Support diverse talent with motivating challenges and job satisfaction

Challenges
Our policy
Goals
Responsible executive (as of April, 2024)
Organizational responsibilities (as of April 2024)
Grievance mechanism
Demonstrating ability and fostering motivation (developing talent)
Securing diverse human resources (promoting diversity)
Creating healthy working environments (reforming working styles)

Challenges

Demonstrating ability and fostering motivation (developing talent)
Securing diverse human resources (promoting diversity)
Creating healthy working environments (reforming working styles)

Relevant stakeholders

Direct: Employees, local communities, suppliers
Indirect: Shareholders and investors, creditors, NGOs, industry groups

Our policy

As part of our efforts to build a management foundation to support sustainable growth, we stipulated the development of a framework in the Medium-Term ’21 Plan that would enable diverse human resources to work together organically and play an active role based on enthusiastic job satisfaction, as well as a training system that upholds individuality, quality and ability. We conduct flat evaluations based on ability, aptitude and performance, and develop human resource base designed to ensure the best mix of human resources to enable diverse talent, regardless of their nationality, gender, age, background or other factors, to grow and flourish, and to get the right people into the right jobs. In terms of human capital investment, we inject resources into various initiatives with a view to developing talent, promoting diversity and creating healthy working environments. We aim to help create value through our business by, for example, investing in systems that promote the planned development of business managers and professional talent in each organizational function, investing in the building of office environments and human resource systems that make diverse employees feel comfortable, and creating working arrangements and tools that help improve employee performance and communication.

Toyo Tire Group Charter of Corporate Behavior

Global Human Rights & Labor Policy

The Toyo Tire Group established the Global Human Rights & Labor Policy in January 2019. This policy endorses the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and the 10 principles of the United Nations Global Compact. As our Group business globalizes and our stakeholders diversify, we strive to carry out our activities in a way that respects the human rights of everyone involved in our corporate activities, including people in our workplaces, at our suppliers, and within the communities where we operate. This will help us contribute to creating an inclusive society that supports everyone, including socially vulnerable people, by protecting them from exclusion, conflict, loneliness and isolation. Group employees also recognize that they may potentially cause, contribute to or be complicit in adverse impacts on human rights through their own activities, and work to prevent this.

〈 Human rights and labor due diligence process in the workplace 〉

Identify and evaluate actual adverse impacts and potential risks in the workplace
Take remedial action on adverse impacts and work to prevent potential risks from occurring
Monitor initiatives
Disclose information on initiatives to external stakeholders

See below for English and Chinese versions

Goals

To respect human rights in the workplace, eliminate all forms of discrimination, and promote diversity.

Responsible executive (as of April, 2024)

Corporate Officer and Vice President of Corporate Headquarters

Organizational responsibilities (as of April 2024)

Policies for strengthening our human resources foundation and the direction of important measures are discussed and decided by the Organization and Personnel Committee, and executed under the supervision of the Corporate Headquarters. Human resources-related activity themes under the jurisdiction of the Sustainability Committee are also promoted in the same way, with the Organization and Personnel Committee being consulted as necessary.

Grievance mechanism

Reporting hotline (whistle-blowing system): For executives, employees and suppliers
Customer Relations Department: For customers (consumers) and local communities
Online inquiry form: For customers (consumers), shareholders and investors, and NGOs
Labor-Management Council Meetings: For employees
Harassment reporting hotline: For employees

Demonstrating ability and fostering motivation (developing talent)

Education and training

In 2021, we launched a new human resource evaluation system to define a clearer picture of the type of talent required to support sustainable growth for the Toyo Tire Group, to clarify company expectations for individual roles at different levels, and to better motivate talent to achieve results and pursue personal growth. We are building an integrated system by promoting well-balanced evaluations with an emphasis on dialogue, raising remuneration levels, and introducing training programs that help improve individual capabilities. In April 2023, we clarified our expectations regarding the ideal human resources profile and expected roles at our production sites. By conducting employee evaluations and adjusting their treatment based on such expectations, we aim to motivate employees to perform at a higher level and achieve better results. We also conduct career-building interviews with each employee and formulate human resource development plans to promote the active participation of all employees.
Having positioned talent development as the cornerstone of this new system, we have been focusing on training and development since 2022. We have added new mandatory training programs on conceptual points designed to help employees fulfill their expected roles and correctly follow company philosophy at each level, or to help core employees acquire vital basic knowledge on digital transformation (DX), ESG, or other subjects. We have also updated our training for divisional general managers and general managers to help them acquire the necessary qualities and skills for developing effective management perspectives, managing their own personal transformations, and displaying leadership on medium- to long-term issues. Furthermore, as part of our drive to train more management candidates, we are also promoting cross-border training at excellent universities and other planned personnel transfers including overseas transfer, to help build a firm pool of human resources.
Periodic employee surveys have confirmed that these new personnel evaluation systems and other relevant measures have indeed helped motivate employees in the way we expected.

