improve employee engagement

"Improve employee engagement" is one of the most important strategies in TOK Medium-Term Plan 2024 released on February 2022. We introduced initiatives for material issues in 2018, along with the TOK Medium-Term Plan 2021. We made minor changes in these initiatives in 2021 at the start of the TOK Vision 2030 and renewed them timed to the new start of the TOK Medium-Term Plan 2024. One of the new material issues is "pursuit of happiness in personnel."
The improvement of employee engagement is driven by the strong intentions of the president. TOK added an employee engagement indicator to the KPIs for the remuneration system for directors linked to medium-term and long-term performance, thereby further strengthening the engagement of the Board of Directors and monitoring in employee measures and enhancing sustainability governance. The president and other management executives recognize employee engagement and employee-friendly environment as the two key factors in employee engagement in a broad sense and intend to pursue the improvement of these two factors. At present, the values representing the former factor indicate the TOK Group’s global competitiveness while there remains relative room for improvement in the latter factor for which clear quantitative objectives were specified in the TOK Medium-Term Plan 2024. Compared to the survey in 2021, we aim to improve employee engagement by 3 points, and employee-friendly environment by 7 points through proactive investments in human resources. As sound motivation for directors, these values have been included into the KPIs for the performance share unit (PSU) of the medium-term and long-term incentive remuneration.

* Based on responses in the employee engagement survey that is periodically conducted with employees of the TOK Group

Diversity and inclusion

As the VUCA tendencies continue to intensify in the present business environment, innovations and risk management are indispensable leveraging diverse insights, values, and specialties, so that the TOK Group can continue practicing its purpose of contributing to a sustainable future through chemistry. Therefore, the Company will adhere to the diversity and inclusion policies and proactively pursue the further promotion of female personnel and the further appointment of international employees.

TOK achieved a record-high ratio of women in senior and middle management and a record-high ratio of women among the overall employees in FY 2021/12 due to the effects of the continued efforts to recruit and retain female employees and to promote them to senior and middle management. TOK also achieved a record-low difference in average tenure figures for men and women. In FY 2021/12, management held a discussion session with senior female human resources who could serve as role models so that young female employees could consider and pursue careers from their perspectives. In the discussion session, participants had vigorous dialogs and shared the necessary know-how and mindset to continue leveraging their skills, such as the concept of work-life balance, medium- to long-term career vision and milestone setting, and how to find out personal strengths. TOK will enhance an environment for the further promotion of female employees by improving the awareness not only of individual female employees but also of their departments and supervisors. The lower childcare leave user rate among male employees has been a problem, compared to 100% user rate among female employees. However, male users are increasing as measured in the past few years. In FY 2021/12, 13 male employees used childcare leave, which was an increase of 2.6-fold from the previous year, and the user rate increased to 52%. The Company will aim to maintain the childcare leave user rate among male employees at 30% or more.

* Tokyo Ohka Kogyo Co., Ltd. only

Indices related to female employee participation*1

*1 Tokyo Ohka Kogyo Co., Ltd. only (employees exclude those seconded from TOK to other companies and contract workers, and include people seconded from other companies to TOK)
*2 The ratio of women on the Board of Directors is as of 2022. The ratio decreased in over the past three years because one independent director was added in 2020 and another in 2022.

Number of non-Japanese employees

Ratio of employees with a disability

Number of users of childcare-related systems*

*1 Tokyo Ohka Kogyo Co., Ltd. only
*2 Flextime system for childcare

Relationship with the labor union

The Tokyo Ohka Kogyo Labor Union was formed in 1976 and belongs to the Japanese Federation of Textile, Chemical, Food, Commercial, Service and General Workers’ Unions (“UA Zensen”). The Tokyo Ohka Kogyo Labor Union has a union shop agreement with the Company. As of December 31, 2021, 1,095 labor union members are affiliated with the Company, and 79.8% of all employees are members of the labor union. Since the labor union was first formed, labor and management have maintained good, cooperative relations. Once every two months, the central labor-management meeting is held to exchange opinions on the operating environment and other labor-management issues. As a part of this process, the Company concluded labor agreements that include provisions on occupational safety and health for maintaining good labor and workplace conditions. When changes in working patterns are made for business purposes, they are always discussed in advance with the labor union. In FY 2020/12, the Company established the labor-management review panel as a forum for labor-management negotiation concerning new personnel systems, re-employment systems, and other systems. In FY 2021/12, TOK repeated discussions toward the introduction of a new personnel system. Discussions will be continued including the handling of the age for mandatory retirement as one of the themes.