Human Resources Development

The JVCKENWOOD Group regards human resources development as a top priority to secure continued growth for the company, and one of our management policies is to develop human resources and strengthen organizational capabilities to realize innovation.

It is striving to foster and retain human resources that inspire innovation by establishing education/training systems that support the growth of individual employees and by developing/utilizing structures that allow employees to maintain long-standing careers even in the face of lifestyle changes.


JVCKENWOOD Group's Human Resources Strategy

JVCKENWOOD will strengthen its human capital strategy initiatives based on its New Medium-Term Management Plan “VISION 2025,” to enhance each employee's ability to create value and maximize corporate value. We aim to create a rewarding workplace and flexible work styles by strengthening strategic recruitment of new graduates and mid-career hires, planning and implementing skills development linked to management strategies, revitalizing rotations mainly for young employees, introducing a super-flex system as a diverse work style, and creating a hybrid work style centered on Value Creation Square (VCS), a new building to be established at the Yokohama Head Office area as a base for value creation.


Human capital strategy in VISION 2025

Themes Ideal state Measures KPI
HR strategy Diversity
  • Linkage between management and human resource strategies
  • Enhanced ability of each employee to create value
  • Rewarding workplace
  • Realization of flexible working styles
  • Increased engagement
  • Formulate human resource requirements and ability development plans in conjunction with management strategies
  • Strengthen strategic recruitment efforts for new graduates and mid-career hires
  • Activate rotation, especially among younger employees
  • Cultivate customer orientation through design management training
  • Introduce a stock-based remuneration system for executive senior management
  • Enhance communication measures, including management dialogue
  • Develop systems such as a super flex-time system
  • Promote new ways of working in the VCS
  • Promote employment and career opportunities for people with disabilities
  • Respond to same-sex partners
  • Number of recruits
  • Number of trainees
  • Engagement indicators
  • Voluntary retirement rate
Promotion of health Management
  • Established healthy and productive work styles
  • Health management reporting
  • Enhancing measures to improve health literacy
  • Productivity indicators
  • Rate of employees on administrative leave

JVCKENWOOD Career Design

To support employees in making use of their own experience to achieve their "visions for their future," we have developed an environment where employees can actively learn. JVCKENWOOD Career Design consists of the following four elements.

JVCKENWOOD Career Design overview


1. Set Human Resource Requirement Levels Based on Human Resource Requirement Definitions and Execute Development Plans

In human resource requirement definitions, we have established "human resource requirement levels" by job category for all employees, as skill levels required to achieve our mid-term business plan "VISION 2025." When setting human resource requirement levels, we define the "essential" skills, experience, training, etc., by job category, thus supporting career visualization. For the execution of development plans, we have assigned a career designer (CD) in the Human Resources Department to support the development of advanced skills among employees by analyzing the gap between human resource requirement levels and the current status for each job category, preparing employee development policies, and engaging in career consultations. Employees understand the skills, experience, training, etc., required of each job category, and know the level that they are currently at. In this way, it is easier to consider their own career because they know what is necessary to learn, and what skills and knowledge to enhance to move forward in their career in the future.


2. Career Interview

In career interviews, a fundamental aspect of JVCKENWOOD Career Design, employees themselves discuss their career visions and career development themes (matching with affiliated divisions, individual skills, etc.) with their superiors, with reference to human resource requirement definitions, as the most fundamental aspect of our career development program. In this way, these interviews provide an opportunity to ensure alignment between the direction individuals wish to advance in and the expectations of the Company. We also ensure alignment concerning the human resource requirement levels with the employees themselves. These meetings are for general employees and take place once a year.


3. Career Development Support (Support for Taking Individual Career Development Courses)

Based on support for skill enhancement through the human resource requirement definitions and the CD, all employees can participate in training once every year in accordance with their own aims for their careers from among a selection of options, and we provide opportunities for serial learning. In this way, we support self-actualization and self-reformation.


4. Career Design Training

Career design training is an opportunity for employees to create their own career visions, and think about the actions necessary to achieve it. Starting in FY2022, we revised the ages eligible for this training to focus on the turning points of 30 and 53 years of age. By working to ensure self-directed career development for young employees of 30, we aim to encourage individual growth and enhance the ability to respond to organizational change. For senior employees of 53, we aim to inspire them to quickly develop their awareness, including the importance of reskilling when choosing reemployment and transfers, amid a social environment that requires lifelong careers. This training acts as an opportunity for participants to comprehensively think about work-life balance, such as "self-development to achieve future goals" and "connections with home life and the local community," as part of discussions about their career visions with other training participants.


Various Other Skill Development and Training Programs to Complement JVCKENWOOD Career Design

JVCKENWOOD provides training for employees at each level, including "new employee training" for when new employees join, "promotion requirements training" for when employees are being promoted between internal roles and levels, "new manager training" for when employees are being promoted to managerial positions, etc., as well as participation in external seminars and business schools, design management training, training for senior employees, and other forms of training. In this way, we have developed a training structure to develop a diverse range of human resources, and we aim to fulfill the appetite for growth of our employees.


Development of Management Human Resources

JVCKENWOOD is implementing a focused training program to develop candidates for the next executives. Specifically, training is provided in the categories of newly appointed executive positions, newly appointed managers, and selected executive training. Through these management training programs, we are building a system for fostering management personnel over the medium to long term.

