Over the past few years, the term "well-being management" has come up more and more often in Japan.
It is a way of running a company that values people being able to come to work feeling fulfilled in both body and mind.
As part of this, more and more companies are placing art in their offices and business spaces.
Well-being management and health management: what is the difference?
Health management (kenko keiei) is an approach taken from the company's side, to protect employees' health.
Well-being management takes the employees' point of view. It is described as an effort to raise engagement and productivity by creating conditions in which people are physically, mentally and socially fulfilled and can work with energy.
In Japan's Health and Productivity Management Outstanding Organizations certification for fiscal 2025, it has been reported that greater weight is now placed on the results of companies' efforts. The question is not only what form the efforts take, but how people have actually changed.
Why does a space affect the people who work in it?
In recent years, several studies have looked at the effects of placing art in offices.
Kyoto Institute of Technology and Casie Co., Ltd., with the cooperation of Takasago Thermal Engineering, carried out a joint study comparing meeting rooms with and without art on display. 380 people took part in the impression assessment and 99 in the productivity measurement. Productivity was measured by having participants solve a 100-cell calculation grid mixing three-digit and two-digit numbers in five minutes.
The results were reported to suggest that rooms with art on display may have a positive effect on productivity. The study was presented at the Architectural Institute of Japan's annual conference in September 2023.
Professor Hideaki Kawabata of the Faculty of Letters at Keio University studies the effects of art appreciation on metacognition and well-being. It has also been reported that looking at art can ease how pain is felt.
Research is still accumulating, and it is too early to state the effects definitively. Even so, the direction is becoming visible: a space with art has some effect on the people who work there.
Placing in a space what numbers find hard to convey
A business has things that are easy to express in numbers and things that are not.
Sales and headcount can be counted. But what a company cherishes, and what future it wants to create, cannot be turned into numbers.
Even when these are put into words and shared, they get buried in day-to-day work. Placed where people see them every day, as color and form, they are harder to forget.
The same is true for visitors. Before any company brochure, the painting on the wall conveys the atmosphere of the business.
About Mermaid nao's BUSINESS ART
Mermaid nao, a Japanese artist, creates BUSINESS ART: commissioned art for businesses.
Through conversations with business owners and founders, I listen to the origins of the business, its philosophy, the future it wants to bring about, and the impressions it wants to avoid. I turn what I receive into color, form and light, and make it into a single original painting.
Each work is made to suit where it will hang and how it will be used, and is delivered framed. The process and prices are on the order page.
Sources
JLL (Office strategy for achieving well-being management, and its connection to health management)
KaradaDesign Inc. (Health management and well-being management in the age of generative AI, 2025 edition)
PR TIMES (Art display contributes to employee productivity and relaxation: joint research with Kyoto Institute of Technology)
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (Capturing evidence of the benefits of art from the workings of the mind and brain, presentation by Hideaki Kawabata)
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