act all high and mighty, but I think that style of talking while walking is a great fit for meetings centered on dialogue, like HR-related consultations.

You know, even the President of the United States sometimes moves things forward by walking around and giving aides one instruction after another as ideas come to mind. So I recommend walking meetings.

It’s good for health, too, and better than sitting the whole time. In that sense, Trinity Walk became interesting because we incorporated a game-like element, and the average step count among employees increased properly, so I think it was quite effective as a health management initiative.

By the way, we’ve held this Trinity Walk many times, and if my memory is correct, I’ve always been number one in the individual rankings.

Separate from that old cheat-like method I mentioned earlier, I was just doing it normally.

Roughly, since we calculate it as a monthly average, I’d say about 12,000 to 13,000 steps per day.

Yes. 12,600 steps is about 10 kilometers.

The point is, I live about a four-minute walk from Shiki Station on the Tobu Tojo Line, but when I take the train, I don’t use Shiki Station. There’s a station next to it called Asakadai, and I go there. On the way home, I also get off there and walk back.

So that takes a little under 20 minutes each way, about 40 minutes round trip, and that’s where I earn the bare minimum number of steps.

Well, when it rains or in an emergency, I can get there quickly.

Plus, for my daily movements, I mainly use stairs. I rely on my own legs instead of elevators or escalators. If it’s the 20th floor, I’d think twice, but for a seven-story department store like the nearby Marui, I choose the stairs.

Exactly. For me, it’s actually the opposite—I don’t run or anything. Instead, in daily life, I always take the stairs at stations, and I used to live on the eighth floor, but I took the stairs up to the eighth floor.

If you routinely use the station one stop over and take the stairs, you can generally reach that number. It’s not like I’m pushing myself, and I’m not setting aside special time to do it, so this hasn’t really changed that much even after leaving Trinity.

We made walking fun through something like gamification, and there were rewards, so it got people excited.

Speaking of health, there’s exercise, of course, but food is also important, right?

I think at some point I should properly talk about how Trinity operated an Italian restaurant called Trinita, but today, if we go that far, it’ll get too long. So I’ll start from the premise that there was a restaurant.

Trinity’s headquarters was a two-story building with a somewhat unusual structure, divided into four floor sections. Three of those were offices and meeting rooms, and one corner was a restaurant.

When we created the restaurant, one of the key points was to provide lunch to employees free of charge. We wanted to get even a little closer to an environment like Google in the United States, where people can freely eat whenever they want. Especially with younger employees, they might just buy cup noodles and a rice ball at a convenience store during lunch and call it done. That’s mostly carbohydrates, and the nutrition becomes unbalanced.

They do have their own reasons, like wanting to get lunch quickly and cheaply, but as a company, we didn’t want to leave that alone. Exercise, sleep, and food are the foundations of health. As long as employees are coming to the company, we want them to stay properly healthy. So instead of just saying, “Please eat a proper lunch,” we decided to actually create that environment.

We already had a plan to open an Italian restaurant, so we thought, in that case, let’s provide lunch as well. It was a restaurant used by general customers too, but we made it a system where employees could eat the same food, with the cost covered by the company.

Lunch these days easily costs around 1,000 yen, doesn’t it?

Well, if you come in for 20 days, that’s about 20,000 yen. Actually, because the regular closing day was on a weekday, it was 16 days in practice. So you save about 16,000 yen, and on top of that, you can eat a proper lunch set from a real restaurant.

Basically, it came with pasta, salad, soup, bread like focaccia, and even a drink, all as one set. At the restaurant, I think we offered it to regular customers for around 1,000 yen at first.

We were particular about letting employees eat that same meal.

Yes, it gets a good reaction during job interviews and things like that.

One thing you have to be careful about is that it’s fine if you’re walking properly, like with Trinity Walk earlier. But if you go down about 20 steps from the office, suddenly there’s the restaurant. You eat something delicious there and then just go back. Compared to going outside to eat, you get less exercise, and you’re eating good food, so most people gain a few kilos after joining the company.

These days, I think it’s better for people to eat a proper lunch and gain a little weight than to harm their health by being too thin or undernourished. Still, I do tell people to be careful because many people gain weight after joining the company.

By the way, this is a little different from the Trinity story, but with this free lunch, even though we’re providing something worth 1,000 yen to employees with no out-of-pocket cost, for tax purposes it’s considered salary.

I think it was 3,500 yen per month.

Usually, you know, there isn’t really an assumption that a company is running its own restaurant, so it’s basically the amount you would normally pay.

Strictly speaking, it has to be split half and half, and also up to 3,500 yen per month.

That’s really low, isn’t it?

It seems that with a revision this year or sometime around now, that will be raised to around 7,000 yen.

Lunch these days costs 1,000 yen, so I feel like they could allow up to around 20,000 yen per month as an expense. Well, if you give it in cash, you don’t know what it will be used for, so maybe there are circumstances that require them to separate it out.

In practice, when we were running the Italian restaurant Trinita, from the perspective of the people at Trinita, they wanted it to count as sales. So the accounting system was set up so that Trinita would properly record the sale, and then Trinity would pay for it.

In the end, that also disappeared. More recently—this was after I was no longer there—they also moved offices, so they contracted with a place elsewhere that serves lunch and pay for it there. I do feel like if a company provides something in kind and spends money for the health of its employees, they should at least be allowed to count that as an expense.

This is a tax office issue, after all. Organizations like the Labor Standards Inspection Office operate under a system meant to protect employees, but this side is the one collecting taxes. If they let it be treated as an expense, they can’t collect tax on it.

But socially, I think a system that returns that much to employees is a good thing. In that sense, I think free lunch is good, but in practice it’s counted as part of salary, so income tax and social insurance premiums end up applying to that amount.

They do count it.

So, in that sense, there are people who don’t make 100% use of it. I find myself thinking they should use it, but some people don’t.

Right, like not liking pasta.

As another aside, this is for employees. In other words, people like me and Yohei, who is an executive, are not eligible.

So if I went, I would pay the same price as a regular customer.

Exactly, because it’s compensation, and it would change executive compensation. Executive compensation basically isn’t supposed to be changed from the amount decided at the beginning of the year.

So in that sense, Yohei wasn’t using it.

I paid for it and used it.

This kind of thing was also covered in the media. So, that was Trinity’s unique system.

Even though I say “unique,” some other companies do have things like lunch programs. But overall, when you put it all together, I think it’s rare to have this many systems in place. Starting next week, I wonder how many episodes it’ll be—maybe about three or four more.

Well, I’m sure we’re more or less at the halfway point now, so I hope you’ll keep listening. With that, we’ll see you again next week.

“Real Management | The Successes and Failures of Corporate Management, Told as They Are: The Unscripted Reality of a CEO”

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