1 Introduction

The treatment of mental disorders among employees can be a long-term economic, mental, and physical burden for the employees. The treatment can also result in socio-economic losses for the organization. In 2015, 1515 workers’ compensation claims for mental disorders were recorded in Japan. Therefore, a predictive approach is required to protect employees and minimize losses due to workplace depression.

In the field of social psychology, various models of human relations and mental activity have been devised. Lewin [1] proposed that if the individual P and the environment E are included in the field and life space is denoted as L sp, and behavior is defined as B = F (P, E) = F (L Sp), the field (area) vector affect the personal behavior [1]. Moreno developed a sociogram that expresses human relationships as a table and a figure [2]. Bales and Cohen developed SYMLOG (SYstem for the Multiple Level Observation of Group) based on the three-dimensional space that is designed to assess the characteristic behaviors [3].

In this study, we focus on individual behavior in the workplace, including positive and negative message sending/receiving characteristics and investigate changes in human relations.

2 Mental Health and Stress Factors in the Workplace

Social isolation in the organization, causing symptoms similar to depression and anxiety disorders, can be strong stress factors [4].

Stress has harmful effects on the brain. It impairs cognitive and emotional functioning as compared to a healthy state of mind. In addition, it is believed that an individual’s perception of a message given from others decides his/her emotional, physical reaction based on the interpretation, and influences the action [5, 6].

Therefore, it is important to recognize the impact of the quality of communication in the organization on the employees’ personal mental health. The organization simulator is useful for observing isolated individuals and proactively preventing workplace depression.

3 Communication Model and Simulator

In this communication model (Fig. 1), the World includes Organizations, and the Organizations include Persons. Persons display various message sending/receiving characteristics (Influence(a, b) for sending, Sensitivity(a, b) for receiving). Based on a message exchange, a persons’ positional relations may vary, limited within the frame of the organization.

On the simulator, every person sends a message to others or themselves once in one turn. The persons’ source message MSG is generated as random numbers following standard normal distribution N(0,1). The sendMSG is generated by senders’ Influence as shown in (1). The sendMSG is transmitted to the recipient selected depending on the proximity or Euclidean distance. The rcvMSG is generated by the receivers’ Sensitivity as shown in (2). The recipient selection probability sendP (rank of closeness: rank of oneself = 1) is calculated with (3) (e.g. n = 3; sendP(1) = 0.5, sendP(2) = 0.33, sendP(3) = 0.16).

$$\begin{aligned} sendMSG = a_i * MSG+b_i \end{aligned}$$
(1)
$$\begin{aligned} rcvMSG = a_j * sendMSG+b_j \end{aligned}$$
(2)
$$\begin{aligned} sendP (rank)=\frac{n + 1- rank}{ n (n + 1) / 2} \end{aligned}$$
(3)

When the message is received positively, the simulator display a circle around the recipient with line, and the message is received negatively, display the circle with dot line. Such appearances show the relationship between the sendMSG and the rcvMSG (Fig. 2).

Based on the results of message exchange, the senders’ and receivers’ positions follow four patterns as follows, (1) both sender and receiver approach, (2) sender approaches and receiver leaves, (3) sender leaves and receiver approaches, and (4) both sender and receiver leave. After all message exchanges in a turn, the persons’ coordinates are varying (except in case of self-message).

Fig. 1.
figure 1

Communication model for the organization simulator

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Fig. 2.
figure 2

Prototype of simulator

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The user can input persons’ attributes (x, y, Influence. Sensitivity, Mental Health) and number of finish turn, then observe the simulation. The examples of behaviors of the simulator in the case of 9 persons organization are following.

In condition 1, all the persons are average message sending/receiving characteristics. They send/receive a message directly (Fig. 3). In condition 2 and 3, a person has positive message receiving and sending characteristics, respectively (Figs. 4 and 5). In condition 4 and 5, a person has positive message sending/receiving characteristics, and locates the center or the middle right (Fig. 6). In condition 6 and 7, a person has negative message sending/receiving characteristics, and locates the center or the middle right (Fig. 7). In the condition 7, a negative person has a tendency toward socially isolated. As just described, persons’ positional relationship changes according to persons’ attribution.

4 Usage of the Simulator

The industrial counselors, human resources personnel, and clients are the target users of the simulator. The users can set a person’s attributes optionally to reflect the organizational environment and inter-personal relations.

  1. A.

    Use with industry counselor: The simulator will make it possible to share information for client and industry counselor.

  2. B.

    Human resource personnel use: The simulator works as a means of monitoring the coping behavior not only for personnel managers, but also for people experiencing a mental health crisis in the workplace.

  3. C.

    Self-consultation: A person who is troubled with human relations in the workplace inputs his/her own situation (e.g., psychological distance from others and personal characteristics) into a simulator and observes the movement. The user can obtain an overview of the situation objectively, and can accordingly adjust his/her behavior and characteristics.

Fig. 3.
figure 3

All persons have average message sending/receiving characteristics (Influence a = 1, b = 0, Sensitivity a = 1, b = 0). Distances of each persons nearly unchanged.

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Fig. 4.
figure 4

A person have positive message receiving characteristics (Influence a = 1, b = 0, Sensitivity a = 1, b = 0.5). A part of distances slightly changed.

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Fig. 5.
figure 5

A person have positive message sending characteristics (Influence a = 1, b = 0.5, Sensitivity a = 1, b = 0). A part of distances slightly changed.

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Fig. 6.
figure 6

A person have positive message sending/receiving characteristics (Influence a = 1, b = 0.5, Sensitivity a = 1, b = 0.5). A positive person of condition 5 have a tendency toward to approach inside of the group.

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Fig. 7.
figure 7

A person have negative message sending/receiving characteristics (Influence a = 1, b = \(-0.5\) , Sensitivity a = 1, b = \(-0.5\)). A person in the middle right have a tendency to move outside.

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5 Discussion

The prototype of simulator has the functional limits as follows.

  1. (1)

    How can users input their message sending/receiving characteristics to the simulator?: It’s not always true that users know his/her characteristics. So we would need some method to adjust parameters automatically (e.g. extract parameters from e-mail messages or voice call).

  2. (2)

    Implementation of more than one or more organization and sub-organization: In most situation, the organization doesn’t exist alone but has the sub-organizations and the other organizations. Persons in the organization must be able to send/receive message beyond the frame of the organization.

  3. (3)

    Influence of message to the workplace environment: It seems message affects not only a target (receiver) person but also surrounding persons indirectly.