Work Environment

For the group to sustainably increase its corporate value in the future, it is essential to further strengthen human resources, which are our greatest form of management capital. For this reason, it is important to hire, train, and utilize excellent human resources.
Our hiring of employees is based on Our Corporate Spirit of integrity, fairness, and harmony, a belief that has been nurtured since our founding 178 years ago. We are committed to hiring people who can actively practice the three Cs: “Change (Change ourselves as society changes); Challenge (Challenge new fields with conviction and ambitious spirit); and Create (Create fresh global value through diversity).”
In addition, we are promoting the recruitment of experienced candidates as a way to strategically place human resources in areas of group business expansion. We welcome professionals with varied experience and a “Challenge” mindset, who are looking for an environment where they can make the most of their abilities.

The personnel evaluation system at Japan Pulp & Paper is comprised of Grade Standard Evaluation and Challenge Evaluation components. For the Grade Standard Evaluation, the expected level at each grade of a role is uniformly set as the “grade standard,” and the employee is evaluated based on the extent to which they demonstrate and realize that standard. The Challenge Evaluation consists of a “performance evaluation” and a “process evaluation.” In a performance evaluation, the employee’s organization is evaluated based on the extent to which it achieved quantitative results during the applicable time period. In a process evaluation, the company establishes high-priority goals that need to be challenged in order to achieve performance goals, as well as medium-to-long-term initiatives to create new value, and evaluates the progress made in those areas. During these evaluation processes, emphasis is placed more on how difficulties and changes were handled than simply the level to which set goals have been achieved. We expect meaningful goals and true challenges to be established. In both setting goals and conducting evaluations, with clear communication between employees and evaluators, we focus on improving employee satisfaction and motivation levels through fair evaluation of achievements and actions, increased transparency of feedback, and rewarding their results.

Japan Pulp & Paper has adopted a personnel system centered on the Role Responsibility System and is working to vitalize human resources, its greatest form of management capital, through development and optimal utilization. The Role Responsibility System not only emphasizes organizational management, but also focuses on the promotion and recruitment of highly skilled and motivated persons for positions in which they can demonstrate their expertise and achieve specific tasks. In terms of education and training systems aimed at developing human resources, we created a program aimed at raising the skills of each and every individual and vitalizing people and organizations based on the concepts of “developing human resources able to fulfill their roles and responsibilities” and “developing personnel with self-initiative who are able to respond to times of change.”
Through rank-based training, we bring together all employees eligible for promotion and train them to understand what’s expected of them in their next role and to perform at a higher level. Selectable training courses incorporate practical training programs designed to give core personnel the necessary management knowledge and skills to solve and accomplish increasingly sophisticated and complex organizational and business challenges. In addition, one of our training programs is conducted outside of Japan to give employees a more international perspective and to develop their practical communication skills in foreign languages.
Through our talent management system, we also centrally manage and visualize basic employee data, such as their work history, as well as their experience and other abilities including specific skills. We use this data for training and education purposes, and for strategic human resource placement that takes each employee’s uniqueness into account. Going forward, we will further refine our human resource data, and use it when making strategic investments in human resource development. In this way, we seek to improve the skills and abilities of employees who have the responsibility of continuously enhancing our corporate value.

We aim to create a healthy working environment for our employees, our greatest form of management capital. We believe that if every employee, at every level, takes responsibility for his or her own physical and mental health and actively works to maintain and improve it, both their quality of life and work will improve. This in turn will increase productivity and the group’s corporate value. To that end, we are implementing health management initiatives. We are committed to achieving work-life balance by reducing overtime hours, such as with “no-overtime days,” making it easier for employees to take paid leave, and introducing work-from-home and shift work systems. In addition, to prevent diseases and other issues, we conduct various medical examinations and stress checks and employ an industrial physician, full-time nurses, and appoint multiple health supervisors. We also aim to create a workplace in which every employee can actively demonstrate their abilities in a physically and mentally healthy way. We cooperate with external organizations as one way to achieve this goal.

The group is working to strengthen its occupational health and safety system and management with the aim of eradicating workplace accidents, hazards, and occupational illnesses. Each group company implements initiatives through the Personnel Department, the Environment & Safety Promotion Office, and the OVOL Environment & Safety Meetings and progress is reported to the Executive Sustainability Committee. As a result of these activities, the group recorded zero fatal accidents in fiscal 2022. We have set “work environment” as a material issue for the group, and will continue to improve occupational health and safety as our highest priority by implementing measures to prevent workplace accidents and providing comfortable workplaces.