KOKUYO Sustainability Message from The Managing Officer of H&C Division

A passion for solving problems is our strength

When it comes to sustaining long-term value creation and achieving our long-term vision, CCC 2030, the most important thing is to leverage our core competencies to the fullest.

What exactly are our core competencies, then? One of our strengths is summed up by a witticism we’ve coined: being “diligent and quirky.” The phrase encapsulates the kind of Kokuyo employee who is motivated and passionate, almost to the point of obsession, about solving customers’ problems and making a positive difference in their lives.

Take, for example, Hako-Ake, a product that functions as both a box cutter and a pair of scissors. This product targets the niche need for a quicker and easier way to open delivery boxes. The audience for the product may be limited and the product may have a limited social impact, but the prospect of customers thinking “that’s just what I needed” was the key inspiration, and that’s what makes it a quintessential Kokuyo product.

Whether the target audience is big or small, the inspiration behind products has always come from a desire to make someone’s life a little easier. Over the years, such creative imagination has become embedded as our organizational culture. It must remain rooted as a universal value in our organization in years to come, when the reins are passed to a younger generation of employees.

However, this “diligent and quirky” mindset has yet to permeate across the whole organization; it remains limited to particular teams or divisions. In other words, there is still significant potential for it to spread. I feel the need to establish a foundation that enables signature Kokuyo-style creativity and a system that allows individuals to fully exert their uniqueness and abilities across both the stationery and furniture businesses, so that we, as an organization, can foster creative talent. Additionally, there is a need to devise and promote a talent strategy that inculcates Kokuyo-style creativity as a common value. This is my main mission.

The Talent Management Policy in context

With the aim of enabling the expression of signature Kokuyo-style creativity across all business areas, we formulated our Talent Management Policy (see the feature article on human capital management), which delineates the core competencies of our talent. This policy is crafted to empower the talent necessary for realizing our long-term vision. Guided by this policy, management will assist employees in developing visionary ideas.

The policy emphasizes dynamic reassignment, whereby employees who have until now confined themselves to a particular division or business area will start working across divisional boundaries. This approach will help employees develop their career and gain multifaceted perspectives.

Kokuyo’s agenda for expanding its business area requires us to depart from the conventional approach to talent development. Kokuyo initially focused on stationery and later expanded into the workstyle and lifestyle fields. As a result, employees have tended to specialize in one business area or another. However, unlike in the 1980s and 1990s, when the emphasis was on quantitative expansion, our current focus is on qualitative aspects and value creation under our Forest-Like Management Model. Therefore, we absolutely need talent with multifaceted perspectives.

In many aspects of business, we require talent with multiple perspectives. One example is our strategy to expand the stationery business in South East Asia. Since business customs and the values young people expect from stationery differ from country to country, our product development and marketing teams must understand the things that apply globally and the things that should be localized. Another example is The Campus Flats Togoshi, a “share house” we opened as part of our strategy for expanding the reach of the furniture business. In this project, the team had to think about uses for the idle building that could deliver added value to local people. In these kinds of projects, you need the knowledge and experience to combine Kokuyo’s strengths, but you also need to have multifaceted perspectives. In other words, these projects are unlikely to succeed if our employees confine themselves to a single business field.

An urgent task in the months and years ahead will be to ensure that our approach to talent development and acquisition is well-aligned with our strategy for business expansion and all other strategies. Reassigning talent across divisional boundaries is a part of this effort, and it’s something we will continue to strongly promote.

Meaningful reassignment: What matters is matching management’s perspective with the employee’s perspective

Strategic staff reassignments should be meaningful, requiring alignment between management's plans and employee preferences. While management focuses on cultivating talent to meet strategic objectives, it's crucial to balance this perspective with the potential and personality of the employees involved. Furthermore, it's essential to ensure that reassignments align with the growth experiences employees seek. To facilitate optimal matches, we'll leverage various organizational structures, including the Talent Development Committee, where corporate officers discuss potential assignments for career development, and the 20% Challenge, an internal program allowing employees to spend 20% of their time in another division.

There are cases wherein an employee can only achieve their career ambitions by first gaining the prerequisite knowledge and skills. In such a case, we’ll make sure the employee in question understands that, and then we’ll provide opportunities for them to gain experience, thereby helping them advance toward their dream career. Ultimately, I hope we can encourage employees to achieve growth beyond their wildest dreams.

An urgent task: Changing workplace attitudes toward challenge-taking

We conduct two types of employee surveys: a monthly engagement pulse survey and an annual stress check. On the whole, employee engagement is high, and we understand that this is contributing to our high employee retention rate.

Aspects that require more attention in the future include challenge-taking, a sense of growth, and other things that have to do with employees being vibrant. While many employees relish taking on a new challenge, many others prefer to stay absorbed in routine work. Concerningly, this includes younger employees. These findings suggest that we must do more to change attitudes and foster a workplace that empowers challenge-taking behavior. We do have a working environment that is supportive of employees who show a willingness to take on challenges. If an employee raises their voice, they have peers that will come to their help. As a company, we need to channel this culture effectively to create a robust organization that can maximize the challenge-taking ambitions of employees.