[Toyokumo Survey] Over 70% of new employees lose confidence due to "missing internal information"

[Simple, so everyone can use it. Easy Toyokumo]

Toyokumo, Inc. (Headquarters: Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, President and CEO: Yuji Yamamoto, hereafter Toyokumo), which provides cloud services for business that anyone can use easily, conducted a survey on the "reality of 'internal information access' for new employees" targeting 111 company employees who joined within the past 3 years (joined after April 2022).

The main realities revealed from this survey are as follows:

- 85.6% of new employees have experienced "their work stopping because they didn't know where internal information was located"
- 74.8% have experienced feeling "I might not be suited for this job" due to missing information
- 86.5% answered that the ease of information access affects their "desire to work long-term (retention intention)"

From these quantitative data, it has become clear that the unestablished environment for accessing internal knowledge is directly linked to the decline in new employees' self-efficacy and early turnover risks. In response to this challenge, Toyokumo, through the manual creation and knowledge management tool 'NotePM' developed and provided by its group company Project Mode, Inc. (Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, President and CEO: Takuma Ozawa, hereafter Project Mode), provides a "self-solving environment" where new employees can search and check information on their own, supporting the resolution of issues related to onboarding and retention rates.

Background of the Survey

In recent years, as talent mobility increases, the early turnover of new employees has become a serious management issue for many companies. This survey was conducted to quantitatively clarify the impact that "the inability to smoothly access business information" during the onboarding period has on new employees' self-efficacy and retention intention, beyond just operational efficiency issues.

Details of Survey Results

1. Over 40% spend more than 15 minutes a day searching for information. Loss of work time (cost) becomes apparent.

To the question "Since joining the company, have you ever experienced your work stopping because you didn't know where the information necessary for work (manuals, procedure documents, internal rules, past cases, etc.) was located?", 85.6% answered "Yes".

Also, the time spent searching for necessary business information in a day was "5 minutes to less than 15 minutes" at 45.0% being the most, but "15 minutes to less than 30 minutes" (27.0%), "30 minutes to less than 1 hour" (9.9%), and "1 hour or more" (4.5%) made the group spending 15 minutes or more on information searching amount to a total of 41.4%. This indicates that poor information access is not just a matter of hassle, but leads to a loss of work time (cost) that cannot be ignored when looking at the company as a whole.

2. The biggest stress when searching for information is "complexity of folder hierarchy" and "outdated information"

As the situation where they feel the most stress when searching for information, "Folders are complex, and I don't know where the latest materials are" was the most at 46.8%. Followed by "Even if I search, only irrelevant old materials hit" (38.7%) and "Manuals and procedure documents do not exist in the first place" (32.4%), showing that there are clear issues in the organization and update system of internal information.

3. About 80% hesitate to ask business questions. The reality of "psychological walls" occurring in the field.

To the question of whether they feel psychological hesitation to ask business questions to senior staff or bosses, "Strongly agree" (28.8%) and "Somewhat agree" (51.4%) showed that a total of 80.2% feel hesitation. The most common reason for feeling hesitation reached 58.4% with "Because I feel sorry to ask again what I was taught before". This psychological situation is data that re-recognizes how important a "system where you can re-check by yourself without asking people" is in the field's educational system.

4. Potential turnover factors revealed. Unestablished information access directly links to decreased self-efficacy.

To the question "Have you ever felt 'I might not be suited for this job' because you didn't know the location of information necessary for work?", 74.8% answered "Yes".

Furthermore, to the question "Do you think the ease of access to internal information and knowledge affects your feeling of 'wanting to work at this company for a long time'?", combining "Strongly agree" (28.8%) and "Somewhat agree" (57.7%), 86.5% answered that it affects retention intention.

It is clear that "loss of confidence due to not knowing where information is (decrease in self-efficacy)" is an extremely large factor for turnover. This suggests that the retention of new employees requires not only relying on human support like a mentor system, but prioritizing a concrete solution of "improving the information environment". On the other hand, 83.7% ("Strongly agree" (34.2%), "Somewhat agree" (49.5%))
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