The Group will practice Groupwide our Purpose: Building a Better Tomorrow with Environmental Technologies. In addition, we have identified Building attractive, rewarding workplace as a materiality issue under which we will aim to achieve our Long-term Vision (for 2030) of Realizing a comfortable, sustainable society while contributing to lives and culture by maximizing the value of each and every employee and putting that value to maximal use as an organization, while promoting diversity and inclusion, through the following priority measures.

We believe the ideal and essential human resources for the organization are those capable of thinking for themselves and taking autonomous action to tackle challenges, meet the needs of the organization and of its customers, and achieve strong results based on their high-level professional competencies.

We established the HR Development Policy in 2023. We believe HR development and growth are essential to our Long-term Vision—Realizing a comfortable, sustainable society while contributing to lives and culture. We will provide opportunities for diverse human resources to demonstrate their abilities to the fullest and enhance our systems to enable employees to acquire knowledge and skills and experience personal growth while properly evaluating and promoting employees who actively take on challenges and achieve results.

The Group has established a broad range of training programs, including tier-based training for specific employee levels, as well as distance learning programs intended to encourage self-improvement and facilitate the acquisition of official qualifications. In FY2023, we recorded a training time per employee of 6.3 hours and training costs per employee of 62,000 yen. We plan to continue to pursue HR development efforts, drawing on both in-person and online training programs.

We conducted an employee engagement survey in FY2023. To address issues identified through analyses of its findings, we have enhanced benefits programs, revised employment regulations to shorten working hours and make other improvements, revised employee training programs, launched a blog by the President, and held town hall meetings with management, among other initiatives. We plan to continue to conduct employee engagement surveys and consider and implement measures in response to their findings as part of the activities of the Sustainability Committee.

* Employees: Including irregular employees

Through the Meister Program, intended to maintain the Group proprietary technical skills and develop capable younger mid-level engineers, the Group is striving to pass along the skills possessed by veteran engineers highly knowledgeable on specific technologies to the next generation and raise the competencies of younger mid-level engineers. The R&D Center teaches Group shared technologies through programs including basic technical courses for younger employees and technical introductory courses for administration staff.

Due in part to the nature of its businesses, the Group continues to have a small percentage of female employees. Together with developing an environment that makes it easier for women to apply at the hiring stage, we have set as KPIs the targets of at least 6% of managers at major subsidiaries and at least 15% of Company Directors being women by the fiscal year ending March 2027. We are also making progress on hiring of non-Japanese employees and are focusing on related educational efforts such as providing opportunities for diversity training at the Head Office.

The Group is promoting efforts to build safe, comfortable workplaces to allow employees to enjoy improved wellbeing while playing active and vital roles. We are shortening actual working hours by lengthening lunch breaks, and also holding Company-subsidized luncheons to offer a healthy, varied menu and stimulate communication among employees. Our health-management initiatives include physical and mental health counseling by industrial physicians based on the results of annual health checkups and stress checks in line with our aim to support better health for our employees.