Sustainability - HR Development
As society matures, people’s values are diversifying and the forms of happiness they seek and the ways they work are changing. At the Meiden Group, we see our Employees as human capital. To maximize its corporate performance, the Group works to enhance each employee’s abilities (A) and motivation (M), as well as create opportunities (O) and environments where all employees can play an active role. This AMO framework is the basis of the Meiden Group’s thinking about human capital.
Enhance the training system to increase self-driven initiatives and reduce top-down directives, with the aim of developing human resources with the autonomy to think and act on their own.
We conduct numerous training programs to encourage employee growth in the different aspects of their lives: as an employee, a member of society, and a professional.
The Medium-Term Management Plan 2024 aims to strengthen human capital in conjunction with sustainability management, and will focus on further human resource development so that diverse human resources can accept each other's individuality and make the most of their abilities. As part of this, we are promoting growth through opportunities to work with diverse personnel, such as coaching programs at overseas subsidiaries, a foreign trainee system, and an overseas assignment system.
We are also enhancing our innovation education so that employees have the creativity and drive to try new things without being trapped by conventional ideas and methods, and fostering an environment conducive to innovation. For example, we create opportunities for employees to challenge themselves and play an active role in the creation and launching of new businesses as a member of the Business Development Division.
This training facilitates understanding of the roles, abilities, and skills required for promotions and the qualifications for each ability and seamlessly integrates into real-life applicability and employee development.
This training hones the way of thinking, skills, and practical abilities to solve management problems with the aim of enhancing management capabilities.
This training teaches the knowledge and skills necessary for employees to achieve their own career goals.
This training teaches product knowledge according to the technical level of the employee.
When the prescribed correspondence course is completed, we will cover 60% of course fees or the full amount if completed with high grades.
We provide incentives for acquiring prescribed public qualifications at the time of acquisition.
Meidensha strives to respect individual diversity and draw out each employee’s independence and motivation. To that end, we have launched “My Vision/My Challenge,” an initiative for employees to reflect on their own life vision, compare it to the company’s vision, and put into words what challenges they will take on in the company (“My Challenge”). In FY2022, members of upper management put their “My Vision/My Challenge” into words.
The program was expanded to executive officers and managers in FY2023 and is scheduled to include general employees in FY2024.
We implement a rotation system for the systematic growth of young employees. Based on the rotation model, employees, offices, and HR departments share common career growth plans and use periodic meetings to enact rotation. Gaining experience in a variety of fields allows young employees to grow in the early stages of their careers and foster the motivation to pursue potential careers.
In FY2023, we launched the internal internship system, which uses periodic exchanges with and deployments to other divisions to broaden perspectives, provide new knowledge, and allow individuals the opportunities to consider careers and which ones would suit them best.
We have also created an “Enterprising Individuals Course” with the Business Development Division to help drive innovation.
The Group created a Career Consultation Desk in FY2022, a specialized resource for employees as values grow more diverse and employees are becoming less passive more self-reliant about their careers. Regardless of role or workplace, any Meiden Group employee can utilize the service and the array of support it offers, including career and personal advancement planning, career and skill development, and information on company systems. This allows every employee to further demonstrate their abilities and play an active role in the company.
In FY2016, we introduced the MFC mentor system for the purpose of strengthening internal connections between young employees and building an atmosphere of professional development. The MFC stands for “Meiden Family Chain” with the idea that staff would form a supportive familial bond where they would support each other like links in a chain. We refer mentors as “seniors” and mentees as “juniors.” We also have groups consisting of multiple pairs, which we call them “families,” that create bonds that go beyond divisions and business units.
Each family holds its own social events and conferences, including study sessions and events that go beyond the family group. Each year the initiative continues to become more fruitful.
Starting in FY2021, the MFC began including regional office employees in addition to Headquarter employees and now boasts over 500 members. Through such efforts, we hope to further strengthen lateral connections between younger employees.
All employees can access the list of necessary sales, office, technical, and occupational skills. This helps promote study toward a desired career, managerial discussion within divisions, and lateral development and connections and also helps employees gain a clear understanding of the steps required to grow in their individual careers.
Meidensha has long provided technical training to help employees acquire specialized skills and improve their practical abilities. However, in order to strengthen the technical skills of younger employees, we have been providing training since 2018 for both technical and administrative staff to learn about electricity, which is essential for understanding Meidensha's technologies and products. In FY2019, we added ICT training and began offering training on digital fundamentals and design thinking, the essential components of the digital literacy needed to train digital human resources. We created the “digital textbook” in FY2022 and intensified the following initiatives in FY2023.
(1) Creating and publicizing technical education videos on electronics and products
(2) Offering practical training on electronic control circuits
The following training is scheduled for FY2024:
(1) Digital literacy education
(2) Rank-specific training for technical employees (factories)
The technical training center Manabi-ya, located at the Numazu Works, is intended for the early development of engineers and the passing on of technology and skills. It provides technical and skills training, led mainly by experienced employees, and programs for the systematic training of engineers and raising the level of their work. Maintenance engineers in particular study for one year at the technical training center to learn maintenance skills.
We offer the Career Development Management Program, a new training program to systematically and strategically develop the next generation of personnel.
We aim to develop personnel that can think and act with a broad perspective and outlook that exceed the bounds of their own areas of specialty and roles by selecting and recruiting young and mid-level personnel to attend business school and engage in professional exchange with people outside of their own business divisions, factories, and business units, engage in personal exchange with overseas subsidiaries and Japanese subsidiaries, and engage in cultural exchange through placement outside of the Group and at government institutions, etc.
We have also newly added a young employee program to selective training in order to systematically develop the next generation of management personnel for the medium to long term.
In addition, by introducing the Innovation Professional Development Program for the next generation of management and having them experience different fields with various human resources development measures, we aim to enhance their creativity by helping trainees absorb a variety of knowledge and broaden their experience, as well as to foster an innovation mindset.
We also train the general managers of each business on the knowledge and skills they need in the current management environment. These include finance and accounting training, which is essential for accurate decision-making, and training in unconscious bias, psychological safety, and anger management as part of promoting DEI. We also send general managers to outside seminars to build up their organizational capabilities.
Since FY2018, the Meiden Group has been conducting a Japanese study abroad program for local staff (employees of overseas subsidiaries) to promote communication between Meidensha management groups, improve preparedness to take on leadership roles and the knowledge necessary for top management positions in the Meiden Group, and develop personnel who are candidates for leadership positions at overseas subsidiaries. Since FY2021, training that aligns with the issues and demands of each local business has been conducted, with Thai Meidensha Co., Ltd. engaging in coaching programs for organizational development, while joint training programs in China have been organized between multiple regional businesses and the primary business planning department. Meiden Singapore Pte. Ltd.—primarily focused on the ASEAN region— and Meiden America Inc. have created new career paths to detail ways to create candidates for executive positions from local staff, conducted town-hall style meetings to inform and execute plans, and have helped solidify the mindset of local staff. We are building upon and expanding these successes to other local businesses to develop local executives at overseas subsidiaries.
Technician interns and technician trainees from overseas subsidiaries also receive training in Japan to increase the ability of engineers in local business and improve the competitiveness of the Meiden Group. We expect that they will utilize their new skills upon returning to their home countries and improve product quality, technical know-how, and communication.
