Akiko Horiguchi
President and CEO, Oki Workwel Co., Ltd.

1. Introduction

Working from home is gaining traction as a way of working during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since our foundation in 2004, we at Oki Workwel have been addressing working from home by people whose severe disabilities make it difficult for them to commute to work. We now have 59 employees who “do not come to the office”.

2. Outline of Oki Workwel

Oki Workwel, a special subsidiary company of Oki Electric Industry, Co., Ltd. (hereinafter, “Oki”), has 87 members of staff. 77 of them have disabilities, the majority of them severe. One of our distinctive features is that not all staff commute to the office: we have staff who work from home, making the most of the information and communications technology at which Oki excels.

The merits of working from home are that our staff do not have to prepare to go out, and the physical energy and stress required to travel to work are eliminated, allowing them to concentrate on their work. Furthermore, being in an environment which is suited to them gives them the emotional security that they will be fine whatever happens. Oki Workwel had 10 members of staff working from home when we were set up; we now have 59. At the beginning, they all worked in Tokyo, but now our staff are spread across 22 prefectures, from Hokkaido to Kagoshima.

3. Work style of staff working from home

Our staff who work from home are responsible for website creation; systems development; the design of portraits, posters, name cards, and so on; data input and processing; and educational support such as commissioned training sessions. Our work is done in teams, so that members can cover for each other if one experiences health problems. Basic working hours are 6 hours per day, 30 hours per week. Since the time required by each person for meals, rests, and nursing care varies according to the severity of their disability, we allow working hours to be set flexibly any time between 8 a.m. and 8:15 p.m. to fit around visits by helpers or outpatient appointments. Staff can also change their working hours from day to day.

When a member of staff starts work for the day, they launch the “Workwel Communicator®” virtual office system developed by our company. A maximum of 100 people can have a meeting using this system, and if they click on the “Shared” button, equivalent to our office, they can hear greetings and calls from other staff. When leaving the “office” to concentrate on work or go to the toilet, they click on the “Leave seat for a while” button. With this system, users can always hear someone’s voice and call out to others easily at any time, so they can work in an atmosphere that is just like being in the office, alleviating feelings of loneliness or isolation. 

4. Members of staff who work utilising welfare programmes

People with diseases such as ALS or muscular dystrophy which require 24-hour nursing care and monitoring make use of the public disability welfare programme “Visiting Care for Persons with Severe Disabilities” to have helpers dispatched for long periods. Since it was not previously possible to use the “Visiting Care for Persons with Severe Disabilities” programme in order to go out for economic activities such as commuting to work or business activities, during work for which the person received remuneration, to travel to work or school, or for studies, use of nursing care while working was not permitted. However, from October 2020, the Special Project to Support People with Severe Disabilities in Starting Work was launched as one of the items on the menu of Community Life Support Services, in conjunction with employment measures. Since then, the number of local governments implementing this project has increased, and Oki Workwel employees who work from home are among those making use of it. 

(1) Staff who make use of Visiting Care for Persons with Severe Disabilities services while working

Reina Usuda, who lives in Saitama City, is one such member of staff. Ms. Usuda has a disease called Ullrich disease, classified as a type of muscular dystrophy, which means that she is unable to walk and uses an electric wheelchair, as well as being on a ventilator 24 hours a day. At the age of 10, she left her parents’ home and attended a special needs school while an inpatient at the Saitama hospital where her attending physician worked. After graduating from senior high school, she struggled to find a dream that she truly wanted to pursue, passing her time in hospital with no real aim. However, in her late 20s, she made up her mind to leave hospital and began working towards this.

As Ms. Usuda has an intractable disease, she requires round-the-clock nursing care in order to live independently. For this reason, she spent a year preparing to leave hospital, and decided to live in Saitama City, which has the best-developed support system in the prefecture for people with disabilities. She also started looking for work at the same time, but in most cases, the conditions for hiring people with disabilities were based on the assumption that they would commute to the workplace, and nursing care could not be provided at work, so she struggled to find anything. While all this was happening, she studied computing on e-learning courses at the Transition Support for Employment Office. Her supervisor introduced her to Oki Workwel, which offered the possibility of working from home, and thanks to this chance, she joined our company in 2020. As she met the requirement for participation in Saitama City’s employment support project for people with severe disabilities, “at least one year’s residence within the city”, she completed the screening process and began making use of Visiting Care for Persons with Severe Disabilities services while working.

Ms. Usuda is responsible for tasks such as data input, calculation, processing, and so on. Even though she works from home, she would feel uneasy about working alone if she did not have 24-hour nursing care. Worrying about whether she would have to hold on if she suddenly needed to use the toilet, or how she could respond if there were an emergency, she says that she would be unable to concentrate on her work. Luckily, Ms. Usuda is able to receive public assistance from Saitama City, allowing her to work in peace of mind. Although she spent 20 years in hospital, she is now able to go out using the money she earned through her work, enjoying her life doing things like shopping and eating delicious food.

(2) Staff working at a Community Life Support Office

Naoya Wada, who joined our company in 2016, lives in Kagoshima City and makes use of Care for Daily Life, covered by the Payments for Services and Supports for Persons with Disabilities, and One-off Daytime Support, which is a Community Life Support Service. Mr. Wada was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) ten months after birth. Since he cannot sit or stand, and it is difficult for him to walk, he needs nursing care to eat, use the toilet, move around, and so on. As medical care is also essential due to his swallowing and respiratory disabilities, he receives support and monitoring from several different people, and visits a facility providing care for daily life, where a nurse is always on duty, during the daytime.

When Mr. Wada was in the third grade of junior high school, he heard from his careers guidance teacher that there was an employee of Oki Workwel who was working from home right there in Kagoshima City, and gained the opportunity to hear this employee talk about how they actually worked. At that time, his dream for the future was apparently to work in website creation and design, hoping to “create things on the computer which are attractive to people”. When he was in the second grade of senior high school, he took part in remote work experience at Oki Workwel, experiencing the sense of achievement and growth for himself, and gained a strong sense that “I want to get a job here, make use of my strengths, and contribute to society”.

However, for Mr. Wada, who visits a facility providing care for daily life in order to obtain assistance with bathing, in addition to the nursing care for daily life and the medical care he also receives, it was necessary to resolve issues both with the facility and with the support systems in order to realise his dream of working while receiving these services. Mr. Wada was persistent in approaching the various people involved together with his family members, appealing to them with his strong desire to be independent and participate in society, and succeeded in forging his own path.

Mr. Wada is now active in the field of website construction. He talks of his great sense of achievement when the websites he has built go live on the Internet. And more than anything, he feels that he has become one of the people in the position of supporting society by paying his taxes. Mr. Wada was awarded the Kagoshima City Challenge Grand Prize (Industry and Employment Category) by the city on 1 December 2020. 

5. Conclusion

Being able to receive public nursing care services for daily life while working leads to an increase in the employment opportunities for people with severe disabilities. It is expected that the number of local governments implementing Special Projects to Support People with Severe Disabilities in Starting Work, in conjunction with employment measures, will continue to increase from now on. 　

Ms. Usuda, connected to a ventilator, works inputting data

Mr. Wada creates a website while receiving nursing care