Sustainability

Diversity and Inclusion

Basic Approach

The policy of the NGK Group is to provide stable and equal employment opportunities to people possessing a diverse range of attributes, regardless of race, national origins, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity, age, religion, belief, existence of disabilities or any other aspect. We promote even greater efforts to achieve diversity through educational activities to support work-life balance, employ people with disabilities, and advance understanding of diversity and inclusion. In addition to this, we also maintain an environment that enables diverse human resources to enjoy a wide range of workstyles by utilizing telecommuting, providing other flexible workstyles, and offering a wide range of career paths that each employee can pursue individually, according to personal inclination, suitability, and type of work.

Views on Hiring locally

Ninety-eight percent of the roughly 13,000 employees in the NGK Group who work overseas are hired locally. We believe that it is our corporate responsibility to contribute to the development and vitality of the local economies and communities where we operate our business in each country and region, and actively hire locally at each location.

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System to Promote Diversity and Inclusion

This figure shows our system to promote diversity. The Human Resources Department takes the lead in its promotion.

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Various Systems Supporting Our Promotion of Diversity and Inclusion

Creating an Environment Conducive to Activities by Revising and Establishing Various Systems

NGK is promoting various measures for personnel transfer, career development, follow-up, support for early return from leave, flexible work styles, and the like, to create an environment that makes it possible for employees to take full advantage of their individuality and skills in various aspects and situations. The human resource system for general employees enables career advancement by allowing individual employes to proactively take on the challenge of moving up to a higher job grade.
We also introduced a telecommuting system in July 2021 with the goal of improving productivity for employees and the company, as well as promoting a good work-life balance between work duties and childcare or nursing care.
In April 2022 we established a consultation helpdesk related to work-life balance which works to reduce employee concerns about balancing work and private life and seeks to create a conducive work environment.

Human Resource Utilization Systems Aligned with Employee Individuality and Skills

To open the way for employees to take full advantage of their individuality and skills, NGK adopts an internal job application system in which open positions are announced internally and eligible applicants are appointed. There is also an FA (free agent) system that allows employees to register their personal aspirations and preference of jobs within the company.

Internal Job Application System

Social Data Collection

System for the Regular Appointment of Fixed-Term Manufacturing Contract Employees

NGK established a system for appointing fixed-term manufacturing contract employees to be regular employees, and 16 employees were appointed in FY2022.

Appointment from Fixed-Term Contract Manufacturing Workers to Regular Employees

Social Data Collection

Follow-up System to Fit Young Employees in the Workplace

We follow up on younger employees in different ways after they have been placed. We conduct surveys for career-track and production engineering employees about their jobs and work environment during their second year of employment. We then conduct interviews with all production engineering employees, and any career-track employees who so desire, and the head of each department provides feedback to those who want it.

Systems to Support Early Return from Parental Leave

We have introduced a system to encourage and support employees so that they can return from maternity and childcare leave and resume their careers at an early stage.

Systems to Support Early Return from Parental Leave

Come-Back System

Since FY2016, NGK has had its Come-Back System to rehire people who had left our company for various reasons (e.g., job change, studying abroad, job transfer of a spouse, etc.) as mid-career employees.
As of FY2022, there have been two employees rehired through the Come-Back System.

Come-Back System (Japanese)

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Initiatives to Promote Diversity and Inclusion

Since 2021 NGK has been implementing initiatives under our employee Career Autonomy policy.

Policy

Support autonomous career development within the company

Initiatives for Employees to Chart Their Own Career Path

In FY2022, we carried out the following initiatives.

Career Autonomy E-Learning

We conducted e-learning aimed at all employees, and more than 4,000 employees participated. They studied the following topics as the basic knowledge necessary for thinking about their own career independently.

  • Career ownership and careers in an era of 100-year life expectancy
  • How to approach your career (two types/two aspects/three factors)
  • Things that are necessary for enhancing your career (Will/Can/Must)
  • Career plan concept

Career Planning Training for Third-Year Regular-Position Employees

Once employees have been with the company for three years, we ask them to reflect on their growth over the last few years and think about how they will approach internal staff rotation from their fourth year onward. Our goal has been to support them in creating a concrete action plan towards this end. This has become an opportunity for employees to think about their career going forward through group discussion with more senior employees who have experience with rotation. Once the training is complete, participants also meet with their supervisors to share their career plan.

Career Planning and Leadership Training for Newly Promoted Employees

We provided career planning and leadership training for newly promoted employees. The purpose of this training was to deepen employees’ self-understanding and to promote career planning as an opportunity to think about future work styles as they are undergoing a career change such as a promotion. Participants prepare to start a new path as human resources who can fulfill their roles by learning about the expectations in them, the concept of the career necessary for their roles and knowledge in this training. Moreover, we provided this training among those promoted to the supervisor class in the same fiscal year. The aim of this was to allow participants to acquire the necessary practical communication skills to lead their teams.

Career Plan Seminar for Employees in their 40’s and 50’s

Newly adding key personnel in their 40s to the list of targets, we held a new Career Plan Seminar for Employees in Their 40’s and 50’s targeting key personnel and general employees. We ask participants to reflect on their own past and present in order to maintain motivation and work with energy. Through work and discussion, they confirm their own characteristics, abilities, and values in search of a proactive workstyle that suits them and will allow them to prepare for future changes in their environment. Participants have told us that they deepened their understanding of their own characteristics and values and that it gave them an opportunity to think about their lifetime career.

Career Consultation Helpdesk

At the helpdesk, certified career consultants provide career formation support and consultation services to employees, while strictly observing confidentiality. In FY2022, we established a helpdesk which also allows employees to consult with external career consultants.

