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Human Capital

UBE Group Human Resources Management Guidelines

The UBE Group has issued these human resources management guidelines in order to enhance its corporate value and maximize the well-being of employees.

These guidelines present the shared values the UBE Group practices in human resources management. While group companies have their respective rules, customs, and personnel provisions, these guidelines outline the Group’s universal approach to human resources management and apply to all group companies worldwide.

  1. Value the diversity of our human resources and respect each person’s individuality.
  2. Keep employees' motivation high by encouraging their creativity and autonomy.
  3. Provide many opportunities for all employees to develop themselves based on their own professionalism.
  4. Pursue fair evaluation and remuneration.
  5. Be receptive to diverse work styles, maintain good working environment, and further improve the working environment.

Personnel System

The UBE Group pursues performance driven by the principles of autonomy and self-responsibility. This stems from our founding philosophy, which inspires us to continually generate technological innovation and promote self-transformation in response to changes in the environment. We have adopted a human resource system that clarifies the expected roles for employees. It also objectively evaluates their performance so that each individual can maintain an awareness of their mission and issues for improvement, ultimately resulting in a sense of job satisfaction.

During fiscal 2019 and 2020, we revised the HR system for each job grade in order to increase the motivation to achieve targets, and in order to promote human resource development. Along with reducing personal allowances, we have adopted an evaluation and qualification system that further emphasizes employee performance. Employee motivation is further enhanced through greater opportunities for promotion and salary increases. Finally, we will improve our human resource development capabilities by introducing a system to better compensate managers who demonstrate enthusiasm and implement initiatives for guiding and training their subordinates and younger employees.

personnel system

Human Resources Development

At UBE, we provide on-the-job training, workshops and other off-the-job training, and self-improvement support programs with systems that empower our employees to perform at their best in an array of businesses and in an increasingly global operating climate.

A good example of our approach is the Career Development Sheets that employees prepare every year, based on which they can discuss areas in which they should enhance their skills and their prospects with supervisors. We rotate employees in keeping with their aptitude to broaden their perspectives and expertise. For workshops and other off-the-job training, we keep pace with changes in the operating climate by providing employee training programs that reflect skills required for each job level. We offer a range of programs that help employees enhance their capabilities, such as distance learning and in-house and external language courses.

We foster employee retention by bolstering career development. We are particularly determined to retain young employees, and endeavored to alleviate that situation by providing numerous opportunities for younger people to speak directly with seasoned employees in internships and during workplace tours to help eliminate perception gaps about jobs before and after joining the Company. We provided Companywide training for senior employees providing operational guidance and mental care for new employees.

In this way, we are cultivating young employees as tomorrow’s leaders at the UBE Group by helping them to experience their own growth and find satisfaction in their work.

We seek to optimize the efficiency and effectiveness of human resources development by focusing on online training while offering some in-person training to enhance communications with employees even during the pandemic. In fiscal 2021, we began offering mobile tools for online learning to foster career development.

Training System Overview

Training System Overview

* Technical employees and administrative employees

Main Training Participation (FY2021)

Scope Number of participants Average training time per participant (hours)
Level-Based Training
Management training UBE Group 108 19
Basic management training UBE Group 63 17
Generalist training UBE 152 28
Key employee training UBE 258 15
Theme-based training
Elder training UBE 26 7
Refresher courses UBE 126 2
Global training program
Cultural sensitivity training UBE 23 7
Global business leader training program UBE Group 15 40
Overseas MBA programs UBE 3 -
Group company new executive training Cancelled*

Enhancing Global Human Resources Development

The UBE Group actively works to develop human resources that can contribute to its growing international business in various domains. The key points of the strategy are to: (1) foster global business leaders, (2) increase the opportunities for gaining international experience, (3) enhance cross-cultural capabilities, and (4) improve language capabilities.

We are also actively promoting personnel exchanges with members of the UBE Group outside Japan. Through joint training, we are improving leadership and project promotion skills and developing employees with a global mindset.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Basic Views

We have made diversity, equity and inclusion a top priority. We will innovate by integrating diverse technologies, knowledge, and perspectives to drive global business expansion and create new value.

We will make diversity, equity and inclusion a basic policy of the medium-term management plan that started from fiscal 2022 and will endeavor to improve work engagement across the Group

We will push ahead with the following three priority measures.

