In an ever-changing medical environment, Nihon Kohden strives to become the beacon that lights the path forward to the future of people and healthcare around the world through creating a new value with the philosophy we have upheld since our founding. With strong passion in our hearts, Nihon Kohden aims at realizing our Long-term Vision for 2030. Human resources are essential for realizing our Long-term Vision and the source of value creation for Nihon Kohden. We will recruit human resources who share Nihon Kohden’s Management Philosophy and Long-term Vision, and embody its Core Values (Integrity / Humbleness / Diversity / Initiative / Customer centric / Goal oriented / Creativity). We will also endeavor to create environments that foster employees with high ethical standards, ambition, curiosity, and empathy who can autonomously and continuously grow and undertake the challenges of new value creation.
In addition, considering the changing values of work and the penetration of new work styles, the Company promotes initiatives to ensure that employees are highly motivated and can realize various career paths and work styles.
Nihon Kohden established the Core Values Promotion Project in Japan through an internal open recruitment process. The project members from various divisions and job categories are creating and developing measures to disseminate Nihon Kohden’s Management Philosophy and Core Values. The overseas subsidiaries are also developing various unique measures to promote understanding of the Core Values and penetration of Nihon Kohden’s DNA in each country, in addition to the Management Philosophy training. The Company will disseminate its Management Philosophy and Core Values through implementing the Management Philosophy training.
Nihon Kohden has established its personnel system to ensure that employees can take pride in contributing to society through their work, demonstrate their abilities, and realize a fulfilling life.
In the personnel evaluation system, managers hold one-on-one meetings with staff three times a year in order to ensure their abilities and performance are correctly reflected in the evaluation, and to motivate them. In the interview, managers give feedback about the evaluation results to staff and confirm the contents of their self-reports including requests to the Company and job transfer requests.
In addition, we carry out multiple evaluations for managers. By providing feedback on the results of questionnaires from superiors, subordinates, and colleagues, we raise the awareness of managers of their roles and responsibilities and promote behavior change and skill development.
In this way, we believe that increasing satisfaction and promoting capacity development through feedback on evaluation content will lead to the development of human resources who embody the Management Philosophy.
With a view toward realizing our Long-term Vision for 2030, we are promoting the development of human resources who embody our Management Philosophy, Long-term Vision, and Core Values as well as aiming to establish a human resource management system that is globally consistent and coherent.
In April 2021, we introduced a new role-based personnel system for managers and established an expert course to facilitate the promotion of highly skilled persons, in addition to a management course to develop management level employees.
In April 2023, we also introduced a new personnel system for general employees. Through a role grading system based on the size of the work roles expected of each employee, we will create opportunities for ambitious and skilled employees to actively take on challenges and grow themselves. Along with the introduction of a new personnel system for general employees, we also extended the retirement age to 65 in stages and revised the reemployment system.
Nihon Kohden aims to cultivate employees who can adapt globally.
To realize that, we believe employees need to be: 1) Autonomous; 2) Professional; and 3) Leaders who can foster the development of their subordinates.
The basic policy of the level-specific training program, which is common to all job categories such as sales, administration and R&D, is that employees aim to challenge themselves rather than just taking courses passively, and the Company supports the employees in their challenges. The selective training program has been introduced to support individual employees in developing their skills in the areas they chose as their specialization and to encourage their development as professional human resources.
In addition, apart from the level-specific training program, the Company has established a training structure for job-specific education.
In each job category such as R&D, sales and after-sales service, the Company provides training opportunities for employees to acquire the knowledge and skills required for each level of their jobs. In addition, the Company supports the continuous learning of employees by providing opportunities for skill development which are open to employees at all levels of their jobs.
This structure enables the continuous development of Nihon Kohden's technical capabilities, provision of value propositions to customers by sales personnel with extensive product knowledge, and establishment of a structure for support by after-sales service personnel to ensure that our products are used for many years, thereby enabling Nihon Kohden to achieve sustainable development and competitiveness.
The annual total training hours for Nihon Kohden executives and employees and the annual total number of trainees in Japan are as follows.
FY2022 |
|||
Total training hours |
Number of trainees |
||
Level-specific training |
914.3 |
1,037 |
|
Job-specific education |
Training for sales staff |
86 |
218 |
Training for technical staff |
677.8 |
373 |
(Note)The above data includes the number of hours of training implemented by the Phoenix Academy (the Human Resource Development Center), and does not include the number of self-development activities such as correspondence education or training programs implemented by each department.
The International Training Program is a program designed to provide employees with the experience, knowledge, and adaptability they will need to be successful globally. Through the program, we provide employees with the opportunities for long-term study at overseas language schools, on-the-job training at overseas offices, practical training at overseas research institutions or companies, and study at overseas universities or research institutions. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the program was not implemented in FY2020 and FY2021. In FY2022, for the first time in three years, four employees studied abroad for approximately one year.
As of April 2023, 22 foreign employees work at offices in Japan, and 47 Japanese employees~{*} work at overseas offices.
We will continue to expand and enhance this program to develop more global human resources with even more advanced skills.
- Excluding Japanese employees hired locally.
The Global HR meeting has been held biannually since FY2021, bringing together human resources and education managers from each Group company to share each country’s unique measures for spreading the Management Philosophy and Core Values, as well as to discuss new employee training and the fostering of corporate culture. In December 2022, Nihon Kohden established the Core Values Promotion Project in Japan through an internal open recruitment system. The project members from various divisions and job categories are studying “how to help employees around the world understand and practice the Core Values,” and are creating and developing measures to achieve this goal.
As a measure to strengthen governance in terms of human resources, we formulated the Global Human Resources Management Guidelines in March 2022. All Group companies follow the same policies and standards for personnel management to avoid personnel management risks. The Human Resources Department at the Nihon Kohden Head Office and the human resource managers of each Group company hold individual meetings so that each HR department can function effectively as a partner for the development of business activities. In addition to making improvements in areas that do not conform to these guidelines, we will establish a structure for each HR department to collaborate on a global basis through regular communication.
Nihon Kohden fully supports employees who proactively seek to build their skills independently. We offer around 341 correspondence education courses that are paid for by the company. In FY2022, 370 employees took correspondence education courses mainly in language learning.
Nihon Kohden also has a program where it pays for a certain percentage of the costs associated with obtaining a public certification or credential recognized by the company as necessary.