Online Message Book Service 'Sugoyose' Formally Launches New Corporate Service 'Sugoyose Biz'

iUM Inc. (Headquarters: Shibuya-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director: Taishi Fujikawa), operator of the online message book service 'Sugoyose,' will officially launch 'Sugoyose Biz' on June 15, 2026 (Monday). This social recognition service for corporations compiles the thoughts of colleagues gathered across departments and locations to celebrate employee milestones such as long-service awards and onboarding.

The service has already been utilized by corporations for long-service award books and welcome books following direct inquiries. It has been introduced at a Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) Prime-listed company with over 150 books for a single client, and some companies have already decided to use the service repeatedly.

Building on these achievements, along with the official launch of 'Sugoyose Biz,' iUM Inc. will exhibit at the 'Welfare and Benefits Category Discovery Plaza' within the 'General Affairs, Human Resources, and Accounting Week' held at Tokyo Big Sight from June 17 (Wednesday) to 19 (Friday), 2026. Sample displays of long-service award books and welcome books are scheduled for the event.

Background of the Official Launch of 'Sugoyose Biz'

Long-service awards and onboarding welcomes are crucial milestones for employees to reconnect with the company. However, traditional commemorative gifts and welcome initiatives tend to be one-way experiences from the company to the employee. This has led to issues such as gratitude or welcoming gestures appearing formal, and the memory of the award or welcome being short-lived.

In recent years, amid growing interest in human capital management and improving employee engagement, 'social recognition,' where employees mutually acknowledge each other's contributions and presence, has attracted attention as an initiative that fosters organizational culture and supports employee retention.

'Sugoyose Biz' supports transforming these award and welcome experiences into ones that create value for both the receiving and sending employees by delivering peer-to-peer recognition and praise as a physical book tailored to key milestones.

Development of Dedicated Templates Tailored to Specific Uses

Along with this official launch, 'Sugoyose Biz' has developed original B2B templates tailored to the specific objectives of long-service award books and welcome books.

Unlike the standard version of 'Sugoyose' for individual users, the message input process, question items, and message frames have been redesigned to fit corporate award and welcome scenarios. The long-service award template is structured to easily convey gratitude and praise from supervisors, colleagues, and juniors. The welcome book template is designed to help new employees easily understand the faces, names, and personalities of their team members, delivering an engagement experience aligned with each purpose.

Key Use Cases of 'Sugoyose Biz'

The service can be utilized to match employee milestones and internal organization events, centering on long-service awards and onboarding.

- Long-Service Awards Deliver a book filled with messages of gratitude and praise from supervisors, colleagues, and juniors to employees reaching milestones such as 5, 10, or 20 years of service. In recent years, startup and growing enterprises have increasingly adopted initiatives to celebrate relatively short service milestones, such as 3 or 5 years, to prevent early turnover and support retention. Fostering a culture of appreciation and visualizing contributions raises the recipient's sense of contribution, while also providing sending employees an opportunity to recognize the organization's growth.

- Welcome Books Deliver a book containing team members' faces, names, self-introductions, and welcome messages to employees newly joining the organization due to new graduate or mid-career hiring, transfers, or team merges. This reduces anxiety on the first day of joining or transferring, promotes organizational socialization, prevents early turnover, and supports early adaptation to actual operations.

- Other Internal Events Suitable for various scenarios where companies want to preserve employees' words in a tangible format, such as graduation from training programs, project completions, internal awards, and company anniversaries. Compiling contributions, learnings, and experiences accumulated by the team into a single book creates an engagement experience that visualizes organizational culture and strengthens relationships.

Implementation Results: Positive Reception in Long-Service Awards and Onboarding

[Case Study 1] Introduction at a TSE Standard-listed Company: Long-Service Awards for 133 Employees Marking the company's 50th anniversary, the number of employees eligible for long-service awards increased. This created a heavy administrative workload for the HR department under the traditional manual collection and editing of messages. With support from iUM Inc. staff, messages were collected via smartphones to produce message books for 133 award recipients in time for the ceremony. This became an opportunity for a cumulative total of approximately 4,655 employees to express their gratitude and praise. On the day of the ceremony, employees were seen reading their books on the spot, and management highly evaluated the quality of the books.