  1. Addressing the gender gap
    Percentage of women in the workforce: 15%
    Percentage of women in management positions: 6%
    (Fiscal 2024 targets on a consolidated basis in Japan)
  2. Mid-career hire (career-track position) percentage: 50% or more
    Hiring several foreign talents for career-track positions: Multiple people
    (Fiscal 2024 targets on a consolidated basis in Japan)
  3. Maintaining the professional job system, hiring seasoned experts, and enhancing measures for senior employees

UBE has operated a dedicated group for promoting diversity initiatives within the Personnel Department since October 2013, and appointed a diversity promotion leader at each business location in 2022 to promote diversity in human resources and work-styles. We also provide management members with unconscious bias training, and regularly set up forums to discuss diversity in the Strategic Management Meeting and other bodies, where top management is involved in sending out regular communications and overseeing and promoting initiatives.

Diversity in Human Resources

At the UBE Group, we strive to provide stable employment for diverse human resources, regardless of differences in gender, nationality, ethnicity, race, disability, health status, age, social status, family situation, religion, beliefs, gender identity, sexual orientation, employment status, etc.

We recruit and hire people with diverse abilities, and we also increase employee engagement by promoting direct communication between the management and employees, for instance by holding sessions for employees to share their opinions with senior management as well as meetings between top management and labor representatives. In this way, the Group aims to create workplaces where every employee can demonstrate their abilities and work with a sense of satisfaction and motivation.

At UBE, we endeavor to attract and retain diverse talent as part of efforts to overcome the looming challenges of a declining labor force and a changing business climate.

We recruit people with diverse talents regardless of career background, nationality, or gender. The management team engages closely with employees, including through meetings to exchange opinions and through labor–management council gatherings. We endeavor to create workplaces in which employees can fulfill their potential by performing great and satisfying work.

Employee Data (as of March 31, 2022)

  Number of Employees In which, Number of Managers Average Age Average Years of Service
Male 1,869 90.8% 529
95.8% 42.6 16.6
Female 189 9.2% 23 4.2% 40.7 14.9
Total or Average 2,058 100.0% 552 100.0% 42.4 16.4

Hiring Breakdown

(Number of employees)
Fiscal Year 2019 2020 2021
New graduate hires (Generalist positions) 47 (8) 58 (14) 33 (9)
New graduate hires (Key employee positions) 56 (8) 69 (10) 36 (7)
Mid-career hires 64 (7) 34 (1) 13 (3)
Percentage of mid-career hires (announced Dec. 21) 38% 21% 16%
Hires with disabilities 3 (2) 1 (0) 1 (0)
Hires of non-Japanese nationals 1 (0) 1 (0) 2 (1)

Figures in parentheses indicate the number of women hired, including full-time employee appointments

Addressing the Gender Gap

As of March 31, 2022, 9.2% of our employees were women, up from 8.4% in the previous fiscal year, and women held 4.2% of management positions, up from 2.8%. We formulated an action plan based on the Act on Promotion of Women’s Participation and Advancement in the Workplace to enhance work environments for women.

From fiscal 2021, we enhanced our programs and raised awareness of women’s issues through the following initiatives.

Initiatives in Fiscal 2021 (Parent company)

  • Held Roundtable Meetings (Number of participants: 33)
    These gatherings between the President and nine or so female employees each time used a free discussion format so that top management could directly convey its thoughts and answer questions from participants.
  • Conducted Career Support Interviews (Number of participants: 35)
    As well as offering routine interviews with direct supervisors, we provided career support interviews for employees with the executive director in charge of human resources and the human resources manager. These gatherings enabled participants to explore an array of career possibilities and follow up regularly with employees.
  • Provided Training
    E-learning about unconscious bias
    We used an e-learning format to help people become more aware of their unconscious bias and its impacts on others and the organization to help the Company progress and improve corporate value and competitiveness.
  • Formulated General Business Owner Action Plan for Fiscal 2022 through Fiscal 2024
    Based the plan on the Act on Promotion of Women’s Participation and Advancement in the Workplace and the Act on Advancement of Measures to Support Raising Next-Generation Children
    In keeping with the Act on Promotion of Women’s Participation and Advancement in the Workplace, we set the following three goals under a three-year plan starting in fiscal 2022 (Parent company).
    1. Have women account for 10% or more and 5% or more of our employees and managers, respectively, by the end of March 2025.
    2. Boost the percentage of female new graduates hired for generalist positions to an average of 30% or more during the plan period.
    3. Increase the percentage of male employees taking childcare leave during the plan period to 70% or more, with the average leave taken exceeding 15 days.
  • Expanded Women’s Work Opportunities
    Broadened assigned workplaces and job scopes
  • Improved Facilities
    Renovating factory rooms and restrooms
    Reducing workloads through mechanization and IT

Plans and Policies for Fiscal 2022 (Parent company)

  • Revise Childcare Leave Rules
    Key initiatives were to extend leave period to when children reach the age of three and review child nursing leave system, lifting the limit from third grade at school to sixth grade
  • Establish Childcare Support Allowance
  • Shorten Prescribed Working Hours (15 minutes at lunchtimes)
  • Deploy Women’s Health Measures
  • Build Female Employee Network
  • Provide Training
    Training to support diverse careers for managers

Initiatives Starting Fiscal 2021

The results were used to devise the following Voluntary Action Plan to Promote Women to Executive and Managerial Positions. In addition to the initiatives already implemented, we will enhance the Female Executive Development Program. This includes measures such as individual career development interviews by the Personnel Department, planned job rotation, and discussion meetings with senior management. This is expected to accelerate the promotion of women to officer and executive positions. In June 2022, one woman was appointed as an outside director.

