Digital transformation has ushered in an age of smarter machines and automated workflows that remove human error. Human workforces, however, are still absolutely necessary for business and society to operate: it’s just that the values of businesses and workers themselves are changing which in turn leads to their needs changing.  

The widening gap between business and workers’ needs reduces the productivity and motivation of workers, which in turn leads towards  economic stagnation. 

Persol Holdings is a Japanese human resource management company that provides labour hire services to clients. Founded in 2008, the company manages temporary staffing, recruitment, and outsourcing for its clients. 

Takao Wada, President and CEO at Persol says that the human element of HR must remain central to the recruitment process:

“Persol’s human resources management is to offer better choices for job seekers and to introduce careers best suited to their personality. There is a deeper meaning behind Persol’s vision ‘Work, and Smile’; we want everyone to live a better life through their work.”

While other business are about developing the bottom line of an organisation, Wada says that ultimately human development creates more and longer-lasting value:

“We would like to help people choose the right career for themselves so that we can see them growing as individuals through their chosen career. We aim to provide various work opportunities and options to encourage people to take on various challenges, and through these challenges they can experience success as well as a sense of accomplishment. This is our idea of ‘Work, and Smile’.”

How successful has the ‘work and smile’ philosophy been for Persol? Joe Daly, Senior Partner at Gallup Inc. says that workplace wellbeing drives performance for organisations and, more broadly, there is an expectation on companies that they should improve the wellbeing of their employees and their communities. Daly says that Gallup conducted a poll on behalf of Persol:

“Persol’s Group’s questions specifically were asking about: ‘do you enjoy the work that you do every day?’ ‘Do you have a choice in the type of work that you do?’ And does the work you’re doing make a difference for society?’

“The most interesting finding we have is that the question about choices and the type of work you can do is highly correlated with the way people feel about how their life will be in five years. What you’re picking up there is the element of hope. If people feel their life is going to be better in five years, there’s something about feeling there are a lot of choices in the work you can do.”

Hiroko Kase, VP, Human Resources at Persol says that these findings help businesses create working environments that keep their best employees actively engaged with the places in which they work: 

“Persol is a group that understands its employees’ personalities and attempts to develop their sense of humanity. I am very proud to be working with the sense that not only are my skills but also my humanity is being nurtured.” 

For Takao Wada, making work better is a great way to make life itself better: 

“Work is a large part of life and in a way it is life itself. I believe our mission is to provide those choices to help people improve their lives. This is Persol’s human resources management philosophy.”

Work and smile, then, works.