SOCIAL LABOR AND TALENT
To promote wellbeing inside and outside our organization, we embrace new workstyles and support the careers of diverse employees.
Workstyle Reform, Diversity, and Inclusion
Basic approach
Wellbeing is the experience of happiness and health.
We are committed to promoting wellbeing (the experience of feeling happy and healthy) inside and outside our organization. To enhance wellbeing inside the organization (and thus promote it in society), we embrace new workstyles, fostering a workplace that is diverse and inclusive of gender, disability, and nationality.
Actions in 2023
On the first floor of our head office, we built Hows Park, a pro-diversity office that embraces inclusive design. From the first stage of the design process, we engaged in dialogue with a diverse spectrum of lead users, including people with hearing impairment, mental-health problems, and lower-limb conditions, and wheelchair users to ensure that the office would be accessible and inclusive to all.
Hows Park accommodates diverse needs with the shape and height of furniture, easy visibility, and comfortable sense of distance.
Programs
Programs for workplace diversity*
We exceed regulatory requirements in our effort to support the careers of diverse employees and accommodate their needs associated with each life stage. Underlined text indicates a measure that exceeds regulatory requirements.
| Maternity leave | Pregnant employees are entitled to a leave of absence for a period lasting from six weeks before the due date (14 weeks if a multiple pregnancy) to eight weeks after it. |
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| Spouse’s leave | Employees whose spouse is pregnant are entitled to two days’ leave around the due date. |
| Parental leave | Employees are entitled to a leave of absence to care for their children until the child’s 2nd birthday (if the child’s second birthday falls in April, until the end of that April). |
| Sick child leave | Employees with children who are yet to enroll at elementary school are entitled to five days of leave a year or, if they have multiple applicable children, 10 days of leave a year (the leave can also be taken on an hourly basis). Taking such leave has no impact on wage or bonus. |
| Nursing care leave | Employees are entitled to take, for each care dependent, up to three periods of leave totaling no more than 183 days. |
| Short nursing care leave | Employees are entitled to take, for each care dependent, five days of leave a year or, if they have multiple care dependents, 10 days of leave a year (the leave can also be taken on an hourly basis). Taking such leave has no impact on wage or bonus. |
| Shorter hours | Childcare: Employees with children are entitled to take shorter work schedules until the children complete grade 3 of elementary school. Nursing care: Employees with dependents are entitled to take shorter work schedules for up to three years for each dependent. |
| Work from home | We promote a mixture of home and office working. |
| Complete flextime (with no predetermined core period) | We encourage employee productivity with flexible work hours |
| Re-employment system for employees who voluntarily resigned | We run a returnship program to help reintegrate into the workplace regular employees who resigned because of marriage, childbirth, childcare, nursing care, spouse relocation, overseas study, charity work, a career change, or other valid personal reasons. We believe that bringing in outside experience and insight further increases the diversity of our organization. |
| Re-employing mandatory retirees | We have in place a system that, in principle, allows employees who wish to work at the Kokuyo Group after retiring at the mandatory age of 60 to continue working as senior employees. Through this initiative, the retirees get opportunities to continue a professional role in society after mandatory retirement. In return, they use their experience and knowledge to help younger colleagues develop. |
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These programs apply in Kokuyo and major subsidiaries. View data on numbers of employees taking childcare and nursing care leave |
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Kokuyo-Style Hybrid Work
In 2022, we launched Kokuyo-Style Hybrid Work. This program honors diversity while encouraging employees to engage in workstyles that improve the productivity and creativity of the team as a whole, so that personal growth can accompany team outcomes. Kokuyo’s distinctive workstyle model is practiced by supporting each employee’s “life-based working,” a term we use to describe a situation in which the one’s workstyle, learning style, and lifestyle are balanced and embody one’s uniqueness.
For example, employees choose one of three workstyle categories (office-based, balanced, home-based) and then decide with their superiors on a workstyle that will best suit their individual and team performance. Teams regularly review members’ workstyles to see how they can improve.
With the workplace expanding, we provide employees with a satellite-style multipurpose space, known as n.5 (pronounced “enu-ten-go”). The space may be used as a satellite office, but it can also be used for activities related to employees’ working, learning, and living. Employees use n.5 for a variety of purposes, including for self-led seminars and other self-organized events.
Flextime in distribution centers
The distribution industry faces a number of labor challenges. For example, restrictions on truckers’ overtime will come into effect in Japan in 2024. To address the challenges, Kokuyo Group has embraced workstyle reform.
It is generally believed that flextime is unfeasible for the distribution industry. Nonetheless, KOKUYO Logitem introduced flextime for back-office staff in 2009 and then for distribution center staff in 2022. As well as prompting a higher uptake of flextime in delivery operations, KOKUYO Logitem has set a best-practice model for the industry. In 2023, KOKUYO Supply Logistics introduced flextime for distribution center staff and all other employees. With flextime, employees exercise autonomy in deciding which hours they work during busy periods. This frees up disposal time and reduces physical and mental strain. It also sets a good example of flexible workstyle practices for the industry.
