Human Resource Development

Hoshizaki • ism

• Have a dream.

  Everything comes from a dream. Any dream will surely come true.

  Everything starts with a dream.

  Just thinking about it isn’t enough. Don’t give up.

  To attain a big dream, set yourself a deadline and break it up into concrete steps, arranged chronologically. Then review and revise them once or twice a year.

  If you hold onto your dream tightly and stick with it, you will be amazed to see your dream becomes a reality.

• The profitable corporation has a culture that generates profit.

  Don't adjust yourself to others. Uniqueness will be the source of profitability.

  We aim to be at the top in everything, and focus on generating profit.

  When you are in a profitable corporation, generating profit is normal, and when you make a little less profit you feel strange.

  In order to protect our culture of generating profit into the future, don’t adjust yourself to others.

  We need to keep taking on new challenges without fear of failure.

  If we do everything through consensus, we will end up as an ordinary company.

• Change makes progress.

  There is no way to survive on the extension of the present.

  In order to become and remain number one, we cannot be afraid of change.

  Hoshizaki is an energetic company with a culture that generates profit, but we have many failed initiatives in our past.

  If you think you have made a mistake, it is OK to fix it then and there.

• Don’t make money by money.

  We are manufacturers. Our profit shall come from our core business.

  Our founder always said that you should not judge things based only on gain and loss.

  Although he made big purchases for our main business, he also told us not to make money by money; but to focus on our core business.

  Because we have followed these teachings, Hoshizaki has come to be known as a rich company today.

• Broaden your horizons.

  After all, you will find a brand-new perspective.

  Even if you think something is a waste, if you put your all into it, you will find a brand-new perspective. Improve yourselves and widen your horizons.

  Even the Toyota Production System, which thoroughly eliminates waste, inconsistencies, and unreasonable requirements in the pursuit of lean production, always retains the necessary safety inventory even as it focuses on just-in-time production. If you are only concerned about costs, you will be caught off guard.

Hiring

We aim to improve the capabilities of our employees in order to grow continuously. We strive to hire excellent talent, and we hire a set number of new graduates each year. When hiring new graduates, in addition to our traditional face-to-face interviews, in light of the situation with COVID-19, we have also implemented online company orientation and screening. We also strive to prevent post-hiring mismatches by providing information in a variety of formats, including providing opportunities to meet with company employees and enhancing the information on our website.

Each of our domestic sales companies performs hiring separately based on its future business strategy and employee composition. Our comprehensive training program for new hires enables us to hire people flexibly, and ensures that our hires can succeed after joining the company regardless of whether they come from technical or non-technical backgrounds.

We also carry out initiatives that leverage the strengths of our Group companies, with the Company’s Human Resources Department and hiring managers from each company collaborating and cooperating to strengthen the hiring capabilities of the Hoshizaki Group as a whole. Specifically, the Group jointly creates company brochures and websites, and streams seminar videos to evolve (deepen) its hiring activities, in order to create opportunities to find more talented human resources.

Fair Evaluation and Treatment

We operate a fair evaluation system in order to ascertain the strengths and weaknesses of each employee, and enable them to harness their capabilities to the fullest while continuing to grow. We evaluate and give feedback to employees in general positions twice per year, based on three criteria: job performance (status of efforts to produce results at work), ability (capability to perform work duties), and passion (attitude of commitment to execution of duties). For employees in higher grade positions, we offer a management course for employees aiming for management positions, and a specialist course for specialized positions. Evaluations for both courses specialize in the duty performance aspect, while incorporating a target management system.

In the past, our domestic sales companies only used quantitative criteria, such as sales achievement rate, as evaluation metrics. However, in fiscal 2020, we performed a full-scale revision of evaluation metrics and weights through an initiative to strengthen internal controls. In order to eliminate excessive pressure to achieve targets and appropriately motivate employees, we have incorporated qualitative criteria, such as improvement of capabilities, alongside the traditional quantitative criteria, and changed from evaluation systems delegated to each domestic sales company, to a unified Groupwide system.