Developing talent with technical expertise

With an eye toward a future predicted to have dramatically different market conditions through a mobility revolution, we are focusing on the development of professionals who can transform difficulties and crises into opportunities for sustainable growth. To develop the talent that supports our Group’s essential technological innovations, our education and training emphasizes basic knowledge, external company relations and the passing down of technology.
We aim for talent development that, through company-wide level-specific education, equips employees with the logical thinking and facilitation skills that are key in research and development, and problem-solving skills and innovative ability based on customer needs-oriented thinking. Our technology departments also provide training to young employees to acquire technical expertise, and promote annual talent development to achieve the mission of each organization.
Since 2020, the technology departments’ educational curriculum has included a course on the SDGs. Through group work, participants recognize the role of technological development in resolving the various social issues relevant to our business.

Developing talent with sales expertise

Tire distributors associated with the Toyo Tire Group work to develop human resources training that strengthens expertise through education and training and improves the skills of people in charge of customer service so that our customers can always feel comfortable and secure when selecting Toyo Tire products.
Our subsidiary companies in the United States offer selective All American Leadership training and T3 online product modules as a digital training system on an ongoing basis. T3+ mobile gaming platform has also been added to existing platforms in the digital training system to facilitate the acquisition of greater product expertise.
Furthermore, we have introduced a mentoring system that enables junior and new sales members to receive coaching and counseling from highly experienced veteran sales people and deepen their understanding on the products and company.

Read more about our ongoing initiatives in Japan.

Developing talent with production expertise

Our production function is focusing on improving quality control inspection capabilities and developing operators’ multitasking capabilities.
In addition to the compliance training offered to all employees, our subsidiary in Thailand also provides internal audit training on quality management for employees in certain occupations.
We are currently considering offering leadership training for managers and seeking to enhance training opportunities that are specific to an employee’s level within the company and job type.

Training held in 2023 (Toyo Tire Corporation)

・Basic courses for young employees by mid-level employees
・Competency development courses for mid-level employees by external lecturers
・Participation in external training courses

Employee opinion survey

It is important that our employees should feel proud of what they do and are motivated to create value. We have been conducting a bi-annual employee awareness survey since 2021 to capture a snapshot of our organizational culture (The Toyo Tire Corporation response rate in the second employee awareness survey reached approximately 95%).

The survey results and detailed analysis are shared with the Executive Committee and feedback is provided to each department. Our efforts to create and implement improvement action plans based on deep reflection are starting to bear fruit as the cycle takes hold. Each department is encouraged to implement autonomous and proactive initiatives based on their individual strengths and weaknesses. The Human Resources Department regularly monitors the progress of each department, and incorporates common issues into the development of company-wide policies and system reviews.
The 2023 survey pinpointed issues relating to shift workload in the production department so we set up a project to promote improvements together with labor and management. Linking our philosophy, systems, events, and communication will enable us to form a unique culture and increase employee job satisfaction.

[TOPIC] Joint human resource development program with Doshisha University

In March 2024, we signed a five-year comprehensive partnership agreement with Doshisha University. The partnership seeks to promote the use of mutual high value-added resources to foster human resources who can contribute to society and realize beneficial technologies.
We will promote multi-layered collaboration on multiple different research themes, develop future technical leaders and accelerate the implementation of innovative technologies that are useful to society.
We intend to make the most of the learning opportunities and venues for recurrent employee education that the university offers to nurture corporate engineers through industry-academia collaboration. At the same time, we will work together with the university career center to offer business-focused career advice to students and help them learn how to choose their future independently and develop their work attitudes.