Work-life balance
The Kokuyo Group endeavors to create an employee-friendly working environment with consideration for the work/life balance.
These initiatives have been recognized. Three companies in our group have acquired the Kurumin Mark as of the end of December 2022.
The Kurumin Mark is granted to companies and organizations which proactively support childrearing by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare that is working to reduce the declining birthrate. This initiative is based on the Law for Measures to Support the Development of the Next Generation.
The companies which have acquired the Kurumin Mark (as of the end of December 2023):
Kokuyo Co., Ltd.
Kaunet Co., Ltd.
KOKUYO Marketing Co., Ltd.
Employing People with Disabilities
Kokuyo has been an active employer of people with disabilities ever since 1940. In that year, Kokuyo started recruiting students from a school for the deaf in Osaka (now known as Chuo School for the Deaf). The students were employed in the company’s factory in Imazato, which stood on the site of what is now our Head Office.
A turning point in our policy for employing people with disabilities came in 2002, when we unveiled a program of structural reform. This reform program involved spinning off our business units into new companies. A question we then faced was how to provide jobs in the new group companies for people with disabilities. In September 2003, we founded KOKUYO K Heart as a “special subsidiary” (meaning a disability-friendly employer that is counted as part of the parent company). In December 2006, we founded Heartland, a subsidiary devoted to employing people with intellectual or mental disabilities.
As of June 1, 2023, people with disabilities make up 2.38% of the group’s workforce.
Heartland is a special subsidiary of Kokuyo. It employs people with disabilities and specializes in the running of agriculture. It creates employment for a total of approximately 7,000 people with disabilities in the region annually.
Labor and Talent
Basic approach
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 to expand their career opportunities.
Creating a cyclical process of employee growth and business growth
Talent Management Policy
In 2023, we established the Talent Management Policy. This policy enshrines the principle that Kokuyo’s workforce as an asset to society and that we should help every employee achieve their potential and cultivate talent that will drive business growth and contribute toward a better society. This principle is shared by the management and every employee.
One action we have taken in line with the policy is to launch the Talent Development Committee. This committee holds meetings across all divisions so that managers can confer about the career potential of each employee.
Our systematic approach to talent development has included programs such as the 20% Challenge and the Kokuyo Marketing University. To these, we recently added a new program, Kokuyo Academia, to further bolster talent development. The idea behind Kokuyo Academia is to give attendees an idea of Yokoku as the source of corporate and personal growth and to help them refine the leadership and creative skills they need to make their Yokoku a reality. The idea is also for attendees to gain confidence in their potential from what they have learned so that they will feel empowered to take on a new challenge. In this way, Kokuyo Academia helps foster a culture of continued learning and challenge-taking (Yokoku).
Programs
In FY2018, we launched a new employee reward system. Line managers receive rank-based pay, which reflects the person’s roles and responsibilities with no regard to their age or experience. Regular employees receive skill-based pay, reflecting the person’s knowledge, skills, or training. This new system delineates organizational functions and roles according to the company’s strategy, ensuring that the right person is matched to the right job. It also encourages dialogue between managers and employees concerning the company’s goals and how the employee can help achieve them. Attainment of these goals (measured on an absolute scale) is taken into account in employee evaluations in order to achieve a more differentiated approach to evaluation and treatment.
Since FY2019, we have been bolstering our talent-development infrastructure to match and promote the right people to the right jobs and to develop their abilities. Increasingly, we promote based on merit, not seniority. In a growing number of cases, employees are promoted to line manager in their early 30s, to middle manager (department manager) in their late 30s, and to managing officer in their 40s.
Human Resources Management Structure to Create Cyclical Process of Employee Growth and Business Growth
Our talent-development cycle consists of four processes: 1) creating new opportunities and identifying raw, underdeveloped talent; 2) moving employees to new positions of responsibility in a timely manner; 3) backing up employees who take on challenges; and 4) appraising employees based on multiple viewpoints.
Actions in 2023
Creating new opportunities for challenge-taking
- 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’ achievements and efforts count toward their individual personnel evaluation. To date, approximately 260 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 solutions for 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.
Examples of challenge themes in 20% Challenge topics
- 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 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 160 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 40. 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 110 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 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kokuyo Marketing University Participants (cumulative total) |
118 | 143 | 168 |
| Kokuyo Marketing Graduate School Participants (cumulative total) |
73 | 93 | 113 |
Kokuyo Marketing University
Kokuyo Marketing University, seventh year (2023): Group discussion
Kokuyo Marketing Graduate School
Kokuyo Marketing Graduate School, third year (2023): A final presentation session
