In FY2022, TATSUTA Electric Wire & Cable adopted a new personnel system and overhauled its core human resource development policy.

In simple terms, the new system clarifies the roles and responsibilities of each person, sets goals, and evaluates their actions and performance. Our aim is to transform into a “fulfilling personnel system” that encourages each employee to take on challenges and rewards those who strive to do better, thus creating a culture where creative work and taking on challenges is valued, and developing personnel who can take on challenges swiftly and handle their work autonomously.

In particular, I expect all of our employees to be able to learn and grow on their own.

The factors behind the review of our personnel systems are the increasing roles and responsibilities of companies expected on the global level and significant changes in the business environment amid rapid changes in the social environment and people’s values. In addition, with the unexpected spread of COVID-19, we had to face more changes in working styles and communication than before.

While we need to swiftly and appropriately respond to these changes and also change ourselves, we felt a sense of crisis about whether we could adapt to changes with our current organization and human resources. There was also a growing awareness of the issues with our existing personnel systems.

As part of the review, we conducted a full check of various systems. This brought to light the need to develop professional personnel who can actively take on challenges, create innovation, and drive global growth. I really feel that the time has come for us to seriously rethink our approach to human capital, especially from the perspective of diversity.

In the process of deliberation, we conducted a survey (examination and analysis of organizations and workplaces) of all employees and interviews with all officers, and held discussions among officers and managers. In particular, we gained responses from all survey targets, showing that employee interest is high. At the same time, this shed light on the vague concern everyone is feeling about the future and the current era of rapid change.

For a while now, there has been a growing consciousness among management and executives of “let’s change the Company” and “let’s take on challenges.” Even so, the series of initiatives carried out as part of the latest personnel system revisions were major challenges for the leadership as well. I would like to tell our employees that every time an opportunity presents itself, “do not hesitate to change.”

In carrying out human capital management, one important personnel strategy is accumulating data on individual employees (career, qualifications, training history, intentions of the individual, self-evaluation, evaluation by manager, etc.) and visualizing it so that both the evaluator and the evaluatee can understand it. At the center of this is the TATSUTA HR system, rolled out in July 2022.

We believe that proper evaluation and allocation, as well as promotion and salary increases, will encourage the growth of each individual, and by utilizing the HR system to organizational structure and business operations, it will in turn lead to the growth of the Company.

Of course, it is not easy to penetrate this system throughout all employees. I believe that we need to evolve the system into one that will fully convince as many employees as possible, by repeatedly holding seminars to respond to the various opinions and questions that arise during goal setting and self-evaluation.

I believe the growth of each and every employee starts with having fun and working every day with high morale and a sense of fulfillment. To achieve this, it is important for each employee to deepen their knowledge and improve their skills.

We had previously conducted training by job level and programs aimed at unearthing the next generation of leaders. From FY2022, we have started providing a wider range of learning opportunities.

With full-scale training to prepare for DX, we aim to develop DX personnel with diverse perspectives, such as by incorporating quality management education. In the ondemand video training program, where employees can choose what to learn from a wealth of content, they can acquire the practical IT skills necessary for their work and business skills that are trending, as well as learn about self-development and health. The number of users has exceeded our expectations, probably because the videos can be easily accessed at any time. We found that many employees have the will to learn if given the opportunity. In the past, most training programs were limited to those personnel specified by the Company. With the spread of the Internet, I feel that the environment has grown conducive to enabling people who want to learn to do so freely at their own pace. We also plan to actively support individual employees’ efforts to acquire qualifications and improve their skills.

In addition, we have introduced a self-reporting system that allows employees to report their work and career aspirations, family situation, and work location requests to the Company. We believe that this communication is necessary for employees to find self-directed career formation and growth, and for them to want to work at TATSUTA Electric Wire & Cable for a long time. At the same time, we believe that this information can be utilized for human resource development, appropriate allocation, and the creation of workplaces where employees can work with peace of mind.

One year has passed after the start of the new personnel system, and we reviewed and newly introduced personnel measures and systems linked to our management plans. I believe that the framework and foundation for conducting human capital management in line with the times are now in place.

For example, one of the things we reviewed is the recruitment plan based on our business plans. Recruitment quotas are currently on a significant upward trend at many companies in anticipation of a full-fledged economic recovery. However, given the concerns over a decrease in the working population due to Japan’s declining birthrate, it is uncertain whether we will continue to be able to acquire the talent we need.

Therefore, from the current fiscal year, we have created a three-year recruitment plan instead of our previous one-year recruitment plan. First, in order to develop a human resource portfolio, we conducted detailed interviews with each department to clarify respective human resource needs (skills, expertise, number of employees, place of work, etc.) across the Company for this three-year period. Having grasped this, we believe that we can increase the possibility of hiring diverse personnel by carrying out recruitment activities throughout these three years while flexibly adjusting the hiring timing and combining new graduates and mid-career hires.

While the way people think and the tools related to human resources change as times change, people will always be of utmost importance to any company. We thus always face each of our employees seriously.

The more steadfastly someone works, the more joy and confidence they likely feel when they reach their goals, and the more frustrated they are when they fail. I believe that all of these things we experience in day-to-day work are what lead to job satisfaction. We have reviewed various systems and measures, but of course this is not the end. We will check, revise, and make additions as necessary so that both the Company and our employees can feel that the organization and company culture have changed. Changing the Company’s culture and essence, as well as its personnel, is not something that can be achieved in a short period of one or two years. We will steadily move forward with these efforts, while making quick decisions and taking swift actions.