Our employees and Company will keep seeking growth and burnishing our strengths, together toward Our Hopes for the Future
Managing Executive Officer
Head of:
Human Resources,
Human Resources and Interpersonal
Relationships Development,
Sustainability,
and Human Rights Promotion
Junko Ishizaki
Commitment from the Executive Officer in Charge
Taking our activities into the future as we embrace our Purpose
In 2022, we unveiled our Group Purpose, Our Hopes for the Future, and its accompanying slogan, “Creating the fundamental societal infrastructure and lifestyle culture rooted in regeneration, ensuring a world where we live together in harmony embracing the Joys of Life,” and took the first steps toward the Group’s 2055 centennial. It was also the year I joined Daiwa House, and I feel extremely fortunate that both I and the Company were able to get off to a fresh start in a completely new environment.
Our Hopes for the Future concept was born out of input from nearly 40,000 people inside and outside our Group and repeated dialogues transcending positions. This was not something to create and be done with. We must make steady progress towards this goal in the unique Daiwa House manner. Each and every employee must make our Purpose their own, taking initiative in their own individual way. Over the past year, a preparation phase, my top priority was instilling this concept internally. We worked to spread awareness and understanding so that people inside and outside the Group would get on board with the concept. Specifically, we created places where employees could talk in various formats and spent a year gathering their ideas on what they could do, what needed to be changed, and what values should be held dear in the middle of change, in order to bring about Our Hopes for the Future.
The road to Our Hopes for the Future is not a straight line, and we will surely encounter changing social environments, businesses, and individual values along the way. In the midst of change we will remain steadfast and keep moving forward, understanding that Our Hopes for the Future await. We will continue to focus on sharing awareness and nderstanding of this goal, which will form the foundati
Creating the future with dialogue as peers, spanning generations and walks of life
Values that we cherish as we instill Our Hopes for the Future are respect for a nonhierarchical approach, co-creation, and psychological safety (voluntary cooperation). We think that using dialogue to connect diverse individuals in a healthy and psychologically sound working environment as they express their individuality enables new values to be created, and will make Our Hopes for the Future a reality. In fiscal 2022, we started our internal dissemination efforts, and the early signs are promising. One of these is the Miraimachi Sengen (Futuretown Declarations) formulated by each of our branches nationwide. We asked them how they would aim at Our Hopes for the Future and their vision of the local communities they would like to build in 2055. Feedback from many was that this provided an opportunity to create spaces for nonhierarchical dialogue transcending department and job title boundaries, for an unprecedented sense of unity. One branch suggested we use the generic “san” to address each other rather than use job titles, which is the standard practice in Japanese workplaces. They hoped this would improve the working environment— allowing a breath of fresh air to blow in. The proposal was immediately adopted at Board meetings and our company entrance ceremony. It is not easy to change organizational culture, even at a request from the top. I see it as an extremely positive sign that change has occurred so naturally and sense that new developments are arising with an eye on the future.
This fiscal year, each branch will team up with members of its local community to take specific steps in line with the Miraimachi Sengen (Futuretown Declarations). We hope that these will lead to further peer-to-peer style dialogues and enable our employees to express their personalities.
To become a Group that draws out everyone’s potential
We are comprehensively overhauling our personnel systems with a view to Our Hopes for the Future. I see individuality as the result of self-growth gained through a variety of experiences. The Company is working to create an environment where each employee can expand their potential for a world where we live together in harmony embracing the Joys of Life. We have longstanding arrangements to provide such opportunities through in-house recruitment and a “free-agent” system. In fiscal 2022, we introduced our new Multi-Experiential Career Support Program. This encourages employees to work in or join projects in other divisions, or to assist in junior and senior high school extracurricular study as trainers while keeping their main jobs. The aim is for employees to find their own unique work-styles and become aware of their untapped potential by taking on a variety of challenges.
