Fostering a culture that empowers individuals
(Work Environment)
Basic Policy
We believe that creating an environment where diverse individuals respect each other’s uniqueness, and can grow and thrive by leveraging their strengths, is the foundation for sustainable corporate growth. To enable each employee to resonate with our corporate philosophy and Corporate Vision, and to act independently based on mutual trust with the organization, we are advancing reforms through both systems and workplace culture, with a dual focus on enhancing engagement and deepening Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I).
Employee Systems Encouraging a Challenge Mentality
Alps Alpine aims for an organization where individuals can initiate new value creation while continuing to grow and embrace new challenges. With that in mind, we have put in place a role-based grading system and a personnel evaluation system that place emphasis on ambitious activities and achievements. These systems clarify the roles of employees – regular employees through to managers – and the expectations placed on them, enabling fair and understandable evaluations. Besides encouraging individuals to grow and take on new challenges, they support early identification of outstanding talent and the development of diverse career paths. To ensure that the results of evaluations are properly reflected in compensation to employees, we have mechanisms in place, applicable to all employees, for reflecting company performance and individual achievements and contributions in bonus payments. Through fair appraisal of employees’ efforts and accomplishments, we want to have every employee play a proactive part in the achievements of the Company as a whole, leading to even further growth and value creation.
Clarifying How Roles Relate to the Corporate Vision
Dialogue on Philosophy and the Corporate Vision with Senior Management
Steps are being taken to reform our culture in line with a senior management vision to create a company where all employees get to grow together, demonstrating enthusiasm and acting on their own initiative. One focus has been communication in the form of dialogue, namely town hall meetings. These are important opportunities for employees to hear first-hand what senior management has in mind, and for senior management to learn what employees are thinking and the specific issues they are facing on the job.
Town hall meeting
Workplace Provisions Encouraging Employee Initiative and Ambition
Active Use of Internal Job Posting
Alps Alpine places importance on eliciting the best from employees in terms of both motivation and ability. For that reason, we have introduced an internal job posting system to promote the creation of workplaces allowing employees to take on new challenges and the placement of human resources in positions best suited to them, unrestricted by organizational boundaries.
In fiscal 2025, 45 employees seized opportunities to further their envisaged career paths by using the internal job posting system to sign up for training or be matched to new duties. The system was also used to post jobs directed at rehired employees and employees with managerial experience. Alps Alpine is promoting a culture that enables human resources from diverse backgrounds to test their potential.
Establishment of Career Counseling Office
In 2024, a career counseling office was established to help create an environment encouraging employees to take the initiative regarding their own careers and progress to the next step. Nationally certified employees serve as career consultants on a wide range of themes, including career planning, skills development, improvements to the work environment, and concerns about work roles and duties.
Initiatives to Enhance Engagement
The overall score of our fiscal 2025 annual engagement survey of regular employees in Japan was three points higher than in fiscal 2024.
Of the survey’s 12 themes, “Corporate Philosophy” had the highest score improvement. This was analyzed as a benefit of efforts to communicate philosophy and policies after the formulation of Vision 2035 and to create opportunities for dialogue. By contrast, low scores were recorded for “Career,” “Corporate Culture” and “Job Appeal,” areas we recognize as requiring ongoing attention. Taking these results into consideration, we are pursuing both a corporate culture transformation and support for employee career paths, for example through promotion of inter-departmental dialogue, enhancement of education and training, and changes to employee systems.
Besides companywide measures, individual workplaces also advance their own activities aimed at enhancing engagement. In fiscal 2025, designated engagement promoters at each workplace led improvements tailored to their respective circumstances, having identified issues through analysis of survey results. To support accurate issue analysis and measure formulation, we invited an outside lecturer to hold a workshop in which 135 engagement promoters took part. Such activities are seeing awareness and implementation of engagement enhancement efforts take root even at the workplace level.
Employee Engagement Survey Results
Pick-Up Topic
Developing Initiatives Based on Engagement Survey Results
“Career Night” Supporting Career Development of Younger Employees
Bases also individually implement a wide range of initiatives to address issues relevant to them as identified through engagement surveys.
Kakuda Plant, picking up on analysis identifying a shortage of opportunities for younger employees to consider or consult about their career paths, held a dialogue-based event, “Career Night.”
Employees in their 20s and 30s participated in the event to learn about career support systems and partake in roundtable discussions in which older employees shared their own career experiences. By acknowledging that other plant employees were accessible role models, participants were able to gain a positive outlook on their own futures.
Interaction between employees from different workplaces also took place, allowing them to engage in casual conversation about their career paths.
Labor-Management Relations
In the spirit of labor-management equality, we engage with the Alps Alpine Workers Association, as the organization representing employees, to discuss and resolve matters such as those relating to wages and bonuses, employee systems, and work style issues such as improvement of working hours. The workers association also monitors company management, for example as an observer in management-related meetings and by regularly engaging in information exchanges with management regarding the state of business.
