In conducting business, the Nichirei Group places the greatest importance on human resources. To realize our vision for 2030 based on our Sustainability Policy, we need to make our stance on human resources clear. We therefore established the Nichirei Group philosophy on human resources. We have also determined the kind of human resources we need and the organization that we aim to be under the Group Human Resources Policy.
We have set out five human resource-related strategies based on our philosophy and the Group Human Resources Policy. We will consider and then implement specific human resource initiatives, share information, and check their progress.

Our Philosophy on Human Resources

• They are key to helping us support good eating habits and health, which will lead to a more sustainable society
• Through diversity and motivation, they boost the Group’s development
• Their strategies, linked to those of management, underpin the social value of our human resources and promote behavioral change

Group Human Resources Policy
(The Kind of Human Resources We Need and the Organization That We Aim to Be)

Human Resources Strategies(Five Perspectives to Help Bridge the Gap between the Ideal Situation and Now)

Eight Themes Based on Our Human Resource Strategy

• ●Health management
• ●Work satisfaction
• ●DE & I
• ●Creation of new value
• ●Personalized learning opportunities
• ●Labor

• Note: KPIs have been set for themes 1, 3 and 6.

Each Group company promotes efforts adapted for its individual businesses, however, the Group has also established the Group-wide Group Human Assets Committee and Diversity Promotion Conference and shares information about and confirms the progress with each company’s measures to continually enhance workplaces through these two councils.
The Group Human Resources Committee and Diversity Promotion Council are organized across the Group, and the above two meeting bodies share information and confirm progress on measures to improve work satisfaction, which are being promoted by each company.

Implementation of Digital Transformation (DX) Training

Medium-term Business Plan Compass Rose 2024, which began in FY2023, promotes the use of data and technology in the Nichirei Group as a high-priority human resource development measure, and we have been expanding learning opportunities tailored to individuals.
In the final year of Compass Rose 2024, we aim to appoint a Digital Leader in each department of our main operating companies in Japan to promote the use of data and technology. The program will be implemented in tiers, from DX Bronze—the introductory program providing the essential points of digital literacy—to DX Silver and DX Gold. DX Bronze targets all employees (approximately 3,500 people) at our main domestic operating companies, who are scheduled to complete this program by the end of FY2024. DX Silver and DX Gold will then provide learning programs tailored to individual competency levels.

DX Training Program

Hours of Study for DX Training Program (Three-Year Plan)

Implementation of Sustainability Education

The Nichirei Group has been ramping up sustainability management by implementing position-based study sessions and education and training programs for all levels of employees since FY2023.

FY2023–FY2025 Plan for Position-Based Sustainability Training

Study Sessions on Sustainability (For Management)

We deepen learning by inviting experts to conduct lectures on topics such as sustainability management, sustainable procurement, business and human rights, climate change, a circular economy, biodiversity, and diversity of human resources.

●Study Sessions on Sustainability in FY2023

SDGs and Materiality Training “One for Future”（For Managers or Above）

We initiated training for all Nichirei Group managers or above, approximately 1,300 individuals, in August 2023. The training employs a unique online business card game called “One for Future”, which incorporates information on the Group’s assets and material matters to deepen thinking about how to achieve both social and economic value. Participants assemble in teams (as members of different operating companies from the ones they belong to) to think about the social issues they can resolve using the Group’s strengths and capabilities.

How to Think about SDGs and Social Issue Resolution（For New Employees and Newly Appointed Managers）

Teams think about business models through which the Group’s capabilities and strengths can be deployed to achieve both social and economic value while resolving social issues.

Sustainability E-learning（For All Employees）

We conduct activities related to SDGs and ESG relevant to our material matters, which encompass the environment, society, human rights, and sustainable food, in conjunction with global events. We also use videos to help participants easily understand and learn technical terms.

Sustainability Portal Site（For All Employees）

Level-based training plan (Holding company)

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion: The Advancement of　Women Employees

To achieve sustainable growth, the Nichirei Group will secure and develop diverse human resources while fostering an inclusive corporate culture in which everyone can make the most of their strengths.

Nichirei Foods Initiatives

Nichirei Foods launched its Diversity Promotion Department in 2022, and is carrying out a variety of activities with the goal of creating an environment where diverse people can do work that is satisfying and allows them to demonstrate their unique skills. In this context, we have positioned the advancement of women employees as an important issue for promoting diversity and inclusion. We are therefore implementing measures to help employees advance their careers while taking into account their individual life stages and values. These measures include providing opportunities for women to proactively think about their careers, creating networks among women employees, and enhancing welfare programs to support work-life balance.

