We are motivated to research the needs of each country with the aim of developing a "Worker monitoring service" in the Asian market.

Q.Why did your company decide to take on interns? What did you aim to achieve?

We are a one-stop ICT company that engages in consultation, system and product development. The IoT-based “Worker monitoring service” was made based on our rich knowledge from developing software systems for device manufacturers, web services, and smart phone applications. This is a real-time service that enables a range of safety management tasks at work sites; it monitors workers’ conditions to respond promptly to anticipate hazard situations and unusual situations including heatstroke for those working at heights or working alone. We had a desire to contribute to the solution of various social challenges specific to Asian countries with our aforementioned technologies and services. While the “Worker monitoring service”, for example, was designed for safety management at workplaces in Japan, it could equally be used to monitor the physical condition of people undertaking the pilgrimage to Mecca. Just about the time we were considering overseas needs assessment surveys and SDGs product planning through internships and joint research with university laboratories abroad, we were introduced to the internship project. We grasped the opportunity to participate with both hands.

The precise goals and activity plans the intern showed us led to a smooth start.

Q.What kind of internship did you run? What difficulties did you face and how did you resolve them?

Our intern was a self-motivated and able to work spontaneously. Although we had a rough idea of the activity programs, our intern impressed us with clear goals and a detailed activity plan. Also, we began to keep in touch with each other immediately after the official acceptance of the intern, which we believe to have contributed to the smooth start of the program. At the beginning of the activity, we first sent our product, "Worker monitoring service," by mail to the intern allowing him to gain product knowledge from us with the actual product at hand. After this, he went on to research how it could be used in Indonesia. During the activity, we also asked him to create client lists in various business fields in the country. While we proceeded on with our program, we had online meetings with an Indonesian employee who joined us this year and currently lives in Indonesia due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Furthermore, we shared the intern’s research data with our local partners and worked in collaboration with them to develop sales strategies. The intern strictly adhered to our custom of “Ho (report), Ren (communicate), So (consult)”. We were impressed that he acted upon what he had learned about Japanese corporate culture during the intern training period.

We could explore the needs unique to Indonesia from the original view of the Intern.

Q.Comparing before and after the internship, what effects did it have on you, your employees, or your organization?

Most of our program consisted of creating client lists, but as he completed it early on, we asked him to approach the companies on the lists. We prepared a proposal with him and sent it to about 10 companies that responded to us, and from these two companies requested us to meet in person for the product demonstration. However, it was difficult to do so due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so we made our presentation online instead. There are voices that our future initiative would be to contact the industry unions of the companies that responded favorably to our approach. We also further discussed its technology application; in Japan, our monitoring service facilitates the management of workers against heat stroke, but Indonesians are basically more tolerant of the heat. If this is the case, rather than safety management, the needs may lie in monitoring human activities such as prisoners’ monitoring at jails, route checking of couriers and other activities. We now see a lot of possibility in the idea. Although the COVID-19 pandemic prevented us from doing enough field research, we were able to achieve significant results.