In addition, in order to develop expertise knowledge and practical knowledge required by the company as a whole for business strategies and business operations within the company, expertise knowledge and practical training are provided, which are voluntarily planned by individual divisions. The average annual training time per employee* is 24.44 hours.

* Calculations are based on the List of Training to Develop/Strengthen Skills (Table below).

Training to Develop/Strengthen Skills

Units: persons

Training category Content (eligible persons) Number of Participants in FY 2023
Managerial-class training Dispatch to outside training 3
Tier-specific training 1) New Employee Training: group training and e-learning 49 155
2) Promotion Requirements Training: Training for general employee of promotion candidates 61
3) New Manager Training: training for persons newly promoted to managerial positions 45
Career design training Please see Career Development Program below 492
Career development support Please see Career Development Program below 360
Design Management training In order to strengthen human resource development and organizational capabilities to achieve innovation, we conduct this training to spread customer-oriented design management internally. 101
Specialist knowledge training and practical seminars by individual organizations

Training on expertise knowledge and practical operations planned/administered by individual organizations
(Group training and e-learning)
 

<FY2023 Training Topics>
Diversity (including harassment), mental health, risk management, intellectual property, legal affairs, compliance, trade operations, IT security, quality control, environment, human rights, etc.

-

Hours and costs of training to Develop/Strengthen Skills

  Units FY2022 FY2023
Total training hours hours

36,191

77,262
Training hours per employee Hours Hours 11.31 24.44
Total training expense thousand yen 79,089 119,158
Investment in training cost per employee thousand yen 24.71 37.70

Recruitment

JVCKENWOOD is committed to the recruitment, training, and performance of diverse human resources. Recruitment of new graduates and mid-career recruits is also an important initiative in our Medium-Term Management Plan VISION 2023, which aims to restructure our workforce by age group. As part of our recruitment activities for new graduates, we offer internships in cooperation with certain specified universities and open internships. Internships are very important in recruiting new graduates because they deepen their understanding of and interest in our company through work experience, and because the ratio of job offers is high, we will continue these activities in the future. 
We are also focusing on mid-career recruitment as well as new graduate recruitment. In order to maintain our company's competitiveness and productivity, we recruit mid-career our company recruits, regardless of gender or nationality, from a wide range of generations, including those in their late 20s and 30s, and utilize the expertise of individuals who have worked in different environments. In fiscal 2021, 24 mid-career employees joined the company.


Promotion of Diverse Work Styles

Under the policies of "VISION 2025," JVCKENWOOD will establish Value Creation Square (VCS) as a new value creation base integrating the administrative divisions and the headquarters and technical divisions to strengthen technical development and promote further work style reforms with the aim of enhancing corporate value over the medium to long term.

JVCKENWOOD will develop a diverse and flexible work environment centered on VCS to realize hybrid work that allows employees to work from any location, including telecommuting, satellite offices, and business sites. JVCKENWOOD will improve employee performance by encouraging a change in corporate culture through the activation of open communication and will also increase satisfaction with work styles. The Company also seeks to create open innovation by providing a place to promote co-creation with outside companies.


Status of Promotion of diverse work styles

  Units FY2022 FY2023
Ratio of employees who have done telework % 44.3 42.9
Total actual hours worked per year hours 1,890 1,873
Ratio of days of annual paid leave obtained per employee % 58.2 72.1
Average number of days of annual paid leave obtained per employee days 15.7 18.8
Childcare leave and Shortened working hours for childcare and Child nursing care leave % 94 100
Childcare leave persons 6 20
Shortened working hours for childcare persons 39 34
Child nursing care leave persons 44 60
Shortened working hours for nursing care persons 2 1

Other Initiatives

Fostering Female Managers

Please see the page linked below to learn about stratified training provided to female staff to foster future women executive positions.

Diversity & Inclusion Initiatives


Free Agent (FA) Program

We have introduced a free agent (FA) program to encourage self-fulfillment and self-transformation while fostering a culture of challenge. To be eligible, an employee must have worked for the company for a specified number of years and have gained commensurate work experience. Our goal is to encourage employees to willingly and independently take stock of their skills as well as experience while giving them the opportunity to reach their desired position through the rigorous selection process of the FA program. This is all in the hope that they will remain highly motivated, fully use their abilities, and make a significant contribution to our business.


Internal Recruitment Program

Similar to the FA program, the internal recruitment program allows an employee to transfer to another department within the organization based on their own will and motivation. It differs from the FA program in that, in addition to promoting organizational vitality through the continual rotation of human resources, it is also designed to quickly place people who can hit the ground running in departments that need them. This program, along with the FA program, enables employees to work independently to develop their skills while helping them achieve their individual career goals.


Initiatives to Pass on Technology and Know-How

The JVCKENWOOD Group has a re-employment program for employees who contributed to the company until they reached retirement age. The program is designed to reduce the technological impact from experienced engineers leaving the job due to retirement and to ensure that the company’s collective technology and know-how are passed on. This program, in accordance with the Act on Stabilization of Employment of Elderly Persons, allows those who have reached the prescribed retirement age of 60 to extend their employment up to age 65 if they so desire. 

It benefits rehired employees in that it continues to provide them with a livelihood after they have reached retirement age while giving them sufficient time to pass on the technology and know-how they have developed over the years to the next generation.