●Career Advancement Seminar for Women: Research & Development and Product Development Department

In March 2023, the Research & Development and Product Development Department held a seminar for their women employees in management positions, with the aim of nurturing women in management and resolving career concerns specific to their job types. The first half of the seminar featured a lecture by a woman director from outside the Group with a career in product development, and in the second half participants broke off into working groups to exchange opinions. Many participants indicated they were able to envision taking on challenges to advance their careers. They also indicated that they found the seminar’s suggestions for solving problems and thinking positively from a woman’s perspective very helpful for dispelling concerns about career building and embracing a growth mindset.

●Initiatives in the N-win Project for Women Employees

The N-win Project launched in 2021 aims to improve the job satisfaction of Nichirei Foods’ women employees. It involves conducting employee surveys and other initiatives that address feedback from the workplace obtained from the surveys. In FY2023, the project included a total of four roundtable discussions in which 69 women employees in their 20s participated.

Nichirei Foods is responsible for the Group’s processed food business, and it must respond quickly and flexibly to the ever-changing needs of society and customers. We must therefore leverage the unique perspectives and experiences of women to incorporate new ideas when developing and marketing products and services. The Diversity Promotion Department will provide diverse role models, career support, work-life balance support, and leadership development as it continues striving to foster a workplace culture in which women are healthy, lively and satisfied with their jobs.

Nichirei Logistics Group Initiatives

The Nichirei Logistics Group places the highest priority on diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) in order to innovate. Unconscious bias has a major impact on how DE&I is promoted, and many women themselves believe that their role is in the home and that the genders have differing abilities to perform work. While men currently dominate the logistics industry, the Diversity Promotion Department leads the implementation of measures for the advancement of women employees in the workplace, an issue that we will continue to address in promoting diversity.

●Training for Women Who Are Managers or Above (from FY2022)

The results of a survey conducted by the Nichirei Logistics Group revealed that while men rarely have concerns after being promoted to a position, the majority of women harbor a degree of hesitation or concern. Less than one in four women surveyed viewed the increase in discretion as a result of being promoted to a higher position positively. Therefore, we have initiated training for women who have been promoted to provide them with insights about the mindset and work styles of managers. A key feature of this training is that the curriculum inculcates a mindset that enables supervisors to broaden the scope of their responsibilities. Because they take part in the program alongside trainees, supervisors are cultivated as division managers able to support the development of women managers.

• *Planned for Eastern Japan; held voluntarily as a result of each operating company’s diversity activities.

●Women-Advance-Meeting (WAM; from FY2023)

Many people in the Nichirei Logistics Group have never seen women working in management positions at distribution centers and cannot imagine a woman having a management career. Therefore, we started conducting WAMs in FY2023 to provide an opportunity for our people to learn about women working as managers, and as an opportunity to build personal networks beyond the worksite. We hold five-person WAMs—comprising two managers and three regular employees—four times a year for 60 minutes each. They are a meaningful, pleasant forum for people to interact and think about their careers.

Work Satisfaction

The Nichirei Group aims to further improve productivity and create a vibrant workplace by welcoming diverse human resources, values, and ideas to energize the organization. In FY2018, we established the Nichirei Group Workplace Reform Policy. Each operating company set goals based on the policy and promoted various initiatives over the five years through FY2022. The Group Diversity Promotion Council and the Group Health Promotion Council were organized under the Group Human Resources Committee as organizations to enhance work satisfaction. These organizations discussed human resource strategies that would contribute to the realization of the sustainable growth of the entire Group, exchanged opinions on measures, shared information, and confirmed progress.

Initiatives to Encourage Childcare Leave

In line with the October 2022 revision of the Act on Childcare Leave, Caregiver Leave, and Other Measures for the Welfare of Workers Caring for Children or Other Family Members, the Nichirei Group has revised its childcare leave system. Although the Nichirei Group’s system exceeded statutory requirements prior to the act’s revision, the Group addressed the revised regulations by enhancing its system in ways such as establishing childcare leave at the time of childbirth and childcare leave that can be divided into installments until the child is one year old, with both leave systems aimed at men. We also provided more options for taking childcare leave.
Taking this revision as an opportunity, Nichirei Group management met with the labor union to discuss and set a target of 100%* of male employees taking three or more days of absence or leave for childcare. By setting these targets, encouraging men to participate in childrearing and expanding opportunities for women to play an active role in the workplace, we aim to achieve work-life balance for both men and women during their child-rearing years.

• *We set this target for male employees because when women employees give birth, 100% of them take childcare leave.

Next Generation Development Guidebook

This guidebook focuses on the Nichirei Group’s absence and leave systems for childbirth and childcare, with the aim of helping both men and women achieve work-life balance during childrearing years. The guidebook has sections for women and men that provide information on support for balancing work and childcare, prenatal preparations, and necessary procedures at each stage from childbirth to the return to work.

