Human Capital

Nippon Kayaku’s human resources assessment system is chiefly based on a performance assessment. This assessment, which covers every employee, begins with the assignment of work commensurate with each person’s role and responsibility at the start of every financial year. While implementing their tasks, each employee will determine their annual work targets in meetings with their superior, and work towards those targets over the course of the financial year. The employee will then confirm progress with their superior at a Mid-term Results and Target Achievement Status Meeting held once every six months. Finally, with the coming of the new financial year, both employee and superior will review and assess the previous year’s performance, and set targets for the year ahead. The results of these reviews will be reflected in employee bonuses.
In addition to a performance assessment, the human resources evaluation system for non-managers is comprised of two further parts: a challenge assessment and a process assessment. The former assesses the targets the employee has voluntarily set, while the latter assesses the process by which they achieve those targets.
Our overall aim is to increase employee work-motivation and engagement through assessing not only targets and degrees of achievement but the processes for getting there, thus linking company growth to the personal growth of the employee, and aligning the former with the self-actualization of the latter.

So that we may flexibly respond to the dramatic changes in the business management environment, and with the aim of finding the right people for the right jobs by matching those with the proactive willingness and ability to perform with the workplaces most in demand of them, we have opened up our recruitment process to external applications. FY2024 saw us conduct open recruitment processes for two posts, both of which successfully resulted in job transfers. By offering challenging opportunities to the employees who desire them, we thereby promote career autonomy, support employee career progression, and connect that to improved work engagement.

With products being increasingly difficult to differentiate these days, the “people” who provide products and services are becoming a major element of business competitive advantage. Therefore, he extent to which we can utilize our human resources has become a major Nippon Kayaku theme too, giving rise to our belief that more rewarding work and greater purpose in life for each individual employee will feed into yet greater corporate value.
FY2024 saw us conduct our second Employee Engagement Survey of 2,204 employees (full-time, contracted, part-time, senior partners). Nippon Kayaku’s Groupwide score was 48.4, an improvement of 1.3 on FY2023 but still below the national average. While from a companywide perspective we scored highly on “manager support” and “workplace unity,” our scores for “appropriate recruitment and placement” and “prospects for business growth and business future” tended to be lower. These results suggest we have not yet fully become a strong organization capable of defeating market competition, and that there is room to improve organizational culture and systems. We are therefore fixing action plans for, and conducting improvement activities in, each company workplace with a view to increasing engagement. We will continue to drive forward reforms which energize employees in their jobs, and foster a workplace climate which is both comfortable and rewarding.

Nippon Kayaku is working on optimizing working hours and reducing instances of long working hours. Specifically, we have set up a Working Hours Management Advisory Committee, comprised of both management and labor representatives, which demands and reviews twice-yearly reports from each business site on working hours management surveys, related measures and initiatives.
We also provide training for supervisors, managers and human resources managers, and set up study group sessions cosponsored by both the management and labor sides.
While respecting laws related to working hours and Article 36 Agreements (which stipulate overtime limits agreed upon by the company and labor unions), we have fixed a policy of “no more than 45 overtime hours per month in principle, and an upper limit of 80 overtime hours per month.”
We are even going beyond the mere observation of laws with various initiatives including management of workplace entry and exit, objective register management, and appropriate management of overtime for supervisors and managers.

Since renewing our labor agreement in 1998, Nippon Kayaku Co. Ltd, and the Nippon Kayaku Labor Union have maintained healthy relations based on mutual labor-management trust. Under the Union Shop System, with the exception of managers and a section of contracted workers, union membership rates stand at 100%.
With respect to the union, the company endeavors to disclose as much information as possible, earnestly respond to matters in line with its negotiation policy and have management directly convey its policies on business management, safety and health by convening the Central Joint Labor Management Council three times a year. We also hold a Central Management Round-table Conference once a month, sharing information pertaining to the company’s situation, deepening mutual understanding of issues, and discussing ways of resolving issues. We also make efforts to promptly convey the details and results of such meetings to employees.
Issues concerning individual business units are discussed at each unit’s annual Joint Labor Council and monthly Management Round-table Conference. Through the shared awareness of issues, relevant discussion and opinion exchanges allowed by these meetings are we aiming to deliver a more comfortable workplace.

As part of our efforts to promote anti-harassment and the creation of workplaces with higher levels of psychological safety, FY2024 saw us conduct management-oriented Respect Training at our Fukuyama and Takasaki plants.

FY2024 gave rise to a single Labor Standards Act violation relating to monthly overtime hours exceeding the monthly limit of 80. Once this violation occurred, the labor union and HR Department promptly conducted a hearing with the managers of the organization concerned, and confirmed both the reasons behind the occurrence and reoccurrence prevention measures. The HR Department also conducted working hours management training at the workplace concerned. We plan to scale out this case study to other organizations in our efforts to further strengthen working hours management education.

Nippon Kayaku has introduced the following Welfare and Benefits System to support the lives of its employees.