Voluntary Action Plan to Promote Women to Executive and Managerial Positions

Diversity, equity and inclusion underpins our management policies. We are striving to enhance work practice flexibility to cater to diverse personalities and values and hire more women, and offer them more opportunities to play active roles in our organization.

We formulated the following action plan to increase the proportion of female managers to 15% by the end of fiscal 2030.

  • Appoint women to more than 30% of new graduate career-track positions
  • Implement various measures to foster women’s career advancement
  • Provide unconscious bias training
  • Create climate that empowers women to expand their job scopes
  • Bolster support programs for childbirth, childcare, nursing care, and other life events and make those programs easily accessible for all female and male employees alike
  • Eliminate long working hours

Employing Non-Japanese Nationals

To harness expertise from different values and cultures, UBE revised the global business leader program to include local training in Japan, Thailand, and Spain, and have expanded personnel exchanges with employees of the UBE Group companies outside Japan. (To help prevent the spread of infectious diseases, we have switched to online training in recent years, and will continue to utilize it.)

Additionally, every year the Company hires foreign nationals to work in Japan, and actively pursues personnel exchanges including accepting personnel from international Group companies.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Overseas Subsidiaries

Spain
UBE Corporation Europe, S.A. Unipersonal (UCE)

  • On March 8, International Women’s Day, we organized an open webinar about “Equality, the new normal.” Approximately 100 people participated in this event and we interviewed the President of the Chamber of Commerce of Castellon and local companies’ executives.
  • Signed the second Equality Plan for the next four years with the worker’s committee at UCE
  • Signed the first Equality Plan for the next four years with the worker’s committee at Repol S.L.U.
  • Payroll audit with equality perspective
  • More flexibility in the working hours either men or women fostering the co-responsibility in the community

Thailand
UBE Group (Thailand) (UGT)

  • In fiscal 2021, UGT hired 28 employees, eight of whom were women.
  • In fiscal 2021, women accounted for roughly 40% of promotions in managerial and non-managerial positions.
  • Pushed ahead with a hybrid work model to achieve work–life balance.
    Conducted employee satisfaction surveys and one-on-one interviews that focused on progress with working from home.
    In Bangkok, downsized office and renovated it as a coworking and team meeting space.

Rehiring Retirees

UBE provides career and life planning training for employees to help them continue working in various workplaces in and outside the Group after reaching the standard retirement age of 60. The aim is to enable them to retain job security by making continued use of their accumulated work expertise and skills.

In order to understand the diverse working needs of seniors, we take the following measures to increase engagement:

  • Questionnaire survey for senior employees
  • Discussions with the senior managing executive officer in charge of human resources and the head of the Human Resources Department

In fiscal 2021, 89.3% of UBE employees who reached the standard retirement age were rehired and are now deployed throughout the UBE Group.

Employment of People with Disabilities

The UBE Group has two special-purpose subsidiaries, established to create employment for people with disabilities, and the entire group is doing much to foster their employment. We have organized the UBE Group Support Network for Employment of People with Disabilities to actively support the hiring of these individuals and create workplaces for them Group-wide, including Group companies.

Percentage of Employees with Disabilities Percentage of Employees with Disabilities

Creating comfortable and motivating workplaces

Basic Views

We are creating flexible work programs and environments that enable diverse employees to fulfill their potential.

  • Full flextime work program without core times, with a minimum daily requirement of one work hour (applying to 93% of day-shift employees as of March 2022)
  • Shorter flextime work hours for childcare and eldercare leave (14 employees were using this program as of March 2022)

We additionally offer annual paid leave in half-day or hourly increments and a telework program that allows people to take time off for personal reasons. Such flexible work environments cater to the specific needs of diverse employees, not just those with childcare or eldercare commitments.

In April 2022, we shortened the prescribed working hours of employees on day shifts by 15 minutes daily to help them perform more efficiently and productively. For fiscal 2022, labor and management agreed to a target of 1,940 hours. We will keep striving to ensure a healthy work–life balance. We target 1,900 annual working hours by fiscal 2025.

Furthermore, in order to support employees’ autonomous career development and enhance their engagement, we have been expanding our internal recruitment system since fiscal 2021.

