Sustainability
Human Resource Development
Basic Approach
We have positioned “Quality of People: Embrace challenges and teamwork” as the top value in Our Values and “Enriching human life by adding new value to society” as our Mission in the NGK Group Philosophy. In addition to providing educational programs, we also work with superiors and create a workplace environment where each employee can take the initiative in their own growth. The goal of this is to enable employees to contribute to the business in the environment in which they work.
Skills Development for Employees
In our policy, the NGK Group has set the goal of cultivating people with the following kinds of abilities and mindsets in order to implement the five transformations described in our Group Vision. To this end, relevant departments are working in cooperation to strengthen this initiative.
- Cultivate advanced knowledge, skills, abilities or their combination, and proactively approach problems
- Demonstrate teamwork and persistently lead to results
- Autonomously grow and continuously change oneself and the company
FY2025 Company-Wide Personnel Development Framework Chart
NGK conducts systematic personnel development for all job types in all Group companies in Japan, both when an employee enters the company and at milestones in their career, such as promotion to a new role.
In recent years, as we strive to promote autonomous career development, we have increased selective training for those who volunteer in addition to the training mentioned above.
FY2025 Company-Wide Personnel Development Framework Chart
Key Personnel Competencies
In order to make a greater call to action for things which are needed to achieve the NGK Group Vision, such as taking on the challenge of innovating and utilizing diversity, we have defined “key personnel competencies (behavioral traits)” based on the NGK Group Human Capital Management Policy.
These key personnel competencies are utilized in our action assessments and 360-degree survey.
Training Programs by Objective
Cultivate advanced knowledge, skills, abilities or their combination, and proactively approach to problems
We carry out education and training designed to equip employees with the mindset, expertise, and skills they need to carry out their jobs. To ensure that the skills employees acquire are applicable to the work that they perform, we provide coaching in cooperation with the participants’ supervisors and training programs for handling challenges directly relevant to their own departments. This gives employees practical skills instead of just knowledge, and allows them to acquire the basic capacity to proactively approach problems.
Demonstrate teamwork and persistently lead to results
We make sure NGK employees have a deep understanding of the NGK Group Philosophy, Vision, and Corporate Business Principles. This not only empowers them to achieve their business targets, but also to consider for themselves the significance of their work and basis for making judgments, and to incorporate it into their own actions with a sense of consent. Smooth communication and cooperative relationships within the workplace are essential for fostering a sense of unity within NGK and allowing each employee to feel satisfaction with their work. This is why we conduct communication training when employees join NGK or are promoted.
We have also redefined the expected roles of management grade personnel by revising our Key Personnel System. We have reduced player work as much as possible, and made it clear that these personnel are responsible for the management and performance of the organization. Based on our redefined expected roles, we are working to improve and enhance an education framework which further strengthens the capabilities of management. At present, we are conducting training in accordance with the new system for senior managers on down, to ensure the penetration and establishment of our new key personnel system. In doing so, we foster the ability to lead teams toward demonstrating teamwork from various perspectives.
Autonomously grow and continuously change oneself and the company
We aim for the NGK to grow further by having each employee think and act on their own, take on challenges, and play an active role. To this end, we provide training that supports employee motivation and career development. The environment in which we work today is changing drastically. So, we implement training that helps employees to understand their own values, characteristics, and skills, to consider what they believe their own role should be, and encourages them to take on new challenges, take up new tasks, and work positively toward growth. This includes training and seminars addressing career design for those being promoted, as well as those in their 40s or 50s. In addition to this mandatory training, we are also expanding our online education and career counseling.
Initiatives for Employees to Chart Their Own Career Path
Reskilling and Recurrent Training
To achieve the NGK Group Vision, we increasingly need skills (including digital skills) that allow us to play an active part in growth fields such as Carbon Neutrality (CN) and Digital Society (DS). As the required skills become more advanced and personalized, we need to provide opportunities to acquire them in a timely manner. We have introduced e-learning courses containing over 10,000 lessons in total, with the aim of helping employees to improve themselves. We also provide licenses to employees who want to learn on their own. To date, more than 700 employees have used e-learning courses for reskilling.
In FY2024, we also introduced and began to operate a learning management system (LMS). We carry out a diverse array of educational activities, including mandatory training, voluntary training, learning materials, and e-learning. By integrating these into an LMS, we can achieve shared education for NGK Group employees, and we are aiming to construct an educational infrastructure that promotes further autonomous learning.
Compliance Requirements in Job Performance
We provide employees with training that communicates to them the responsibilities, which NGK bears as a corporate citizen, as well as what this requires of them as employees of NGK. This training seeks to instill a strong sense of ethics and a commitment to doing what is right.
The fundamentals of NGK business—safety, quality, environment, and CSR—are inculcated from the time an employee joins NGK to every time they receive a promotion so that knowledge ends up being reliably translated into action.
Manufacturing Training
We pursue training aimed at conveying the central importance of safety, the environment, quality, timely delivery, and cost in manufacturing while passing on the traditions and spirit of NGK manufacturing. This training also aims to grow employees into individuals who can support the creation of new value.