Systems that Enable Diverse Work Styles
Alps Alpine labor and management have together formulated a Work Style Vision serving as a guideline for employees on how they should go about their work. We strive to create a safe and comfortable work environment by maintaining and improving the physical and mental health of employees and complying with each country’s laws and established practices relating to matters such as working hours.
Work Style Vision: Smart Work × Smile Life
- ≪Purpose≫
- To achieve ongoing business development through personal growth and self-fulfillment and the securing of talented human resources
- ≪Envisaged Direction≫
- Our aim is to inspire collective efforts to enhance the work and private lives of every employee.
- ≪Envisaged Environment≫
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- An environment allowing work style flexibility fit for a global corporation and a culture encouraging ambition
- An environment allowing employees to perceive personal growth and give play to strengths with peace of mind in the workplace
- ≪Envisaged Characteristics≫
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- Adaptive to changes in duties
- Ability to select, to some degree, work styles and areas to match work and private career plans
- Time to engage in personal pursuits due to flexible, efficient work styles and higher productivity
- More opportunities for personal growth and achievement
- Better matching of employee skills and needs with jobs
- Mutual acceptance of diverse work styles and values
Support for Balancing Work and Private Life
Our employee system was revised to enable employees with certain personal circumstances, such as childcare, caregiving or nursing care, to work more flexibly. Besides improving the accessibility of leave systems, we help employees achieve balance between their work and private lives by expanding available working arrangements, which might include telecommuting, shorter working hours, or working every other day. While eligibility differs for each system, we have made some systems available to contract employees, not just employees of the Japan-based parent company, depending on the system type and contract style.
Systems and Measures Relating to Work Styles
| Objective | Systems/measures | Description | Eligibility |
|---|---|---|---|
| Work style flexibility | Teleworking | A system allowing employees to work away from their place of work using information and communication equipment approved by the company | Regular and contract employees |
| Work from home | A system allowing employees to work from home when they are unable to go into their place of work because they are caring for a family member or because of an injury or illness | Regular and contract employees | |
| Four-day weeks | A system allowing employees to work only four days a week because they are caring for a family member or because of an injury or illness | Regular and contract employees | |
| Free dress code | A provision allowing employees to wear what they choose to realize a comfortable working environment (available at some locations) | Regular and contract employees | |
| Support for parenting/care | Reduced working hours (incl. use together with flextime) | A system permitting employees to work reduced hours to enable child or other family care or based on an approved application | Regular and contract employees |
| Transfer pause* | A system for restricting an employee's work area for a defined period due to parenting or care provision needs | Regular employees | |
| Parental leave | A system allowing employees to take extended leave to care for a child until the first April 30 after the child turns two years old | Regular and contract employees | |
| Career improvement | Job group switching* | A system allowing employees to try a different job group (course based on job type) to develop or enhance their career | Regular employees |
| Easing of restrictions on holding more than one job | Provisions permitting employees to hold more than one job for the purpose of career or skills development or in-house application of expertise acquired outside the company | Regular and contract employees | |
| Official qualification incentives | A system providing for payment of incentives for acquisition of official qualifications specified by the company for the purpose of instilling certain expertise and developing human resources capable of operating outside the company | Regular employees | |
| Better work-life balance | Recommendation of five-day consecutive leave | A measure for recommending to employees that they take around five days of consecutive paid leave with aims to improve work-life balance and to lift organizational productivity through delegation of authority | Regular employees |
| Bullet train commuting (Sendai zone) | A system making commuting easier by allowing commuting by bullet train | Regular and contract employees |
*Contract employees are not covered by transfer and job group systems as their work location and compensation are specified in individual contracts.
Enabling Employees to Thrive Regardless of Age
To support an environment enabling employees who have reached retirement age to keep working while utilizing knowledge and experience gained over a long career, Alps Alpine is expanding systems relating to working arrangements for those employees. Most recently, around 90% of such employees have chosen to be rehired and are now applying their skills in a wide range of areas. With rehired employees able to work until the age of 70, the number of employees making use of the system is on the rise. During our in-house DE&I Expo, employees who were rehired at retirement age spoke about their work styles and job approaches since being rehired. This was very well received.
Adjustments are made every year, for example through salary level reviews and bolstering of allowances. And from this fiscal year, rehired employees become members of the Alps Alpine Workers Association, the organization representing employees. Labor and management are together strengthening efforts to create great places to work.
Preventing Harassment
Ongoing training for all employees, including managers, is carried out to prevent harassment in the workplace. Details can be found in the “Compliance” section.
Compliance
Metrics and Targets
Mid-Term Management Plan 2027 metrics and targets and past performance are as follows.
| Scope | FY2023 Results |
FY2024 Results |
FY2025 Results |
Mid-Term Management Plan 2027 FY2027 Target |
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Employee Engagement Survey score | Non-consolidated | ー | 64.5pt | 67.8pt | 72pt |
*Based on organizational health survey metrics from HR Brain, Inc.