Social Engagement
Social
Together with our Employees
With the ‘First Penguin Spirit’ serving as one of our Company’s values, the Group has continued to create the future of the internet since it’s establishment. In order to realize our purpose, we believe that it is important for employees with various backgrounds to work together and to strengthen the relationship between our employees and the company. We have established a “Human Resources Management Policy” (see the diagram below) that describes what we as a company promise to our employees in addition to what we as a company expect from our employees. Based on this policy, we will continue to promote organizational and human resource development in order to realize our ideal organization.
Employee Development
The Company considers our employees to be an invaluable asset that is essential to the success and growth of our Group business. We believe that good talent development directly drives business growth, which in turn leads to the success of our core business. In particular, the Company strives to nurture employees that can continue to evolve and embody our business through the creativity and innovation of new technologies.
The Company has implemented an executive leadership training program for potential candidates from middle management, with a focus on nurturing a next generation of leaders that are driven with a sense of purpose. The Company has also established various educational and training programs for all employees that can provide continued learning opportunities for better self-awareness and personal growth.
In particular, in recent years, we have been developing and incorporating programs that are focused on strengthening management skills pertaining to psychological safety, in order to strengthen and smoothen the relationships between the Company and individuals, as well as between managers and employees.
In addition, by encouraging lateral transfers within the Company and its various businesses, the Company strives to offer its employees with growth opportunities and new challenges through the development of new skills and knowledge sharing. Following are some such initiatives:
- The employees can choose between two career paths consisting of either Management or Expert. This creates an environment for career advancement regardless of ones role as a manager or as an individual contributor.
- The implementation of career training in which employees are encouraged to think about their own careers from a Will/Can/Must perspective, with the aim of strengthening career autonomy among employees.
- Through the utilization of a talent management tool the Company will better strategically allocate and develop employees and formulate a succession plan through a centralized system of employee skills and experience.
- The development of “CareerShift”, a public recruitment system to match employees seeking new growth opportunities within the core business.
- The development of “Raise Your Hand”, a public recruitment system that aims to develop a next generation of leaders by creating opportunities for individual employees that are strategically motivated to challenge themselves.
Career Development
With multiple businesses and numerous job types, the Group offers its employees the opportunities to build their careers by utilizing their expectations and aptitudes.
1. Two Career Paths
The Group has established two kinds of Career Paths, as follows:
・Management – individuals engaged in the leading and managing of teams and/or departments throughout the organization.
・Expert – individual contributors that enhance our business and build their careers through the provision of their specific talent and expertise in areas such as payment, marketing, investment in startups, and engineering, etc.
2. Internal Mobility Initiatives
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- (1) CareerShift
- “CareerShift” is a system that allows employees to participate in projects or transfer to different businesses beyond departmental boundaries. When applying, the employees are not required to receive preliminary consultations or approvals within the departments or with their superiors and can proactively improve their skills and build their careers through their challenges to new missions.
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- (2) Raise Your Hand
- “Raise Your Hand” is an internal recruitment system to openly encourage transfers and participation for core business positions with strategic importance. The system aims to develop the next-generation leaders and create opportunities for the employees with proactive challenges.
Working Environment
In an effort to create a comfortable work environment, our Group is creating a system in which employees can choose a work style that best suits their individual lives and lifestyles, such as a remote work system or a flextime work system.
In order to better achieve QOL (Quality of Life) through work, the company manages working hours using an attendance management system, and monitors and takes measures using data such as 360 degree surveys as well as employee engagement surveys. We continue to create optimal conditions for a healthy work environment for the individual employee and the collective.
In addition, in order to understand the organizational condition and help resolve issues, we regularly conduct surveys with employees regarding their work, workplace, and engagement with the company. The Company reviews concerns, such as:
- Are individual talents being fully leveraged?
- Is the organizational system and working environment effective and efficient?
- Are employees receiving proper support from their superiors?
- Is there an appropriate level of trust in top management?
- Is the Company’s Human Resource system functioning effectively?
- Are there any pain points of excessive stress on a micro or macro level?
The findings from these surveys provide valuable information for our group to strive to do better and be better for our individual employees and the entire company.
In order to realize our company’s purpose, we also continue to believe that collaboration among diverse employees between group companies and segments is important, and we are thus working to further enhance communication throughout the group.
Diversity
The Company continues to recruit talent based on their abilities and expertise, regardless of factors such as gender, nationality, ethnicity, religion, age or work experience in order to support our rapidly changing and diverse business. The Company aims to foster a diverse work culture by hiring employees that can offer different skill sets, perspectives, values and talents.
Together with Society
To realize sustainability management, the Company believes that the engagement with local community as well as employees, shareholders and investors, investees, alliance partners and business partners is significantly important. The Group will contribute to realization of a sustainable society through various initiatives.
THE NEW CONTEXT CONFERENCE
THE NEW CONTEXT CONFERENCE has been held since 2005, hosted by Kaoru Hayashi and Joichi Ito for the individuals interested in the cutting-age Internet technologies and the businesses that emerge around them.
Under the concept, “Considering the new contexts that contribute to the development of society,” the conference aims to explore how to design a society by fully leveraging a wide variety of digital technologies with the values in a global society such as equality of people, diversity, prosperity, and sustainability and by together with experts from Japan and abroad.
Tohoku Youth Orchestra
The Tohoku Youth Orchestra is a restoration assistance project headed and directed by Ryuichi Sakamoto, and is a mixed orchestra of elementary school students to university students affected most by the 2011 Tohoku disaster: Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima.
The orchestra is positioned as “the opportunity for growth,” where children can learn and experience the world together with friends through guidance from and performance with world-renowned musicians and interactions with people. The Company gave a helping hand to establish SNS measures by providing advertising materials or social networking media and to support it as a sponsorship.
Providing information to strengthen Sustainability in Startups
Open Network Lab ESG is providing information titled “Meet with ESG Startup” through its owned media to introduce the visions and the details of initiatives taken by leading companies. Additionally, it holds events for sharing research information and trends on Sustainability in a clarifying manner and provides such information widely to startups as well as their supporters and stakeholders.