Towards this end, we provide training in unique technologies that will deepen employees’ understanding of NGK products and technologies, as well as provide training in administrative and improvement techniques that will equip employees with the mindset and means to improve their workplaces.
Of our training on NGK’s unique technologies, the training for our ceramic technologies follows a program tied to the actual manufacturing process. It involves teaching participants about ceramic technologies and manufacturing in general at NGK so that they will develop a broad perspective, which they can apply in their work.
For manufacturing sites, we cultivate human resources capable of making managerial contributions as manufacturing worksite leaders and give supervisor-level Production Dept. employees a chance to learn the skills needed to improve workplace culture and productivity.
Technical training on management and improvement cultivates human resources who autonomously pursue improvement through basic education about QC, statistics, reliability, cost price, and maintenance.
Developing Digitally Proficient Human Resources
Based on the NGK Group Digital Vision, we will educate all employees including those at the management grade, in digital transformation (DX), and will develop human resources who are skilled in the use of data (1,000 people by 2030) and human resources to bridge the gap to DX. We provide training by grade level, according to experience and the role served. In the business units, training is segmented into levels such as “Leaders” to drive the pursuit of DX, “Supporters” who assist the leaders, and “Beginners” who learn how to view and process data.
Examples of development measures
- In the “Leaders” development program, employees leave the department they are affiliated with and participate in an internal internship in a specialist division for one year to concentrate on learning data analysis and digital technology.
- New employees learn IT skills through e-learning during the first year after they join NGK.
Innovation Training
The aim of innovation training is to backcast from the SDGs and social challenges in an environment that is changing drastically, to discover what points to consider with new businesses and the creative thinking that spawns innovation.
In the program for young employees with leadership potential, participants learn methods for working with employees from other companies who have different experiences and value, and overcome these barriers to create and achieve goals together.
It also aims to foster flexible thinking skills and outside-the-box thinking that avoids being trapped by existing ways of thought. Through workshops, participants learn methods and ideas that serve to broaden their minds. We are also linking themes which arise during innovation training to our in-house proposal system to ensure that they can actually be developed into new businesses.
Position-Based Training for Corporate Philosophy Education
We conduct training and workshops for all employees at milestones in their career such as hiring and promotion. This is to ensure that everyone working in the NGK Group understands and agrees with the NGK Group Philosophy, and can incorporate it into their various actions and decisions. In FY2024, 530 employees attended courses: from new college graduates, to mid-career hires, and people who receive a promotion or have been recruited from fixed-term manufacturing contract employees to full-time employees.
Company History Training
This training program looks at the history of NGK in order to reexamine the origins of the corporate activities built up by our predecessors, to reinforce our shared values, and then to prompt participants to think about how this impacts the way they go about their jobs.
The program for Group S (section chiefs) uses videos to encourage participants to deeply consider what makes up the essence of NGK, with a focus on themes such as quality and globalization.
English language videos are being developed, and programs geared towards Group companies outside Japan are being introduced.
English Training for New Employees
Since FY2011, we have been providing global training courses for all new career-track employees with the goal of rapidly cultivating globally capable human resources.
These courses first train participants in developing global mindset and English ability, which aim to help them form a concrete image of what it means to work globally and help them acquire the communication methods and intercultural understanding necessary in global setting. Then, we conduct English language training for those who request it which, in addition to English ability, helps participants cultivate practical business skills like giving presentations in classes whose composition facilitates effective learning at each level.
Maximum time spent studying English per new career-track hire (FY2024 results)
Of the 123 new career-track employees, 114 spent the maximum amount of time studying
Practical Overseas Training / Global Seminars
NGK conducts practical training over a period of six months at Group companies outside Japan with the aim of developing globally competent personnel. The training focuses on developing practical business and communication skills in a cross-cultural environment targeting young employees who are future candidates for overseas postings.
In addition, we also conduct a wide variety of global training aimed at employees engaged in overseas work, including future candidates for overseas postings. This training covers themes such as language acquisition training, studies on individual areas, and acquisition of global standard communication and management skills based on intercultural understandings.
FY2024 Training Outcomes
Training Participant Summary (total number of people)
Average Annual Hours Spent for Training per Full-Time Employee
Average Annual Cost of Training per Full-Time Employee
Support for Obtaining Qualifications and Degrees
We have adopted a system for supporting the acquisition of qualifications and academic degrees in order to encourage the ambition of employees to develop new capabilities and pursue autonomous learning for self-development. We actively support personnel in striving to obtain new skills, such as qualifications related to their current work, qualifications needed to reach the next step in their careers, and qualifications that lead to developing capabilities in areas they are interested in.
This applies to more than 500 various qualifications for occupations such as lawyers, certified public accountants, patent attorneys, architects, as well as qualifications related to the environment, health and safety, quality control, technology, various specialties, languages, and IT. It also includes doctoral degrees related to an employee’s work as well as master’s in business administration (MBA) degrees. Not only do we subsidize examination fees and transportation costs, but we offer lump-sum payments of up to 100,000 yen for qualifications that are particularly difficult and useful, and provide assistance with the costs of maintaining the qualifications. For high-level qualifications and academic degrees, we subsidize half of the cost of tuition (up to 2 million yen).