Capability Development

Hoshizaki and our domestic Group companies strive to enhance our training programs to enable all of our employees to harness their capabilities to the fullest, and work with motivation and ambition.

Hoshizaki Group education system (fiscal 2021)

Joint Group new hire training

In early April, Hoshizaki and our domestic Group companies provide a two-day Group joint training course to all new-graduate hires. The goals of the training include giving new hires a sense of the Group’s scale, getting to know a manufacturing site, and fostering horizontal bonds across the Group that go beyond individual companies (creating camaraderie among employees hired in the same year). Trainees not only acquire the basic knowledge of an adult in society, but also learn about our history and the significance of our corporate philosophy directly from management, developing a sense of belonging as a member of the Hoshizaki Group.

Position-specific training

Hoshizaki and our domestic Group companies provide training to employees at each level of the company hierarchy. In particular, we provide training and 360-degree evaluations to employees newly promoted to department and section manager in order to reinforce management behaviors and increase awareness of compliance. Additionally, coaching training is required as part of new leader training. With this, we are committed to creating an open organization with smooth communication between superiors and subordinates.

Training to develop next generation of management

Hoshizaki and our domestic sales companies work actively to develop the human resources who will be involved in management in the future. We select excellent members from our executives and executive candidates, and strengthen their strategic conceptualization and planning capabilities by having them tackle business cases and internal issues in order to thoroughly train their logical thinking and problem-solving abilities.

Developing global human resources

In 2021, Hoshizaki started a new global human resource development program by renewing various conventional training programs that were conducted to strengthen language skills and business skills.

We select excellent members from our executives and executive candidates, and strengthen their strategic conceptualization and planning capabilities by having them tackle business cases and internal issues in order to thoroughly train their logical thinking and problem-solving abilities.

Hoshizaki Training Center

The Hoshizaki Training Center was established as a place to improve the knowledge and skills of employees who support the Group’s strength: its service and support system.

The training center provides electrical and refrigeration training, which forms the basis of our products, not only through classroom training but also through training using simulated refrigeration circuits and other tools to impart a deeper understanding. The center also incorporates training aimed to make employees immediately effective on the job: it has a large number of actual products, and trainees can learn about them by seeing and touching them firsthand; it also incorporates analysis of malfunctions assuming being at actual work sites, and role-playing training assuming conversations with customers.

We also ensure that we can provide uniform and high level service to customers nationwide. New hires scheduled to be assigned to service roles undergo a two-month joint training course, and then a year after hiring, they take Hoshizaki’s in-house technical test, as our effort to ensure their technical level and uniformity of skills.

Diversity

Hoshizaki and our domestic Group companies are committed to advancing diversity, including promoting women’s participation, based on our belief that incorporating diverse people and values is vital for creating new value.

Promoting participation by women

Hoshizaki and its domestic distributors have a vision of promoting women's advancement, "becoming a company where excellent staff can easily work and play active roles, irrespective of gender." In FY2010, we launched the "Kagayaki Project" consisting of members of each Group company, and set a specific goal of “LADIES10," of increasing the percentage of women in the positions at or above assistant manager level to 10% or more by FY2020. In addition to providing support for women's career development, the project is working on creating a comfortable working environment, and as of the end of December 2020, the percentage of women in positions at or above assistant manager level was 9.3%.
Then, from FY2021, based on the activities so far, the “Kagayaki Committee" was established to promote activities from a flexible and multifaceted perspective regardless of job title, age, gender and organizational system. By this, we aim to achieve by FY2025 (1) quadrupling the number of female managers from FY2020 (to 50), and (2) increasing the number of employees at and above assistant manager level by 1.5 times from FY2020 (to 300). By setting higher targets like this and working in parallel with the training of managers and future leaders (those equivalent to assistant managers), we aim to expedite, as well as permanently promote and instill, women's advancement within the Company.
As a measure to achieve these goals, we will formulate a training plan for people who are expected to grow into management, and actively provide opportunities for a career path to higher-ranking positions, thereby supporting highly effective career building. For supervisors involved in HR development, training programs are provided to better understand and promote diversity, as well as to improve awareness of everyday obstacles to women's advancement caused by stereotypes and unconscious bias. We will further improve the working environment through such activities of the Kagayaki Committee.

