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 new values 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.
The Core Values Award in FY2023 provided opportunities to relate Core Values to individual tasks. When we solicited episodes embodying the Core Values in business operations, we received numerous stories that revealed activities conscious of these Core Values across all areas of work, including customer interactions, product development efforts, and production sites. These episodes have become valuable examples showing how employees incorporate value standards into their daily tasks.
One of material issues for sustainability to realize our Long-term Vision is to “Foster a corporate culture of pride in contributing to healthcare,” and we have set “Develop human resources who can succeed globally” as a KPI for this in the previous Three-year Business Plan. We set the target at 45 hours or more of education per person for a cumulative total of 3 years. The results in FY2021, FY2022 and FY2023 were 18.6 hours, 18.2 hours and 24.4 hours per person, respectively and 61.2 hours of education per person for a cumulative total of 3 years. A total of 538* people attended leadership training in FY2023.
* Total of participants in training for senior managers, managers, assistant managers, candidates for manager
With the introduction of the CxO framework in April 2024, Nihon Kohden appointed a Chief Human Capital Officer to oversee human resource development across the entire Nihon Kohden Group and established the Human Resources Development Operations, which comprises the General Affairs Department, the Human Resources Department, the Phoenix Academy (Human Resource Development Center), and E-STAFF CORPORATION. The Human Resources Department is responsible for comprehensive talent strategies and specific initiatives for diversity and inclusion. The Phoenix Academy (Human Resource Development Center) handles the dissemination of our Core Values and overall employee education. In promoting health management of employees, the General Affairs Department, the Human Resources Department, and E-STAFF CORPORATION collaborate closely.
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 (raised by one year annually) 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.
|
FY2023 |
|||
|
Total training hours |
Number of trainees |
||
|
Level-specific training |
726.5 |
3,099 |
|
|
Job-specific education |
Training for sales staff |
182.0 |
2,596 |
|
Training for technical staff |
786.5 |
223 |
|
（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 temporarily, but resumed in FY2022. In FY2023, five employees studied at overseas language schools or received on-the-job training at overseas offices for about 9 months.
As of March 2024, 24 foreign employees work at offices in Japan, and 46 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.
We believe that it is important for employees of the Nihon Kohden Group with different backgrounds from various cultures and languages around the world to act in accordance with common goals and Core Values. Nihon Kohden provided educational materials to the entire Group and started an education program about its Management Philosophy throughout the Group in 2019. By systematically learning about the history of the company’s foundation and Management Philosophy, it provides an opportunity to deepen their understanding and appreciation of the Company culture and recognize the value and meaning of their jobs. To promote the understanding and implementation of the newly established Core Values, Nihon Kohden has developed various unique measures in each country since 2021, aiming to instill Nihon Kohden’s DNA.
The Global HR meeting has also been held biannually, 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, the fostering of corporate culture, measures to improve employee engagement and other issues. 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 studied “how to help employees around the world understand and practice the Core Values,” and developed measures to achieve this goal. Globally, we have produced and distributed videos featuring executives and employees sharing episodes that embody the Core Values. Additionally, we conducted questionnaire surveys and distributed new dissemination tools to further embed the Core Values within the companies.
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 205 correspondence education courses that are paid for by the company. In FY2023, 365 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.
