Report: Diversity promotion efforts

The Committee is chaired by the President and consists of members of upper management. From September 2017, the Committee met quarterly to make a strong push for diversity. In the third year since its inception, when its efforts began to show progress, the Committee shifted to meeting twice a year to check on the status of diversity promotion and to conduct KPI management. 

In November 2017, we launched the “Diversity and Me” publication with rotating contributions. In it, contributors give their personal thoughts on diversity and share them with employees to foster a diversity-friendly corporate culture. Video distribution will begin in June 2019, featuring conversations with upper management around diversity-related topics.

Recognizing that harassment is a violation of human rights, we held a training course to reflect on our own management and corporate culture and to facilitate improvement. In order to create an organization with high manager-centered psychological safety, we are working to create a culture that neither engages in or allows harassment.

The company held seminars for all section managers on diversity management.

Managers reflected on their management styles and identified areas that could be improved. In addition, the seminar used role-playing methods to teach participants how to manage employees coming from diverse backgrounds and to promote an understanding of where each member’s motivation comes from.

In the diversity dissemination survey conducted every quarter is a question asking what obstacles exist within one’s department that get in the way of enhancing diversity. The most common answer is unconscious bias. Therefore, the company holds e-learning seminars for all managers with the aim of controlling and reducing such unconscious bias.

Each division established Committees with the goal of becoming a team that continues to produce results by working together. Led by division heads, all employees are working on various initiatives and taking ownership of diversity issues. Details of the initiatives are shared within the company and presented at the Diversity Award, which is held to select and commend the year’s best performing initiatives.

We share in efforts to improve quality, create new value, and achieve results, which we do by utilizing diversity.

At the 2019 Diversity Awards, the six final teams out of the 40 who entered gave presentations. The event was broadcast live, and featured participating employees from across Japan. The top prize was decided by employee vote and the winners we commended for their efforts.

The top prize went to the District Construction and Construction Planning Department, which functions across several departments. This department is responsible for digitizing frequently-used documents and automating work Companywide.

The Diversity Awards have held since 2018 and serve as the culmination of the year. 

To sum up diversity enhancement activities that took place throughout the year, the company shares initiatives that improved quality, created new value, or produced results by utilizing diversity.

31 teams took part in Diversity Award 2018 and six finalists held presentations on their works. Roughly 550 employees gathered to listen to the presentations and went on to vote for the best initiative, which was presented the Best Performance Award.

Award winner: Tokyo I District

Initiatives

1) Trainings by non-Japanese employees for non-Japanese staff members to become a more substantial part of the workforce.

2) Enhancing sales area to better accommodate inbound needs due to an increasing number of international visitors.

3) Developing products from women’s perspectives to increase female customers and improving the company’s lineup of baby products.

Results

Decreased complaints against non-Japanese staff members and increased sales of products in the improved category.

Mr.Ryoji Hoshika

We created a new page on the company intranet for publishing information on all activities related to enhancing diversity. We also launched  a website to inform our employees about our internal system. 

We publish up-to-date news on diversity enhancement, such as various in-house systems, opinions from users regarding such systems, diversity trainings, and efforts undertaken by various organizations. 95 issues have been released as of FY 2019.

In addition, we publish the information of diversity hints for promoting diversity.