The Effectiveness of Pointing and Calling, and a Story about Roadside Station Joso

October has arrived, and while mornings and evenings have become much cooler, my body, which is struggling to keep up with the sudden change in season, is feeling a bit... perhaps? under the weather. This is Yamamoto, your consultant.

This time, I would like to talk about something related to work: pointing and calling (shisa kosho or yubisashi kosho).

Pointing and calling is an action where, for example, when crossing a pedestrian crossing, you point your finger while visually checking to the right, left, and front to ensure safety. You may have seen train or bus drivers and station staff pointing at signals or vehicle departures and calling out "All clear!" as they perform this pointing and calling.
In manufacturing sites, for example, after pressing a start switch, it is the action of pointing and saying "Switch on, all clear!" to confirm that it was definitely pressed. I have also incorporated this into procedure manuals and provided guidance on-site.

In this way, it involves visually re-confirming the point being indicated to ensure there are no mistakes in actions or abnormalities in the surroundings. The purpose of pointing and calling in work is to prevent operational errors and confirmation mistakes, thereby preventing industrial accidents before they happen.

Pointing and calling, which has already permeated the labor society, has been scientifically proven to reduce the risk of accidents.

According to an experiment on pointing and calling reported by the Railway Technical Research Institute in 1994, errors occurred 2.38 times out of 100 when work was performed without any action. On the other hand, when work was performed after using pointing and calling, the number of errors was 0.38, confirming that the error rate is reduced to less than about one-sixth with or without pointing and calling. Therefore, it has been proven that pointing and calling is not just a movement, but an effective means of actually improving safety.

In addition, pointing and calling has the effect of focusing the worker's attention and adding a sense of tension to the confirmation work. Especially in simple tasks, pointing and calling out loud prevents carelessness and also influences those around you, raising safety awareness.
It can be said that by actively using the five senses, such as sight and hearing, in the direction of the pointing, the brain is activated, providing a sense of tension and improving the accuracy of confirmation.

However, because pointing and calling becomes a repetitive, one-pattern task every day, it is difficult to establish in the workplace, and one-pattern tasks tend to become unconscious actions (what is commonly called "red miso" behavior). There are three main reasons for this.

(1) There is a sense of embarrassment
Since pointing and calling involves performing actions while saying obvious things out loud, many people feel "embarrassed," especially at workplaces where it has been newly introduced. This is because the atmosphere and culture of the workplace create resistance to performing pointing and calling.
To remove these psychological barriers, a change in awareness throughout the workplace is necessary. In particular, it is important for supervisors and seniors to actively practice pointing and calling and set an example, thereby gradually permeating it into the workplace.
Also, to create an environment where it is easy to practice pointing and calling, it is effective to foster a culture where people do not feel embarrassed by providing regular education, such as concrete examples through posters and videos.

(2) It is meaningless or troublesome
Pointing and calling is sometimes misunderstood as being meaningless or ineffective. Especially when repeating the same work every day, it is difficult to feel the effect, and it is easy to misunderstand that it is meaningless to do it every day. However, as mentioned above, the effect of pointing and calling has been scientifically proven, and it is known that the error rate drops significantly through conscious confirmation actions.
Also, pointing and calling is often omitted for minor or simple operations, with people saying it is troublesome to do it every time. This tendency is especially seen in skilled workers who are prone to overconfidence that "I will not make a mistake" and tend to neglect pointing and calling.
Therefore, it is necessary for managers to repeatedly educate employees on the importance of implementing pointing and calling and have them understand the risk of errors.

(3) It becomes a one-pattern (hollow) routine with the same confirmation
There is a tendency for pointing and calling to become hollow, where you perform the same pointing and calling for the same work every day, assume that if no accident has occurred, it will be fine tomorrow, and even if you point, you do not confirm with your five senses and no sense of tension is generated.
It is also necessary to prevent this hollowization by regularly educating employees on risks and the importance of pointing and calling at safety and health meetings, etc.

By the way, this is a personal story (laughs)... Near my home, there is Roadside Station Joso, which opened in April 2023. It is located right after getting off the Joso IC on the Ken-O Expressway, and because it has been introduced on TV many times, it is a facility that is very crowded on weekdays as well as on holidays. The annual number of visitors was said to exceed 3 million.
Finance September 2025 Issue No.718

There is a restaurant and a building selling souvenirs in front of the parking lot, and the melon bread is particularly famous and always has a long line.
Outdoors, there are Ibaraki specialty fruits such as melons, roasted sweet potatoes, and other catering sales, and it is always crowded anyway.
The building on the front right houses the bookstore TSUTAYA, a famous local bakery shop, Starbucks, and others. And there is a Honda autonomous driving demonstration facility. Further to the right, there is a hot spring facility that opened at the end of last year. This place is famous for its sauna.

It is a very fulfilling roadside station with many facilities and shops combined like this.
And this facility also serves as an evacuation facility that makes use of the lessons learned from the Joso flood damage in 2015.
It is a facility that the city is pushing, not only for regional revitalization, but also as an evacuation facility using the lessons of flood damage, and also having an autonomous driving demonstration facility looking ahead to future aging and infrastructure issues.
By the way, a little away from the roadside station, there is a famous strawberry farm with ceiling cultivation, and they have all-you-can-eat strawberries during the season. Autonomous vehicles serving as demonstration experiments are traveling back and forth between the roadside station and the farm.

It is such a wonderful Roadside Station Joso, but... I am not good at crowds and waiting in line... so I don't go there much except for TSUTAYA. Even so, if I go by motorcycle on a sunny day, traffic jams are almost irrelevant, so I mainly go by motorcycle. Riding and tinkering with motorcycles is also my hobby, as I mentioned in my self-introduction.

This Saturday, I went there in the morning before it rained, partly to charge my motorcycle battery. On this day too, the large four-wheeled parking lot was almost full.

By the way, the motorcycle I came on is my family's second motorcycle in terms of displacement, and it is called a Kawasaki Estrella. The displacement is 250cc.

I obtained this motorcycle, which is over 30 years old, 6 years ago for a super cheap price of a single-digit number of ten thousand yen for a certain reason, although it was in a non-running condition as shabby as the price, and I have been riding it while fixing various parts, such as procuring parts, assembling, repainting, and upgrading. It is a retro-style motorcycle that is old in both model year and appearance, but I have reached an age where a machine with this kind of style suits me.

Actually, I was planning to go out with a friend on my motorcycle from Saturday afternoon, but I canceled it because of the rain forecast from the afternoon, so I just rode in the neighborhood only in the morning. Like this, I spent a leisurely Saturday afternoon with rain, and from Sunday, I am moving for nursing care again.

Returning to the main topic, I also use pointing and calling as one of the basic safety actions, not only at work but also in my private life, such as when I am driving a car or using fire. I can't do it when riding a motorcycle, though, since both hands are occupied...

The probability of an accident is reduced to 1/6 when you use pointing and calling compared to when you don't. If you can prevent accidents with just a little extra effort, there is no other risk management measure as inexpensive as this, is there?

I hope you all have a relaxing weekend, and let's do our best with work and everything else starting next week.
Stay safe!