Social
HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT
We can only succeed in our long-term vision and business strategies if we empower the necessary talent. That is why our basic approach to employee management is to support both employee growth and business growth. In other words, we support a growth cycle that both expands the reach of our business fields and expands the potential of every employee. We have established the Talent Management Policy to enshrine a common understanding between senior management and employees on the values and principles Kokuyo Group should observe when engaging with individuals.
Actions
- Creating a Cyclical Process of Employee Growth and Business Growth
- Actions in Line with Talent Management Policy
- Yokoku for Long-Term Value Creation
- 20% Challenge: Internal Moonlighting
- KOKUYO Marketing University and KOKUYO Marketing Graduate School
Creating a Cyclical Process of Employee Growth and Business Growth
We aim for a cyclical process of employee growth and business growth. This approach balances two goals: expanding our business portfolio to cultivate a diverse ecosystem of businesses, and allowing individuals (our talent) to expand their career opportunities.
Actions in Line with Talent Management Policy
Recognizing that our employees are a social assets, we engage closely with every employee to unlock their potential for driving business growth and creating positive social impacts.
| Providing opportunities for all employees to shine |
A broad spectrum of employees (young to senior) volunteer for the 20% Challenge (internal moonlighting), gaining experience of working in another part of the organization. In 2024, we started supporting talent fluidity, an important measure for career support. We offer many opportunities to work in another division or other country. We believe that such redeployments help employees uncover their hidden potential and grow, provided that the person’s career preferences are respected. |
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| Maximizing the speed of growth in talented and passionate employees |
In 2024, we opened a talent-development institution called KOKUYO Academy. The idea behind KOKUYO Academy is to give attendees an idea of yokoku (the passion and ambition to create a better tomorrow) as the source of corporate and personal growth and to help them refine the leadership and creative skills they need to put such yokoku into practice. We also have a number of training programs to support employee growth. For junior employees, we offer KOKUYO Career Dock, which consists of two programs run simultaneously. One is a self-development program for the junior employees. The other is a program for training subordinates attended by the employees’ supervisors. KOKUYO Career Dock is designed to foster a common understanding between supervisors and subordinates about career growth and challenge-taking. The training programs are also attended by senior managers to encourage the junior employees to commit to professional development and their supervisors to support their development. Our talent management system is designed so that employees can step up the career ladder regardless of their age or years of experience. |
| Nurturing leadership talent for leading team-based value creation |
The task of nurturing individual leadership talent is not left entirely to employees’ immediate superiors. It is a job shared by other senior staff around the person, managers of other divisions, and by HR. At the Talent Development Committee, members discuss career advancement and growth opportunities for individual employees, considering multiple perspectives. All career-track staff receive 360-degree assessments to provide feedback about their leadership performance. They also attend workshops to further develop their leadership skills. |
| Helping employees build diverse and fulfilling careers |
To prevent situations in which employees are forced to give up their career because of childcare commitments or family care commitments, we have revised our systems and improved our programs for helping balance career with such commitments. We have also revised our personnel evaluation approach for employees on maternity or parental leave so that their leave does not create a blank period in their record. We track the skills employees are accumulating over time and provide continual feedback to support the person’s growth. To give middle-aged and senior employees greater autonomy over their careers, we have partially eased our prohibition on working second jobs. Believing that employees should take the initiative in their career and growth, we are providing the support measures to facilitate such self-driven action and improve the value of our talent. |
Yokoku for Long-Term Value Creation
Creative yokoku by diverse talent is key to creating the new value expanding the reach of our business fields. We define yokoku as the passion and aspiration to create a better future.
We excel in value creation because our employees are sensitive to the problems our customers face and their resolve, or yokoku, to address these problems in creative ways. We maximize this strength by shining the spotlight on each employee, bringing out their uniqueness and talent to the full, and by nurturing the leadership skills to put yokoku into action. Alongside this, we foster an open organizational culture that encourages employees to express their yokoku and a workplace environment that emphasizes bonding and solidarity among diverse employees who share the yokoku spirit.
We run the Yokoku Workshop to encourage yokoku among our employees. Employees discuss yokoku and learn about each other’s ideas and goals, fostering a mutually supportive environment. At the workshop in 2024, 836 employees presented their yokoku ideas and goals. At the team workshops, 93 teams (a total of 403 employees) developed a team yokoku.
20% Challenge: Internal Moonlighting
In 2020, to promote an empowered workplace in which employees actively pursue opportunities for professional development, we launched 20% Challenge, a program of internal moonlighting in which participants spend 20% of their working time engaging in a job for another organizational division. Organizational divisions issue recruitment notices for certain jobs (“challenges”), employees apply for them, and the head of the division in question works with the HR team to find the right candidate. The program runs for three to 12 months, and participants’ initiatives and their contributions to the company and to external stakeholders count toward their individual personnel evaluation. To date, approximately 370 employees have participated. These participants stepped across business and organizational boundaries to engage in challenges such as market research for overseas businesses, strategy support, R&D project anticipating the future of digital learning, and raising employees’ eco-awareness. The idea is that employees try to divide their time 80–20 between their normal work and the new assignment, a ratio that is ideal for raising workplace productivity without compromising one’s normal work. Through this program, we visualize workplace activity. We then identify aspects to rectify or recalibrate through dialogues among the employees concerned and their managers and HR.
| 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cumulative total of employees who have participated in the 20% Challenge | 129 | 189 | 266 | 378 |
KOKUYO Marketing University and KOKUYO Marketing Graduate School
KOKUYO Marketing University is a project-based training program for employees who graduated from university between three and 12 years ago. The program teaches attendees to consider customers’ perspectives and to develop ideas that tap into an unmet need. The attendees acquire knowledge about marketing and strategic planning. They then apply their knowledge right away in a project in which they create a product concept. Under the guidance of external corporate strategists, they spend around half a year perfecting the product idea and then present it to the management. Since the program began in 2017, more than 190 younger employees have taken on a project related to development, planning, or another area. The program continues to provide a starting point for employee development and action. For example, attendees can enhance their learning by making use of the program’s mentorship system, in which they receive support from graduates of the program. Additionally, attending the program leads to positive changes in workplace outputs and encourages the employees to accept an offer of redeployment and the fresh challenges it brings.
KOKUYO Marketing Graduate School is a program for mid-level leaders, who are aged between 30 and 49. The program is designed to equip these employees with strategic acumen, including the ability to objectively forecast future scenarios. During the program, attendees are presented with 10-year business themes determined by the management. Under the guidance of external marketing professionals, they spend around nine months engaging in team work to perfect their growth strategy for KOKUYO and then present it to the management. Since the program’s launch in 2019, more than 130 employees have participated. Many of the program graduates are playing an active part in the company after seizing opportunities to take on the challenge of an even larger role such as through company-wide projects after completing the program.
| 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| KOKUYO Marketing University Participants (cumulative total) | 118 | 143 | 168 | 192 |
| KOKUYO Marketing Graduate School Participants (cumulative total) | 73 | 93 | 113 | 133 |
