Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Management Approach

Against the backdrop of factors such as the growing number of businesses seeking to expand globally and stronger international competition, as well as addressing the lack of people in the labor force due to a decline in the population of developed countries, including Japan, people’s views regarding careers and workstyles have become more diverse than ever before. We believe that diversity and inclusion (D&I) is crucial for the Kawasaki Group to sustainably improve its enterprise value in such an environment. D&I is a concept that aims to bring together people from diverse backgrounds regardless of nationality, gender, age, religion, or disability; to allow each employee to fully realize their diverse capabilities while maintaining an awareness of mutual acceptance and recognition of others; and to create an organization that maximizes these efforts. From fiscal 2024, we are helping to ensure that everyone has equal access to opportunities to challenge themselves with the addition of E (equity), representing fairness. Based on this recognition, the Kawasaki Group is proactively implementing various initiatives to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.

People with a variety of attributes, including those with disabilities, non-Japanese, and senior staff work at the Kawasaki Group. We are undertaking activities to “promote the active participation of women,” “support employees balancing work with childcare and nursing care,” “support the active participation of non-Japanese employees,” “promote understanding of LGBT issues,” and “realize workstyles with an awareness of work-life balance, results, and efficiency,” in order to bring together the capabilities of employees with these various attributes and realize our vision of “Trustworthy Solutions for the Future.” In addition, the Kawasaki Group Code of Conduct declares that we respect diversity and strive to build a workplace in which all employees can live up to their full potential.

Within the Head Office Human Resources Division, we have in place the DE&I Management Section, which is tasked with various activities aimed at promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Promoting Diversity and Inclusion

The Company is focused on promoting the active participation of women and has set targets for 2025 to double the fiscal 2020 number of female managerial staff to over 116 and to raise the female ratio for career-track administrative positions to at least 40% and that of career-track technical positions to at least 15% among newly hired graduates. With the aim of facilitating the retention and fostering an awareness of career enhancement for female employees, we host the “D&I Forum” for female managers to exchange views on the active participation of women at the Company through a message from the President and a panel discussion among female officers. We also gain insights on facilitating growth from role models outside the Company, and host the “Female Leadership Development Program” and the “Networking Session for Female Engineers” in cooperation with Kobe-based companies, toward building human networks outside the company. Furthermore, the Company is actively undertaking activities for the recruitment of female engineers. This included conducting workshops as part of the “Training Program for Female Engineers,” in collaboration with universities in fiscal 2023.

* As of April 1 of each fiscal year.

Kawasaki launched a regular hiring program for non-Japanese new graduates in fiscal 2012 and continues to recruit from countries around the globe, including Korea, China, Sweden, and India. To improve communication between non-Japanese employees and their supervisors and co-workers, as well as to enable supervisors and co-workers to better understand non-Japanese employees who have different educational, cultural, and other backgrounds, Kawasaki creates and distributes guidebooks for workplaces that non-Japanese employees will be joining and organizes seminars on multicultural understanding for supervisors as well as training programs to help employees from other countries understand the Japanese business environment.

We are committed to hiring more people with disabilities, and they participate in a wide range of workplaces. In September 2013, we established our special subsidiary Kawasaki Heartfelt Service Co., Ltd., which promotes the active Group-wide employment of people with disabilities in order to maintain and improve their employment rates, with the employment of persons with disabilities standing in excess of the legally mandated employment rate, at 2.60% for fiscal 2024. We are additionally working actively to create barrier-free workplaces, and will cultivate an environment in which people with disabilities are able to develop to their full potential.

*1 As of June 1 of each fiscal year. Respective results include those for special subsidiary Kawasaki Heartfelt Service Co., Ltd.

*2 People working short hours are calculated as 0.5 persons. One person with a severe disability is counted as two persons.

Kawasaki extended its mandatory retirement age based on the mandating of the amended Act on Stabilization of Employment of Elderly Persons, and many of our veteran employees remain actively involved in operations while also passing down their skills by using the experience they have accumulated to date. Furthermore, we hold career seminars for employees in their 50s to assist them in identifying their strengths and allow them to rethink their workstyle options going forward.

Since fiscal 2020, we have held seminars to consider diversity and inclusion chiefly in an online format for those interested in taking part. To date, we have held these seminars on 10 occasions, for approximately 4,000 participants, including employees from Group companies, with topics covered including unconscious bias, LGBT, developmental disability work support, and support for balancing work and fertility treatment. In fiscal 2023, to mark the holding of the 10th seminar, the Senior Corporate Executive Officer delivered messages on topics including the challenges facing the Company and the ideals of what should be, based on the theme of “Involvement of Men in Childcare and Subordinate Management.” Videos of the day’s events as well as the outcomes of a questionnaire on the seminars are distributed on the Company intranet, with many employees who were unable to attend watching these. The number of participants in the seminars has also been increasing year on year, and employee interest in and understanding of diversity is growing. We will continue to hold seminars in fiscal 2024 and beyond, while enhancing the dissemination of information within the Company to ensure that more employees are provided with opportunities to think about diversity.

