Human Resource Development

We are looking for people who continually evolve by pursuing high goals based on independent thinking. To recruit and nurture even more human resources with this ability, we are creating organizations in developing environments that draw out, develop, and fully use the capabilities of each employee. We will continue to promote the creation of “stages” where employees can demonstrate their individual strengths to realize our materiality (Five Gears that drive Zeon), including “Creating a truly exciting company.”

Overall view of and KPIs for the creation of “stages” where employees can demonstrate their individual strengths in Phase 3 of the Medium-Term Business Plan

The overall view of the creation of “stages” where employees can demonstrate their individual strengths is as follows: 1. Driving human resources management to promote employee growth and motivation, 2. Strengthening the link between management and human resources strategies, and 3. Creating an enabling work environment that does not interfere career pursuits. We have set KPIs through FY2028 and will continue working on the actions, as shown in the diagram, to achieve those KPIs.

The company has been conducting an employee engagement survey annually since FY2021 to visualize issues and link them to human resources strategy initiatives aimed at realizing our materiality. In this survey, our assessments focus on two outcome indicators: employee engagement, which measures mutual trust between employees and the company; and the environment maximizing employee potential, which measures the organizational conditions where individuals can demonstrate and leverage their abilities. We consider and implement measures to maximize the abilities of both employees and the organization and to drive growth on both sides.

We conduct an employee engagement survey that is utilized globally, and benchmark it against the averages of high-performing global and Japanese companies. As a result, various organizational issues that were previously often perceived intuitively can now be visualized more objectively.

The results for FY2024 showed that employee engagement was 52% and the environment maximizing employee potential was 51%, both at the same level as the previous fiscal year’s results. To achieve the FY2030 target of 75%, we believe it is necessary to provide ongoing, more positive encouragement that makes employees feel motivated to go above and beyond what is expected. To that end, we will advance a human resource management transformation centered on personnel system reforms, which is the key to this effort.

Trends in employee engagement survey indicators

We updated our managerial personnel system in July 2023 and introduced a new job-based system. In the former system, grades and compensation were used as stepping stones to management roles, based on the person’s ability to perform their duties. However, the roles (i.e., job duties) employees are expected to perform have been diversifying. To foster employees’ motivation and create “stages” that allow employees to demonstrate their individual strengths, we decided that we needed to transition to a personnel system that draws out employees’ diverse strengths and prompts their growth. This led to the revision of our personnel system.

First, while retaining the conventional skill-based qualification system and operating a hybrid model, we are building an HR portfolio and clarifying the job requirements expected of managerial roles to support getting the right people in the right positions to achieve our management and business strategy. After organizing a grade structure based on these efforts, we will completely abolish the skill-based qualifications in FY2025 and plan to consider and introduce a personnel system optimized for our company.

In addition, we are planning to revise the non-managerial personnel system in FY2025 and beyond. In this revision, we will identify issues in work styles and career development through two-way dialogue and review the system to support opportunities for young employees to independently develop their careers.

Direction of personnel system reforms

We are undertaking initiatives to support women to play an active role with the objective of providing opportunities for diverse human resources to demonstrate their individual strengths and play significant roles.

Recognizing the extremely low number of female employees as an issue, we have proactively worked to expand the hiring of women. Specifically, for the recruitment of new graduates with a university degree or higher, we have set targets of at least 50% women for administrative staff and 30% for technical staff, and we have been promoting recruitment activities accordingly. As a result of these efforts, the number of our female employees has increased 2.2 times compared to 10 years ago, and their share of the total workforce has increased from 9.8% to 13.8%.

Although the percentage of female in managerial positions remained at 6.4% as of the end of March 2025, we believe that the results of these efforts will lead to an increase in the number of female managers in the future, and we are strengthening initiatives to make this a reality.

We updated the managerial personnel system in July 2023, better clarifying the job duties and human resource requirements of managerial positions. Going forward, we will develop a pool of managerial candidates by identifying human resource requirements and gaps for promotion. Through initiatives such as a sponsorship program, we will also strengthen support for female managers and female managerial candidates.