Helping Male Employees Have Greater Involvement in Childcare

We are working to encourage our male employees to take childcare leave. Our aim is to create an environment where husbands and wives raise their children together while respecting each other’s careers and where it is possible for employees to balance work and life in the workplace regardless of their gender or whether or not they have children.
We have revised the “Handbook to Support the Balance of Work and Childcare” which previously mainly described the systems for female employees. We now explain in easy-to-understand terms the systems for male employees. Moreover, we have been holding pre-maternity leave interviews not just with female employees but also their spouses in the case of marriage between employees in our company since FY2022. Holding interviews between supervisors and male employees who have a spouse about to give birth lowers a consciousness to divide roles by gender in the home and at work. It encourages employees to balance their lives and work utilizing the available systems. We are promoting the creation of an environment where everyone can easily use these systems by asking supervisors to also promote the coordination of work so that employees can actually take leave and to foment understanding among those around them. Furthermore, we established the Consultation Helpdesk for Anything Related to the Work-Life Balance in FY2022. Those in charge of the helpdesk in the HR Department carefully respond to inquiries about the information and systems necessary to balance both work and childcare. There were 22 inquiries in the previous fiscal year. In addition to those related to the content of the systems we have available, there were inquiries about the childcare leave period from employees themselves and questions about smooth workplace management from supervisors with subordinates planning to take childcare leave.

Seminars for Employees Returning from Childcare Leave

Training was provided for female employees returning after the end of their designated childcare leave period, as well as for their supervisors, their spouses and their spouses’ supervisors.
During this training, spouses were encouraged to take ownership of childcare so that the responsibility for housework and childcare is not too disproportionately borne by women. Participants were also offered advice on how to orient their focus and coordinate their schedule in balancing work and family responsibilities, as well as how to go about developing a medium-to-long-term career plan after returning to work. Despite being from different departments, all of the participants were alike in that they are raising children, and through their interactions with one another, they were able to share their stories, their struggles, and their advice.

Conducting E-learning to Promote the Active Participation of Women

Women’s active participation e-learning was carried out in FY2020 with the aim of promoting proper understanding and cooperation among all employees and not just a targeted segment of participants. Easy-to-understand videos were streamed, which featured messages aimed at female employees, supervisors, and colleagues and which sought to raise awareness about unconscious bias and other topics. We conducted the e-learning again in FY2022 for those who had yet to participate.

New Initiatives for Achieving Our Action Plan for Promoting Women’s Active Workplace Participation (MHLW)

In March 2023 in accordance with the Act on Advancement of Measures to Support Raising Next-Generation Children and the Promotion of Women’s Participation and Advancement in the Workplace, NGK submitted a general employer action plan to the Aichi Labor Bureau, which is overseen by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW).

This figure provides an overview of the Action Plan for Promoting Women’s Active Workplace Participation that we submitted to the Aichi Labor Bureau, which is overseen by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW). We see the fact that there are few women in managerial positions as an issue, and have set a goal of increasing the number of women in managerial positions by 1.5 times. We aim to achieve this by fostering a corporate culture that promotes the active participation of women.

Number of Key Personnel (Managers)

NGK is aiming to increase the ratio of women among key personnel (managers) from 3.8% in FY2022 to about 10% by 2030 and by more than 20% by 2050.

Number of key personnel (managers)

Number of female key personnel (managers) as of March 31, 2023

Social Data Collection

LGBTQ Initiatives

In order to promote understanding of sexual minorities such as LGBTQ for the sake of fostering greater diversity in workplace participation, we provide education and hold awareness raising activities such as video-based training for employees. In FY2021, we began working to allow same-sex partners recognized by External Partner Organizations to utilize our internal service and benefit program.

Employment of People with Disabilities

NGK undertakes a variety of initiatives aimed at employing people with disabilities, such as accepting students from special-needs schools as trainees and attending employment seminars for people with disabilities. NGK hired two new graduates in FY2022. In addition, six new employees have been hired by our special subsidiaries. These hiring activities led to a hiring rate of 2.43% as of the end of FY2022. The government will raise the statutory hiring rate from 2.3% to 2.5% on April 1, 2024. Therefore, we will proactively conduct recruitment activities again in FY2023 to achieve the 2.5% statutory hiring rate.

Third-Party Certifications

Certified as an “L-boshi” Company for Excellence in Promoting Women’s Active Participation

In March 2017, NGK was certified as an “L-boshi” company by the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW). This certification is granted to companies that have done excellent jobs in accordance with the Act on Promotion of Women’s Participation and Advancement in the Workplace.
Each applicant for the certification is evaluated on five criteria: recruitment, employment continuity, working hours, percentage of female managers, and diverse career paths. In September 2019, NGK satisfied all five criteria and received certification for level three, the highest certification level.

This is the logo for “L-boshi” Certification level 3, given to companies demonstrating excellence in the promotion of women’s active participation, by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.

Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare
“L-boshi” certification of corporate excellence in the promotion of women’s active participation
Certification level 3 (2019)

Certified by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare as a “Platinum Kurumin” Outstanding Childcare Support Company

Platinum Kurumin is a program which certifies companies that have taken higher standard initiatives among the companies which have been certified by the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare (Kurumin certification) as a childcare support company which satisfies certain standards based on the Act on Advancement of Measures to Support Raising Next-Generation Children.

This is an image of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare Next-generation support certification logo, “Platinum Kurumin.”

Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare
Next-generation support certification logo
“Platinum Kurumin” (2023)

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