Securing diverse human resources (promoting diversity)

Securing diverse human resources

Fostering a culture of mutual respect among diverse human resources and establishing a culture of cooperation and collaboration are both important for creating unique Toyo Tire value.
We work together with universities when recruiting new graduates to ensure we secure talented human resources, opening our doors to foreign students studying at Japanese universities and Japanese students studying at overseas universities, and actively approaching doctoral degree holders. At the same time, we are actively employing mid-career talent who can play an important role in supporting the company’s growth stage. Meanwhile, we are rehiring human resources who have turned 60 and are creating mechanisms to facilitate the active participation of people with disabilities. We have also built a job evaluation structure that can respond flexibly to diverse employees’ job and career preferences in both specified and general employment. In spring 2024, we introduced evaluation standards that would enable us to treat both human resources with outstanding management skills or the power to drive management strategy and personnel with specialist technological expertise or specific skills who have reached retirement age in the same way as we treat our current managers and employees under the age of 60. This move was designed to improve motivation among elder employees and encourage the nurturing of future successors. We expect these new structures and standards to have a positive internal impact and help invigorate our organization.
In the five years leading up to 2020, we doubled the percentage of women at the assistant manager level from 2.03% to 4.65%. Now, we have set a new goal of raising the ratio of female assistant managers promoted to manager level or higher compared to the similar ratio for men to between 80% and 120% in the five years from 2021 to 2025. (End 2020: 70%, three-year average for 2021 to 2023: 75%).

While the Group has a uniform compensation system for men and women with the same job qualifications and the same level of responsibility, our analysis shows that the differing ratios of men and women in management positions affect wage performance. We will actively promote the development and promotion of female employees to enable us to ultimately eliminate wage disparities.

Employment situation

The Toyo Tire Group is committed to ensuring fair employment practices and treatment of employees, and to creating workplaces where a diverse team members can flourish regardless of nationality, gender, age or other characteristics.
In our human resources recruitment, we strive to secure a diverse range of talent across the world, for example, recruiting both new graduates and mid-career candidates, rehiring retirees, and employing people with disabilities. As an illustration of those efforts, we no longer advertise recruitment targets for women and non-Japanese candidates when hiring new graduates, and have adopted a policy of fair, unbiased evaluation and recruitment for all talent. In order to acquire the best talent, beginning with our fiscal 2024 new graduate hiring, we have also started using direct recruitment to approach students who fit our desired profile in addition to receiving applications from interested candidates via job hunting websites for students. We have resumed in-person, on-the-job training internships, which were discontinued during the COVID-19 pandemic, to provide more earnest work experience opportunities.
Our subsidiary, Toyo Tire Refine Corporation, is trying to secure talent that fulfills the appropriate qualification requirements by actively encouraging work placements with a view to future employment through special needs schools, welfare-related organizations, and vocational training schools. We hold meetings with people with disabilities, their families, and support workers at least once a year in order to strengthen cooperation, and strive to create an environment where all stakeholders feel they can consult us on any matter. As a direct result of these initiatives, employees involved in vulcanization support and cleaning activities at the Corporate Technology Center earned Outstanding Work by Persons with Disabilities awards at the 2023 Hyogo Employment Festival for Persons with Disabilities.
This program recognizes workers from select institutions in Hyogo Prefecture striving to promote the employment of people with disabilities who produced great results as exemplary professionals and have also demonstrated a long period of dedicated service.
Going forward, we will continue to strive to secure appropriate human resources and create safe and secure working environments by cooperating with relevant organizations and providing regular interview opportunities.

Ratio of employees with disabilities (As of June 1)
2.49% in 2021
2.60% in 2022
2.51% in 2023

Diversity and equal opportunities

To promote the empowerment of all employees, we have established different types of personnel systems and a talent development plan, and offer career counseling for each employee. To encourage understanding of diversity from multiple perspectives, we are also enhancing thematic training opportunities on a variety of topics including LGBT, empowering women, harassment, and unconscious bias.
Toyo Tire Japan Co., Ltd. has established a human resources empowerment committee as part of its efforts to create workplaces that encourage both men and women to challenge themselves, to help employees build careers that recognize and respect diverse values and lifestyle choices, and to promote diverse workplace communication to achieve those aims. The committee was originally established to promote the career advancement and empowerment of female employees in particular. However, we subsequently broadened the committee focus to incorporate all employees in recognition of the fact that encouraging active participation and improved awareness among managers, supervisors, and male employees is also important. The company has been proactive in reviewing job descriptions, responsibilities and authority with a view to advancing the careers of female employees, and the number of women in management positions is rising as a result.
Moreover, as part of our efforts to create gender-balanced working environments, we have reviewed our company dress code at some locations, including our headquarters, to allow male employees to wear business casual.