Promotion of hiring people with disabilities

Hoshizaki and our domestic Group companies promote the hiring of people with disabilities, and are committed to creating a workplace environment where they can work energetically. As of January 2022, Hoshizaki’s employment rate of people with disabilities was 2.40%, and that of our domestic Group companies was 2.18%, both of which exceed the legal requirements.

Initiatives to Achieve Work-Life Balance

Hoshizaki and our domestic Group companies are strengthening our initiatives to achieve work-life balance, with the aim of creating a comfortable working environment where our diverse people (employees) can harness their capabilities to the fullest.

Support for taking childcare leave and returning to work

In fiscal 2021, Hoshizaki’s childcare leave utilization rate was 100% for female employees and 35% for male employees. In order to ensure the smooth return to work by female employees who take childcare leave, the department manager and the employee who is planning to take maternity leave meet before taking leave, before returning to work, and after returning to work to discuss her career moving forward. Additionally, we have introduced the online “wiwiw career and childcare balance support program” service as support for employees during maternity and childcare leave. This program can be used from six months before taking maternity and childcare leave until five years after returning to work. During maternity and childcare leave, users can take online courses from their homes, and the program provides a social media service where users can get advice on careers and childcare from people with childcare experience.

Male employees whose spouses are expecting are given guides with information on childcare by their superiors with the aim of encouraging the employees to take childcare leave.

Support for balancing work with nursing care

We support balancing work with nursing care by posting on our company portal site a checklist of things to know before and while providing nursing care.

Support for employees on temporary assignment away from families

Hoshizaki and our domestic Group companies have a program that enables employees living away from their families due to transfers to return home once a week, in order to enable the employees to be together with their families for as much as possible. In addition, we have introduced a system (known as “Happy Monday System”), under which employees who have been transferred and have returned home for the weekend, and who then have a longer commute, are considered to have worked their usual hours even if they cannot get to their workplace on time on the Monday owing to the extra commuting time.

Certification as excellent companies based on law

Hoshizaki and our domestic Group companies have been accredited as Excellent Companies, with 17 out of 18 companies receiving the Next-Generation Certification Mark (nicknamed the “Kurumin Mark”) (of these, 14 received the Next-Generation Special Case Certification Mark, nicknamed the “Platinum Kurumin Mark”), and 2 out of the 18 receiving the Women’s Active Participation Promotion Mark (nicknamed the “Eruboshi Mark”). We will continue to work to create comfortable working environments where our employees can play active roles, as we aim for accreditation by all our domestic Group companies.

* As of December 2021

Platinum Kurumin Mark

Eruboshi Mark

Employee Satisfaction Surveys

Hoshizaki and our domestic Group companies conduct employee satisfaction surveys of all employees each year. Based on the results of these surveys, we analyze employee motivation and employee-friendliness for each company, and then create action plans with the aim of improvement, and strive to improve employee satisfaction.

We also strive to vitalize the activities of individual companies and raise the bar for activities to improve employee satisfaction throughout the Group by sharing perspectives for improvements, from the survey results to specific activities, within the Group, as well as initiative success stories. Through these initiatives, we are improving employee satisfaction each year.

Social data

Data used is as of December 31 each year

*1 As of January 15 of each year: Number of days of paid leave taken between January 16 of the target year and January 15 of the following year, compared to the number of days of paid leave granted in the target year

*2 As of January 15 of each year: Calculated overtime hours per target worker per month for workers employed between January 16 of the target year to January 15 of the following year