EMPLOYEE COMMUNICATION

Employees Employee Communication

Basic Concepts

We are aiming to foster an open and easy-to-communicate organizational culture in which it is possible to create value through varied experimentation with members who have different values. The purpose of that is to be a company that creates new value by extracting the value of diversified human resources and solving social issues in 2030.
We will look to entrench a culture of experimentation where all employees respect each other and can easily access the information they need. It will also be one where value is produced through repeated trial and error in our third medium-term plan, Field Expansion 2024. Our goal with that is to change the way of working at KOKUYO into one of hybrid work and project-based work.

Systems

Employee Satisfaction Survey (stress check)

We conduct an annual stress check as required under law.
By analyzing the responses, along with overtime data and interview data, we identify issues. With this information, HR facilitates dialogues aimed at prompting self-led solutions.

Pulse Survey

We conduct a pulse survey to be able to rotate through the PDCA cycle at a high pace of once a month in KOKUYO Co., Ltd. and Kaunet Co., Ltd. One purpose of the survey is to grasp the state of individuals and teams and then use it together with other data as the indicator for responding to alerts and improving teams. Another purpose of the survey is for management to grasp the state of sites and employees even more timely and accurately while taking various measures such as new ways of working and initiatives to realize our long-term vision. We are aiming to foster an easy-to-communicate corporate culture in which employees can think and talk with each other about the company on an equal footing regardless of their position through establishing a habit of always be aware of the condition of their teams and organizations by continuing this survey every month.

Initiatives in 2023

Employee Town Meetings

All officers presented the YOKOKU in business for their own departments in the form of a movie. The aim of this activity was to serve as the impetus for each employee to see KOKUYO’s purpose as their own and to think about their own YOKOKU. We held a town meeting as an opportunity for officers and employees to deepen their understanding by thinking and entering into dialogue together on the thoughts they could not fully express in their movies, why they chose that particular YOKOKU and the future that lies ahead.

President’s Award

In FY2020, we launched the President’s Award to honor initiatives that help build KOKUYO’s value. In 2023, the third year of the program, the prestigious award went to the Initiative to Revitalize Human Resources in the HR Department.
The diverse initiatives established by the HR Department based on the concept of simultaneous growth of business and human resources include the KOKUYO Marketing University and the KOKUYO Marketing Graduate School. The university is a program aimed at young to mid-career employees to develop the basic core abilities they must learn regardless of their job type. Meanwhile, the graduate school is a program aimed at mid-career leaders in their 30s and 40s. In addition, there is the 20% Challenge. This initiative was started to boost independent career formation, ability improvement and organizational revitalization. It led to the creation of a system to allow employees to proactively take on challenges with respect to job offers on the organizational side. These efforts have been recognized.

In-house Awards Program (THE AWARDS)

THE AWARDS is a new awards program we started in 2023. It is a program to praise our close colleagues such as people and teams who are working hard on YOKOKU, people who are providing support behind the scenes, and people who have grown. Our aim with the program is to create a culture in which our employees put into words what they want to attempt and then receive support for taking on those challenges from those around them.
We sought entries for the following four types of awards and presented them together with the President’s Award in 2023.

Best YOKOKU Award: Teams and projects which take on YOKOKU and work on various experiments (self-nomination or nomination by others)
Best Management Reform Award: Teams which have improved the well-being of their organization (self-nomination or nomination by others)
Most Supportive Person (MSP) Award: A colleague who supports and advances experiments in various aspects (nomination by others)
Most Improved Person (MIP) Award: A colleague who has undergone remarkable growth (nomination by others)

We selected award-winners by business and region. The winners then gathered from all over Japan at our Shinagawa Office for the awards ceremony. We have shared their efforts with all employees such as through our company newsletter.