[TOPICS]

1 Lectures by external experts to help empower women in the workplace

Toyo Tire Corporation continues to hold training sessions and workshops on the theme of diversity and inclusion. In March 2023, we hosted a lecture by an external specialist as part of our training on promoting women’s empowerment, which is an important issue for companies. We hoped the lecture would help invigorate our efforts by providing an opportunity to reaffirm the need to empower women and nurturing the appropriate mindset. A total of 170 managers at department head level and above as well as female employees participated in the hybrid-format lecture either in person or remotely. The first session’s lecture was followed by a discussion with our executives in the second session. The lively exchange of views on the panel followed by proactive questioning from the floor illustrated the high degree of interest in the topic. We will continue to uphold diversity going forward and strive to create workplaces in which each and every member gets their chance to shine.

2 Unconscious bias training

We followed up the training on women’s empowerment with a training session on unconscious bias in November 2023 led by external instructors with the aim of nurturing a culture intent on energizing diversity momentum and fostering innovation. We wanted to promote greater understanding of unconscious bias from the senior management level upward, and to alter perceptions and change behavior, so we prepared lectures for managers from the executive level down to the section head level, and we held group discussions for each management stratum to deepen mutual awareness and foster the right mindset. We also offered voluntary training for executives at affiliated companies as part of our efforts to promote understanding of unconscious bias across the entire Group. In addition to the above-mentioned managers, we are currently exploring the idea of offering unconscious bias e-learning for all other employees in 2024.

New hires

New hires at Toyo Tire Corporation (full-time employees including mid-career hires)

Employee diversity

Employee diversity at Toyo Tire Corporation (full-time employees)

Labor and management relations

Toyo Tire Corporation recognizes The Toyo Tire Labor Union^*1 as the sole negotiating organization. Terms for consultation and negotiation with the union are clearly stipulated in the collective labor agreement. As of the end of October 2023, the union membership is formed of 3,290 general employees, excluding 455 company executives and managers (87.9% of general employees).
The Labor-Management Conference on Business Management Measures is held twice a year and the Central Conference is held annually to bring together labor and management representatives to share and discuss management issues and the Group's goals.

*1 The name was changed from "the Toyo Rubber Labor Union" on October 1, 2023.

Creating healthy working environments (reforming working styles)

Promoting work-life balance

We believe that our unique work styles and working environments maximize the capabilities and vitality of diverse human resources and organizations. Following the transition to class V for the novel coronavirus in 2023, we decided to use internal transformation to invigorate the Company and drive growth. We did that by enabling employees to flexibly select the work style and the workplace that best suited them and by creating working environments that encouraged all employees to tackle their work autonomously and independently. We introduced various work styles with remote work options and renovated our head office work spaces to satisfy various needs for cooperative, harmonious or concentrated working environments. Over 90% of employees who responded to our survey said they were satisfied with the expansion of work style options and the ability to work freely and autonomously.
Regarding the need to help employees achieve a good work-life balance, we seek to improve our understanding of any changes in our employees' lives caused by different life events and to provide ways to help them achieve a healthy work-life balance. We have set up various systems that allow employees to fulfill their childcare and nursing care responsibilities, such as mechanisms for taking leave that enable employees to concentrate on raising children up to two years of age and care for family members (for families requiring nursing care within the second degree of kinship, up to one year). We have also worked hard to establish systems and nurture a workplace environment that are more conducive to men taking childcare leave.
In addition, we have established a system that allows employees to reinstate and use annual paid leave that expired from two years ago in the event of an injury or illness, childcare or nursing care, volunteer activities, hospital visits, hospitalization, pregnancy, infertility treatment, or other reasons. Meanwhile, following labor-management consultations, our administrative and technical bases have designated several promotional days a year for encouraging employees to take their annual leave and achieve a better work-life balance. At the same time, we encourage employees at production sites to systematically take annual paid leave in line with the annual production plan. In fiscal 2023, the annual leave utilization rate stood at 64.8%, an increase of seven points over the past three years.
The updated 2024 action plan includes exploring the possibility of offering paid nursing care leave to look after sick children and expanding the number of days of paid childcare leave, and seeks to expand our childcare support system and improve workplace environments to help increase the rate of eligible employees taking childcare leave to 100%, irrespective of gender.

Improving systems to respond to harassment

In accordance with our anti-harassment regulations, a reporting hotline and advisor have been made available for each business site in order to understand and resolve any incidents of harassment as early as possible. The hotline contact details are posted on message boards and in break rooms at the company to make it easier for employees to access. Training is also provided for advisors to ensure that they can appropriately handle the matters reported and discussed. We also conduct anti-harassment training for managers.

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