Work-Life Balance

Work-life balance is the foundation for promoting diversity and inclusion, allowing diverse employees to exercise their strengths. To sustainably increase enterprise value, it is crucial to create highly productive workplaces where diverse employees can creatively use their abilities while maintaining a good work-life balance. Within the Kawasaki Group, it is therefore important to create environments in which employees can do work that meets the expectations of the Company, those around them, and themselves while leading healthy, fulfilling lives, so that they can engage with their work at a higher level. By providing diverse workstyle options that enable employees to balance their professional and private lives, we will systematically improve work efficiency.

Kawasaki provides support in a number of ways to enable employees to continue working actively while balancing work with childcare and nursing care. Many related systems go beyond national government standards, such as a system of childcare leave available until employees’ children reach age three; a reduced working hours system available until employees’ children graduate from elementary school; nursing care leave available for up to three years; and a system that lets employees take time off in one-hour units as needed for childcare or family nursing care. In recognition of these systems, in 2010 Kawasaki was certified as a company supporting childcare and awarded the Kurumin Mark. Other initiatives include the Supplementary Work Day Nursery Service, which provides temporary childcare services within the Company for employees working on days that they would normally have off; the Childcare Rescue System, offering Company-designated baby-sitter services that employees can use when their children are sick or recovering or when they are working overtime or on business trips; a concierge service to help employees find nursery schools; seminars to support employees taking childcare leave who wish to return to work; and career seminars for dual-income married couples. We continue working to enhance such initiatives for employees with children. Moreover, in order to foster a corporate culture in which employees are not leaving their jobs due to such reasons as childbirth or childcare and in which both men and women are able to balance work with childcare as desired, we have set the target of raising the rate at which male employees take childcare leave to at least 50% by 2025. We are also proactively working to raise awareness through seminars to promote and support the involvement of men in childcare, as well as seminars for employees returning from childcare leave and their supervisors to ensure that our employees, with their diverse attributes, have the option to choose from a diverse variety of work styles.

^* Accumulated leave refers to unused annual paid vacation days that cannot be carried over to the next year (up to 60 days) but can be taken in such circumstances as personal injury or illness, childcare, caregiving, or nursing.

Kawasaki has promoted organizational and corporate culture transformation, system transformation, and operational transformation through K-Win activities, which were initiated as a means of reforming workstyle. To promote organizational and corporate culture transformation, we have issued messages from top management, provided educational seminars for managerial staff, and held one-on-one meetings. In system transformation, in fiscal 2018 we introduced a remote working program (teleworking program) for all employees, and are undertaking initiatives to create a working environment that allows employees to work flexibly in ways aligned with their own lifestyles. In terms of operational transformation, we have provided the Operational Efficiency Improvement Start Book as well as useful information for operational transformation, including tools for various types of work. Currently, the scope of K-Win activities to reform workstyle is being expanded to include “activities to change the corporate culture and employee awareness,” toward the realization of the Group Vision 2030. Meanwhile, we are also working to mitigate, to the bare minimum, increases in the number of employees even during growth stages of our business by visualizing and improving the efficiency of work processes through the deployment of robots and AI as well as through digital transformation. At the same time, we are committed to realizing workstyle which enable employees to experience a real sense of satisfaction and growth by focusing on high value-added work.

Kawasaki encourages employees to take their annual paid leave to enable them to mentally and physically refresh themselves and to draw a clear line between work and private life by taking their leave in a planned manner. To this end, Kawasaki implements two programs: the Two Consecutive Holidays and the Anniversary Holiday programs. Under these programs, employees designate a total of three paid leave days at the beginning of the fiscal year and can take these days off without fail. Additionally, based on the labor agreement, three annual paid leave days that the Company designates are taken by most employees in August. The Company combines this midsummer break with other Company holidays and a national holiday to create a span of nine consecutive days off. Furthermore, the labor union and management have agreed to designate one day per week as an on-time exit day since fiscal 2006. The designation of this on-time exit day helps employees work efficiently and improve their work-life balance.

Other Initiatives

We have set up a diversity and inclusion promotion website on the Company intranet. This website offers an overview of diversity and inclusion at the Kawasaki Group alongside workplace examples and information about systems related to facilitating a healthy work-life balance.

To accelerate social shifts related to diversity, inclusion, and work-life balance, we proactively look beyond the framework of the Company to encourage employees to participate in outside seminars and advance activities together with other organizations and companies. One example is a work-life balance and diversity and inclusion promotion study project being jointly implemented by the Chuo University Graduate School of Strategic Management and private companies. This project broadly promotes the concept of healthy work-life balance in society through surveys and research. We also actively exchange information with DE&I promoters from various companies as a means to share challenges and best practices.

Kawasaki Motors Enterprise (Thailand) Co., Ltd. opened an on-site nursery in April 2010. The nursery provides care for employees’ children between the ages of one and four. Each year, the nursery cares for the children of about 30 employees on a daily basis. Several other children are also registered at the nursery, so that their families can utilize it when necessary. The nursery is generally open from 7:30 to 17:15 to coincide with regular working hours, but, if requested by more than a certain number of employees, it is also made available during overtime hours or on holidays. The opening of the nursery means that employees can continue working with complete peace of mind, having left their children to be cared for within the office premises. From the employer’s viewpoint, this helps avoid the loss of skilled human resources due to childbirth or childcare responsibilities, promoting a stable and committed workforce. The opening of the nursery has thus proved to be mutually beneficial to both employees and the company. In Japan, meanwhile, Kawasaki provides workplace nursery facilities on days that employees have to work but would normally have off.