artience Strengths | Integrated Report 2024Personnel strategy that draws on the individuals, a source of value creation

We introduced a fresh philosophy system when we changed the name of the company, but we maintained our People-oriented Management Corporate Philosophy as a unique unalterable principle. From the standpoint of human resources management, we see this Corporate Philosophy as bringing out the maximum potential of the individual employees. The artience is the company that places its staff at the center of all of its corporate activities and that achieves the growth of its business based on People-oriented Management.

Today, I believe that, from the aspect of human resources, we should seek to implement personnel development that will fulfill the Brand Promise, “Creating value that resonates with the senses and building a future where all people can live enriched lives.” In a situation where non-quantitative value that is not reflected in performance or prices is valued and where needs are diverse, we need to detect the latent needs of customers and markets and incorporate them into manufacturing. To do this, individual staff members need to stretch out their antennae. This is why we emphasize the senses of individuals in the new philosophy system.
In the past, many times our staff were reactive when meeting customers’ needs. To encourage them to proactively discover problems and propose solutions, we are developing a system that evaluates people who take on challenges highly. In the system, they are encouraged to plan to take on challenges unique to each employee, implement the plans and achieve results when doing their day-to-day duties. We will incorporate the evaluation of their actions at separate stages into their overall evaluation in order to reward their efforts and results. We are endeavoring to introduce this new evaluation scheme in FY2025.
Before that, we already revised the personnel management system for manager-class employees in January 2024 to introduce job-based treatment and performance-linked evaluation. We also reviewed the functions of operating officers and corporate advisors. We will massively decrease the number of officers and corporate advisors and pass the management of the company down to the next generation.

Regarding personnel development, we have traditionally emphasized rank-specific training. In the future, we will develop a comprehensive education system including the development of future management executives, the development of IT, DX and other expert skills and new business creation. When we changed the name of the company, we renamed our Toyo Ink Academy groupwide training and education system to the “artience growth field.” This new name embodies a vast field where employees act freely to achieve their own growth. Beyond conventional training programs teaching skills which employees use internally, we will support employees’ development into professionals who can play active roles anywhere. We do this because we are convinced that these professionals will be new sources of value creation and that the company will have win-win relationships with its employees.

Traditionally, Japanese companies had a tendency to see male employees who joined them just after graduation as their core personnel. However, we must increase diversity as we aim to create value that resonates with the senses. We will recruit more experienced workers and actively hire personnel who have cultivated knowledge outside the Group. The male to female ratio in our workforce has long been an issue for us. Women are 41.5% of the employees we recruited in FY2024. We are building a foundation for promoting the active participation and advancement of women. We are increasing our efforts towards meeting the target of 10% of our managers being women by FY2030.

A perspective that includes communicating information to people inside the company is also important. We are proud that our staff retention rate is high and that many employees have worked for us for a long time. As a result, an addiction to tacit understandings that only worked within the company has become the culture of the Company. For example, we tend to think that other staff members should understand a thing even if we have not said it to them. Amid the increase in the number of people recruited mid-career and the percentage  of overseas employees, we cannot leave this situation as it is. We are currently planning to hold workshops to share information about our new philosophy system known so that the whole Group understands it.
In addition, the improvement of employee engagement is always at the heart of our personnel strategy. We will address a wide variety of issues including employee treatment, the workplace environment, job satisfaction and the sharing of the corporate philosophy. In parallel with these efforts, we will consider conducting groupwide engagement surveys. Proper pay increases are necessary since they are directly associated with engagement. We will also need to review staff assignments and personnel transfers to enable employees to more independently choose their career paths. It is also vital that we collaborate with group companies and establish a structure for cooperating with them.

The management and employees share the same aspirations regarding corporate development and their own personal development. The role of the Human Resources Department is to link the two sides and build and coordinate the relationship of mutual trust between them. Their goals are identical in some ways but they have different needs at times. To pursue people-oriented management, we will steady carry out personnel management or human capital management in our ideal form with a view toward creating an organization and a culture with that has an attractive vitality and discipline as well as the serious and persistent pursuit of positive results.