Career Declaration System

To improve job satisfaction, it is important to provide employees with roles compatible with their career plans. The Group has introduced a Career Declaration System in which all employees assess their career and declare their future career objectives once a year. This information is taken into account when deciding transfers and assignments.

Gender Discrepancies in Salary

The Group decides salary based on position and job description and does not set differences based on gender. In addition, gender does not play a role in deciding promotions or salary increases.

Impartial Hiring Opportunities

The Group releases recruiting essentials and all other information on its website, accepts a wide variety of applications, and impartially selects new graduates.

Creating Stimulating Employment Opportunities for People with Disabilities

The Nichirei Group actively promotes the employment of people with disabilities, 33 of whom work at Nichirei Aura Inc., a special Group subsidiary. They are engaged in a wide range of operations, including cleaning of office interiors and maintenance of green spaces at the Head Office, the food factories of Group companies, and distribution centers. The Group will continue to create comfortable workplace environments for people with disabilities.

Supporting Non-Japanese Trainees’ Careers

Fresh Maruichi（ Head Office: Onahama Factory in Fukushima Prefecture）

A Vietnamese technical intern trainee who worked at the Fresh Maruichi Onahama Plant for four years starting in 2015 continues to perform quality control work at the newly established Nichirei Fresh fish processing plant in Vietnam. She plays an active role in her home country by utilizing what he learned at food manufacturing sites and by doing quality control-related work in Japan. In FY2021, one former foreign technical intern trainee began work at the same Vietnamese plant. Nichirei plans to continue supporting the career advancement of its foreign trainees.

Offering Employees Workplace Transfer Options

Nichirei Foods Inc. revised its personnel system during FY2016 and FY2017, in order to specify which employees are not subject to job transfers. Those who are unable to move to a distant location due to marriage, childcare, nursing, injury or sickness, or other personal reasons, or those who have worked more than a set amount of time, can remain at their desired workplace based on their individual career objectives regardless of reason, and can themselves decide whether they are eligible to be transferred. The revisions were instituted out of respect for the diverse circumstances and preferences of Nichirei Foods employees, and to create workplaces in which all members are motivated to work.

Providing Employment Opportunities for Seniors

In 2002, the Nichirei Group set up the Senior Staff System to provide employment opportunities for employees on retirement. After reaching the retirement age of 60, those wishing to continue working may do so until the age of 65. At present, we employ more than 100 senior staff members, whose experience and knowledge contribute to Group development.

Diverse Styles of Working（Provide working condition options）

In-House Childcare Facility

In April 2018, Nichirei opened an in-house daycare center at its Head Office, located in the Tsukiji district of Tokyo’s Chuo Ward. This is one of the Group’s workstyle reforms, designed to enable the early return to work by those employees raising children and to support a work–life balance.
In an effort to assist members of the community, by helping alleviate the problem of long waiting lists at childcare facilities, we are also accepting a fixed number of local children at the daycare center.

Volunteer Leave System

The Nichirei Group supports employee activities through its volunteer leave system.

Past Initiatives (2017-2021)

The Nichirei Group considers its employees to be irreplaceable and refers to them as "human assets" rather than "human resources." (Only for Japanese notation) By accepting diverse human resources, values, and ideas and revitalizing the organization, we aim to further improve productivity and create an energetic workplace. In 2017, we established the "Nichirei Group Workplace Reform Policy," and each operating company set targets based on this policy and promoted various initiatives over the five years through FY2022.
The Group Diversity Promotion Council and the Group Health Promotion Liaison Committee were organized under the Group Human Resources Committee as organizations to promote the "enhancement of job satisfaction." These groups discussed human resource strategies that would contribute to the realization of sustainable growth of the entire Group, exchanged opinions on measures, shared information, and confirmed progress. ​

Human Assets Committee

The Human Assets Committee, which promotes the increased job satisfaction-related part of the Nichirei Pledge, meets twice each year.
The Diversity Promotion Conference, under the Group Human Assets Committee, meets with labor and management twice a year to monitor measures undertaken at each Group company in relation to human rights, job satisfaction, the workstyle of each employee, support for active participation in the workforce by women, the employment of foreigners, workstyles that differ according to life stage and age, as well as the employment of and collaboration with, the disabled.

Human Assets Development

The president of each Nichirei Group operating company is responsible for building systems that develop optimal human assets for the Company.
These measures are reviewed annually, as required by the education and training policies of each operating company, while related plans and their results are monitored by the Group Human Assets Committee, which meets twice each year.