HUMAN CAPITAL MANAGEMENT
We are committed to providing the best environment to assist with the personal growth of all employees. As part of this commitment, we have revised our human resource management system twice in recent years, once in 2021 for managerial employees and then in 2023 to include non-managerial members in the scope. The revisions include system improvements to make sure that everybody will be fairly treated and remunerated according to their achievements and performance and that each member can receive assessment feedback to help their personal growth. We hope that the revised system will encourage everybody, including young people with less experience, to be courageous and try new things.
Another management vision that our Group pursues is “to be a company whose members can actively apply themselves”. To achieve this, it is important for us to support each employee to appropriately manage their physical and mental health. To embody this commitment, we have implemented the “Sumitomo Bakelite Group Declaration of Health” that emphasizes the importance of helping employees maintain and improve their good health. In March 2024, our Company was recognized by the government as one of the “Excellent Corporations for Health Management 2024 (in large-scale enterprise category)”. This recognition is only a small step forward as we continue to implement and promote various health promotion measures as a means to accelerate the sustainable growth of the company.
In recent years, DE&I promotion has been an important issue. To help all members of our diverse workforce to maximize their capability and personal attributes to accelerate productivity improvement and innovations of the company, we have formed a DE&I Promotion Office under the Personnel Division.
In FY2023, a newly formed women's empowerment working group organized a number of round-table discussion sessions, where female employees can get together and voice their thoughts, which are then collected and reflected in our human resource management system.
Also as part of our human resource management improvement, we periodically conduct employee engagement surveys. One survey result showed that the percentage of affirmative responses to the questions of “I believe that I am duly performing my social responsibility” and “I comply with my company’s code of ethics” significantly exceeds the average among Japanese companies. For greater improvement, we will work on providing greater visibility into our organizational personnel information to clarify the strengths of our workforce and take necessary actions to further improve employee performance.
Other measures in the New Medium-term Business Plan include development of digital-skill leaders and enhancement of mid-career recruitment to build a stronger workforce across the Group.
Embracing Diversity
To accelerate innovation, it is essential for us to truly embrace diversity. With a belief that helping women play greater roles in the company should be the first step to achieve that, we now track “the ratio of female management staff” (non-consolidated) and “the percentage of paternal leave” (non-consolidated) as improvement KPIs. We will also gradually increase the percentage of mid-career hires (non-consolidated) to create a workplace where a truly diverse group of people can work together and perform at their best.
Greater Autonomy
We utilize a series of training programs based on a 360-degree assessment scheme so that employees can stimulate each other and help themselves achieve greater autonomy. The number of participants in training programs based on the 360-degree assessment is now set as a KPI. With this, we will work on increasing the number of employees with greater autonomy and a passion for problem solving to further accelerate value creation.
Improved Organizational Capabilities
In order to help train managerial candidates who can help build up our teamwork across the whole organization, we now set the number of participants in our management training programs as a KPI. We assist and encourage managers influential within the organization to stimulate teamwork and grow a sense of belonging to the organization among employees to accelerate the creation of Environmental and Social Values across the organization.