Ratio and number of female managers (non-consolidated)

We are promoting DI&B, with Belonging added to the principles of Diversity and Inclusion. We are conducting various activities with the goal of a state in which diversity is respected and leveraged (D&I) while everyone at Zeon has a sense of security and trust that they are accepted (Belonging). This also contributes to “Creating a truly exciting company,” included in Zeon’s materiality, and serves as a driving force for our employees.

Fostering a culture rooted in DI&B, where everyone is happy to work at Zeon and feels we have a place to belong is the whole process of “creating ‘stages’ together with employees where they can demonstrate their individual strengths” set forth in our Medium-Term Business Plan. Going forward, we will turn diversity into a driver of transformation and link it to the creation of innovation.

As for the promotion system, Zeon has a promotion department within the Human Resources Division, and is also rolling out DI&B promotion projects across the organization, conducting both top-down and bottom-up activities. In particular, within these DI&B promotion projects, project members proactively address DI&B-related issues they wish to work on while also receiving education to grow as leaders who leverage diversity. We are thus working on fostering change agents.

In FY2024, we hired 57 mid-career employees to work in many areas of Zeon, including research and development, business, and digital. We are actively promoting these human resources to managerial roles to create teams with diverse viewpoints.

In FY2024, we hired 98 new graduates. As a means of advancing gender equality and steadily increasing the ratio of women employees that play a central role in future management decision-making, we aim to continue hiring women each year to fill at least 30% of the roles for new graduate hires at the head office.

Our workforce is growing from robust hiring activities over the last several years, and we are focusing on onboarding and creating frameworks to retain these new employees and have them demonstrate their individual skills. This includes providing support in their personal life, in-house self-study opportunities, and support for building interpersonal networks, based on two-way communication.

In particular, for newly hired mid-career hires, we hold frank discussions with Human Resources soon after they start working at Zeon to deepen their understanding of Zeon’s manufacturing activities, while also conducting education to help them perform their work with a high-level understanding of our Group. Furthermore, since FY2024, we have been conducting individual interviews to support their retention and early development as productive contributors.

Number of new hires (non-consolidated)

As we expand our business globally, it is of the utmost importance to our company that an active role is played not just by Japanese employees but also by employees of other nationalities. Their active roles in various departments serve to help not only non-Japanese employees but also the Japanese colleagues working alongside them to grow, while also promoting respect for diverse values and invigorating our organization as a whole.

Zeon has continuously pursued the recruitment of a multinational workforce, including hires from outside Japan, irrespective of nationality, for some time. As of March 2025, we have 34 foreign-national employees, an increase on past numbers. Of these 34 employees, seven are active in managerial roles.

We will continue to pursue a policy of increasing the number of foreign-national employees capable of playing a central role in managerial decision-making into the future.

As of March 2025, Zeon had 45 employees stationed outside Japan, who are active in regions throughout the globe driving our business outside Japan, mainly in Asian countries, along with North America, Europe, and other regions.

In addition to offering our support to employees stationed outside Japan to ensure that they can live and work in safety, we aim to clarify the roles and duties required of each of these employees, as well as providing visions for their careers with an eye to their growth. We will also actively undertake the creation of environments which allow employees to rise to challenges with confidence. This will include canvassing and providing them with opportunities to volunteer their opinions and wishes.

We created a personnel system for senior employees that applies to employees who are at or above the mandatory retirement age of 60 years. As of March 2025, a total of 203 senior employees (including personnel seconded to the Group companies) are working under this program and are active in various areas including assignments outside Japan.

The concept of this system is “creating stages (workplace) where employees who have entered or are about to enter their senior years can demonstrate their individual strengths for an even longer period in anticipation of an era of 100-year life spans.”

The adoption of this system will provide a framework for rehiring up to the age of 70, as well as increasing the variety of life options and providing environments in which employees can work in peace of mind. It will achieve this through the provision of attractive benefits and flexible work styles, including part-time work and side work, as a response to the desire of seniors to remain active and take on challenges even after the mandatory retirement age.

The Zeon Challenge Awards are presented annually to employees who contribute to corporate value enhancement and take on challenges. The prizes given for the President’s Award and other rewards are commensurate with the levels of these achievements.

Alongside the Employee of the Month award, which is presented on a monthly basis to individual employees by division managers, the Zeon Challenge Award is also intended to provide a stage to be active on, and caters to challenges undertaken at the initiative of employees themselves.