Open to companies from other industries, research organizations, local governments, and schools, our MIRAI KACHI KYOSO Center (Kotokurie) is a place for learning and creating together. In April this year, we launched research into a future value co-creation project in collaboration with the city of Nara and Graduate School of Project Design aimed at solving regional issues with a focus on Nara.
Going forward, we need more managers with the mindset and skills to encourage their subordinates to take on even more challenges, and are stepping up our efforts to educate them. Employees’ ongoing development requires a place to apply the experience they have gained after tackling fresh challenges. We have ideas to create a community for employees with cross-border career experience, and are looking into building an environment that will foster development following such experiences.
When employees grow and become aware of their essential natures and fresh possibilities in the true sense, then embark on further self-directed growth, it unlocks the growth potential of the organization they belong to. A salient feature of our Group is the abundance of ties we maintain with our many stakeholders and people in a wide range of industries. We will thus continue leveraging our unique attributes as we work to draw out every employee’s maximum potential.
Refining our legacy of human capital management
Since our founding, Daiwa House’s primary focus has been developing people through business as the very heart of our management philosophy. Human capital management is trendy in the corporate world, but is a matter of course for our Company. Our people are our greatest strength, and their position at the core of our business is permanently imbued in spirit of our Company.
However, in the world at large, peoples’ values are always in flux. The shortage of personnel and engineers due to demographic shifts is a universally shared issue, and we are no exception. Our Group has a number of personnel initiatives to enable us to tailor our business activities to suit changing times and demands as we try to remain useful to broader society. For example, our new employee graduates of technical high schools undertake two years’ study at vocational schools. This year marks the sixth year of this program, and ties have developed between junior and senior colleagues who got their start in the same environment. We look forward to seeing what they do next with great anticipation. We are also expanding our active ageing arrangements for senior employees, enabling qualified engineers over 65 to keep working over the long term, just as the general working population does. And we hope that engineers at other companies who want to keep working after reaching retirement age will consider our Company as an option.
We are also pushing on with reforms to everyday working arrangements, with initiatives such as teleworking and fully flexible hours. However, there is scope for improvement, as in-person, face-to-face meetings are often seen as important for those on-site. As a company that supports the participation of diverse human resources, we aim to create environments where our employees are free to choose working arrangements that align with their lifestyles and values by skillfully employing IT and teamwork.
Towards human capital management where individual growth and organizational growth spur each other on
I think that putting myself in situations where I can gain a range of experiences helps me grow and expand my possibilities. Similarly, in our human capital management, we feel it is of prime importance that the actual experience of working draws out an employee’s untapped capabilities and potential. Once this occurs, their individuality and character come clearly into view. In the first instance, we want to provide a wealth of opportunities to draw out our people’s many undiscovered selves. We hope that this will help them grow, come to know their true selves, and build upon their strengths.
Behind the current focus on human capital management is the reality that the old way of doing things is no longer viable for society and companies—transformation is vital. It is important to share the need for reform across the entire Company so we can advance our HR management.
My next priority is to build an organization that lets individuals shine. A crucial question is how to transform and nurture our organization, management, work-styles, environment, internal communication, and corporate culture to become geared to the future. There is no magic elixir. I sense that the only way to make our ideals a reality is by pressing on with various initiatives from diverse perspectives to tap into organizational management currents that let individuals express their personality.
Rather than structuring their lives around the company, we ask individuals to make the most of Daiwa House, under the notion that the company and work are part of their lifestyle. To that end, we want our Purpose and individuals’ purposes to align by linking our goals and their desires in some way, and for this to be valued. We are not looking for a wide overlap–a little is sufficient. We would be satisfied if our employees and the company then posted solid growth. If the individual and the Daiwa House both grow, what they have in common will eventually become bigger.
People and companies all start to decline the instant they lose their will to grow, so ongoing development is always important. Daiwa House and our employees will always seek growth, enhancing their uniqueness and strengths and the value of their existence. We will continue in our quest for such individual and organizational attributes from a variety of angles.
