Social Engagement
Social
Together with our Employees
Under “the First Penguin Spirit” as the Company’s credo, the Group has been continuously creating the future of the Internet since its establishment.
Employee Development
The Company considers our employees to be an invaluable asset that is essential to the success and growth of our Group’s underlying business. We believe that good talent development directly drives business growth, which in turn leads to the success of our core business. In particular, the Company strives to nurture employees that can continue to evolve and embody our business through the creativity and innovation of new technologies.
The Company has implemented an executive leadership training program for potential candidates from middle management, with a focus on nurturing a next generation of leaders that are driven with a sense of purpose. The Company has also established various educational and training programs for all employees that can provide continued learning opportunities for better self-awareness and personal growth.
In particular, in recent years, we have been developing and incorporating programs that are focused on strengthening management skills pertaining to psychological safety, in order to strengthen and smoothen the relationships between the Company and individuals, as well as between managers and employees.
In addition, by encouraging lateral transfers within the Company and its various businesses, the Company strives to offer its employees with growth opportunities and new challenges through the development of new skills and knowledge sharing. Following are some such initiatives:
- Through the utilization of a talent management tool the Company will better strategically allocate and develop employees and formulate a succession plan through a centralized system of employee skills and experience.
- The development of “CareerShift”, a public recruitment system to match employees seeking new growth opportunities within the core business.
- The development of “Raise Your Hand”, a public recruitment system that aims to develop a next generation of leaders by creating opportunities for individual employees that are strategically motivated to challenge themselves.
The Company aims to continue its growth and enhance its creativity through the ongoing training, development and promotion of employees with diverse talents, backgrounds and strengths.
Career Development
With multiple businesses and numerous job types, the Group offers its employees the opportunities to build their careers by utilizing their expectations and aptitudes.
1. Two Career Paths
The Group has established 2 kinds of Career Paths: Generalists, who are engaging in various businesses, and Specialists, who are engaging in specific business fields such as payment, marketing, investment in startups, and engineering to enhance the expertise and build their careers.
2. Internal Mobility Initiatives
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- (1) CareerShift
- ”CareerShift” is a system that allows employees to participate in projects or transfer to different businesses beyond departmental boundaries. When applying, the employees are not required to receive preliminary consultations or approvals within the departments or with their superiors and can proactively improve their skills and build their careers through their challenges to new missions.
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- (2) Raise Your Hand
- “Raise Your Hand” is an internal recruitment system to openly encourage transfers and participation for core business positions with strategic importance. The system aims to develop the next-generation leaders and create opportunities for the employees with proactive challenges.
Working Environment
In an effort to create a comfortable work environment, our Group has implemented policy which allows discretion for employees in how they would like to manage their work-life balance by leveraging the use of remote and flextime work options.
In particular, as we move on from the coronavirus pandemic, we are experimenting with transitioning to a hybrid working environment in which employees are being encouraged to come into the office in order to further strengthen communication, collaboration and creativity.
In order to better achieve “QOL (Quality of Life) through work” the Company conducts people analytics by utilizing data such as working hours, health conditions, as well as employee engagement surveys in the hopes of creating optimal conditions for a healthy work environment for the individual employee and the collective.
Through the utilization of engagement surveys the Company tries to better understand and manage any pain points within the organization in order to continually improve its management capabilities as a company. The Company reviews concerns, such as:
- Are individual talents being fully leveraged?
- Are employees receiving proper support from their superiors?
- Is there an appropriate level of trust in top management?
- Is the organizational system and working environment effective and efficient?
- Is the Companies Human Resources receiving the necessary support to operate appropriately and effectively?
- Are there any pain points of excessive stress on a micro or macro level?
The findings from these surveys provide valuable information for our group to strive to do better and be better for our individual employees and the entire company.
In an effort to promote organizational development and to strengthen the relationship between the employees and the organization, the Company is promoting a new “Human Resource Management Policy” which outlines the companies commitments to the individual employees, as well as the expectations on how employees can contribute towards this endeavor of strengthening our relationships as a company.
Diversity
The Company continues to recruit talent based on their abilities and expertise, regardless of factors such as gender, nationality, ethnicity, religion, age or work experience. The Company aims to foster a diverse work culture by hiring employees that can offer different skill sets, perspectives, values and talents.
Together with Society
To realize sustainability management, the Company believes that the engagement with local community as well as employees, shareholders and investors, investees, alliance partners and business partners is significantly important. The Group will contribute to realization of a sustainable society through various initiatives.
THE NEW CONTEXT CONFERENCE
THE NEW CONTEXT CONFERENCE has been held since 2005, hosted by Kaoru Hayashi and Joichi Ito for the individuals interested in the cutting-age Internet technologies and the businesses that emerge around them.
Under the concept, “Considering the new contexts that contribute to the development of society,” the conference aims to explore how to design a society by fully leveraging a wide variety of digital technologies with the values in a global society such as equality of people, diversity, prosperity, and sustainability and by together with experts from Japan and abroad.
Tohoku Youth Orchestra
The Tohoku Youth Orchestra is a restoration assistance project headed and directed by Ryuichi Sakamoto, and is a mixed orchestra of elementary school students to university students affected most by the 2011 Tohoku disaster: Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima.
The orchestra is positioned as “the opportunity for growth,” where children can learn and experience the world together with friends through guidance from and performance with world-renowned musicians and interactions with people. The Company gave a helping hand to establish SNS measures by providing advertising materials or social networking media and to support it as a sponsorship.
Providing information to strengthen Sustainability in Startups
Open Network Lab ESG is providing information titled “Meet with ESG Startup” through its owned media to introduce the visions and the details of initiatives taken by leading companies. Additionally, it holds events for sharing research information and trends on Sustainability in a clarifying manner and provides such information widely to startups as well as their supporters and stakeholders.