Paid Leave and Overtime Hours at UBE

Fiscal Year Unit 2019 2020 2021 FY2025 Target
Ratio of annual paid leave taken % 81.3 66.5 79.3 100
Overtime (annual average) Hours per person 181 181 181
Total hours worked Hours per person 1,960 1,973 1,946 1,900 or less

Work-Life Balance

By actively adopting new programs to help employees balance their work and childcare or family care responsibilities, UBE has enabled flexible work styles and created more supportive workplaces.

To allow employees, regardless of gender, to continue working in ways that make sense for them at various stages of their lives, we conducted a survey on support for work-life balance and created the UBE Work-Life Balance Support Handbook for balancing work with childcare, nursing care, treatment of illness, infertility treatment, etc. We are working to improve work-life balance systems and create a climate that ensures that employees are able to take advantage such systems by familiarizing managers with them through Training to Support Diverse Careers.

Furthermore, based on the Act on Advancement of Measures to Support Raising Next-Generation Children, UBE has developed an action plan to help ensure an employment environment that allows employees to use their abilities to the fullest while both working and raising children. In addition to making some childcare leave paid, the Company encourages male employees to take a greater role in parenting. UBE was awarded a Kurumin certification signifying its support for child-rearing.

Under the three-year action plan launched in fiscal 2022, UBE is working toward the following three goals:

  1. implementation of measures to support balance between work and family life,
  2. implementation of measures to encourage work-style reforms, and
  3. expansion of social contribution programs related to raising the next generation.

Main Work-Life Balance System

  System Description
  Maternity leave *1 Up to six weeks prenatal and eight weeks postpartum
Childcare leave Leave can be taken until the day before the child’s first birthday (or the child’s third birthday, in certain circumstances). The first seven days of leave are fully paid (total with childcare leave at childbirth and childcare leave).
Childcare leave at childbirth Employees can take four weeks of childcare leave within eight weeks of the birth of a child; four weeks may be divided into two.
Childbirth leave *2 Employees whose spouses have given birth can take four days of paid leave.
Childcare assistance allowance 20,000 yen per child for employees who are raising a child under 3 years old
Shortened working time The working hours of employees caring for children in elementary school or younger, nursing family members, seeing a doctor, and going to school can be shortened by up to two hours per day on request.
Flexible working hours Eligible for all employees except shift workers (no core time)
Shorted/flexible work hours Employees can use the shortened working time and flexible working hours systems together.
Child nursing leave Employees can take leave on an hourly basis to nurse children in the sixth grade of elementary school or younger. (Five days per child can be taken each year, up to a maximum of 10 days a year for two or more children.)
Family nursing leave Employees can take leave to provide nursing care for family members (up to a total of 365 days).
Family nursing short leave Employees can take leave on an hourly basis to provide nursing care for family members (up to a maximum of 5 days a year for one family member, 10 days a year for two or more family members).
  Half-day annual paid leave Employees can take paid leave in half-day units
Hourly annual paid leave Employees can take paid leave in hourly units (up to 40 hours annually)
Accumulated leave Employees can accumulate up to 40 days of annual paid leave and use it to take time off for sickness/medical treatment, caregiving, fertility treatment, social and community contribution activities, volunteer activities, etc.
Telework Employees can work from home as a means to improve work-life balance, raise productivity, and prepare BCPs.
Career restart Gives employees the option to resume their careers if they have to quit for reasons out of their control, such as marriage, giving birth, parenting, caregiving or spouse’s job transfer

*1 Available for female employees
*2 Available for male employees

Quality Working Environment

Labor Union Relations

The UBE Group respects the basic rights of workers, including the freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining.

At UBE, we have concluded an agreement with the UBE Labor Union that encompasses worker rights. Management engages in negotiations and regular discussions with labor representatives to improve living standards and working conditions for union members and provide comfortable work environments. We endeavor to maintain and enhance healthy relationships between management and labor by having senior executives participate in conference sessions with labor to exchange and honestly discuss views about the Company’s issues and direction and share management policies and plans with union members while reflecting their feedback in management.

Office and Plant Tours for Families

UBE Group companies give office and plant tours to the families of employees, so that they can see where their family member works and the conditions they regularly work under as well as the way they spend their time. This initiative is aimed at facilitating communication within families and increasing employee motivation.

Occupational Safety and Health

ESG Rating

UBE has been working to improve its evaluation as part of the FTSE ESG Index, while actively promoting information disclosure in the health and safety domain. As a result, the evaluation has greatly improved in terms of the social issue management score, which is closely related to human resource efforts.

Our overall rating: 2.9 (2020)→3.5 (2021)→3.4 (2022)⤵
Social issue management score: →2.5 (2020)→3.5 (2021)→3.8 (2022)⤴

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