Female Employees’ Active Participation and Advancement in the Workplace

The Mitsui Chemicals Group was focusing its efforts on proactively leveraging the capabilities of female employees in its operations even before establishing the Promotion and Development of Women Team in 2006. These efforts include assigning female employees to plants and employing women in positions with promotion prospects. Although we have made steady progress in our efforts to foster a corporate culture that encourages the ongoing employment of women over the past decade, we are still facing challenges. There remains a lack of consistency in annual female employment rates, there are small numbers of women with technical backgrounds applying for jobs and being hired, and a low percentage of female managers.
Under the 2025 Long-term Business Plan, we have set a target ratio of women in management positions (manager-level or above) of 10% or more (Mitsui Chemicals, Inc. registered employees). One factor for the currently low numbers is that the ratio of women among all employees is comparatively small. In our hiring practices, we work to set a numerical target for the ratio of female employees in regular recruitment for respective job types, namely, for career-track technical positions, career-track administrative positions and general positions (primarily factory operators), as the situation for each of these is different.

*To secure diversity in the Board of Directors, we try to appoint more than one female director.

Ratio of Female Employees (Mitsui Chemicals, Inc. registered employees)

Percentage of Women among Regular Hires (Mitsui Chemicals, Inc. registered employees)

Non-Japanese Employees’ Active Participation in the Workplace

The Company began the full-scale hiring of non-Japanese employees in Japan in 2005.
For non-Japanese employees working in Japan, we provide dedicated consultation services. In addition to supporting trouble-free work and life styles, we are committed to maintaining a workplace that provides non-Japanese employees with a good work environment and employing talented human resources.

Specific Examples of Assistance Provided to Non-Japanese Employees

• Assisted with Japanese language training
• Assisted with visa procedures
• Addressed daily inquiries regarding HR systems, initiatives, company regulations
• Conveyed information required for working in Japan in English and Japanese
• Conduct inclusion study lectures (promote awareness of cultural differences)
• Created English manuals for HR-related applications
• Responses to consultations from non-Japanese employees (assigned staff in charge to each business site)

Number of Non-Japanese Employees (Mitsui Chemicals, Inc. registered employees)

Enabling Employees with Disabilities to Reach Their Full Potential in the Workplace

In hiring employees with disabilities, the Company goes beyond achieving the legally required employment ratio and is committed to maintaining an environment in which people with disabilities can play an active role while accumulating their skills, and feel accepted as members of the organization.
Before assigning an employee with disability to a certain position, we select the most appropriate place for the employee, taking into account not only their job role, but also the work environment and workplace members, to avoid putting under pressure on the employee to adapt to the work environment. In addition to conducting training sessions at sites that accept employees with disabilities to help other employees understand what a disability entails, we set incubation periods and adaptation/learning periods for a certain period after hiring and introduce measures suited to the employee’s particular disability to enable them to work smoothly. We also provide regular interviews for both employees with disabilities and their superiors to help to retain employees with disabilities in the workplace. Listening to difficulties and issues from both sides helps to improve the workplace environment and work styles and creates a comfortable work environment.
We also offer subsidies for learning skills that are useful to employees with disabilities in their work, such as language and computer skills, to help improve their skills in a way that is suited to their individual talents.We also hold inclusion lecture meetings to foster a climate that accepts into the organization not only people with disabilities but also people with diverse personalities and characters and people receiving medical treatment. At the lecture meetings, participants learn about sexual minorities, and we provide a forum where employees with disabilities or illnesses speak about their own disabilities and experiences.

Mitsui Chemicals has endorsed and signed on to “The Valuable 500” in October 2019. Launched at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Summit, the Valuable 500 is an initiative created to promote the participation of disabled people in the workforce. The initiative looks for business leaders to carry out reform that allows disabled people to fulfil their potential in business, society and the economy.

Ratio of Employees with Disabilities (Mitsui Chemicals, Inc. registered employees)

Retired Employees’ Active Participation in the Workplace

Mitsui Chemicals is moving forward in making use of the wealth of experience possessed by senior human resources, and to those retired employees who wish to continue working, calls for ongoing employment through its system of rehiring. We do this to address the challenges presented by the shortage of human resources associated with our expanding business operations and the generational retirement of whole generations of employees who were recruited in large groups, as well as to utilize employees who are highly motivated to work, even after their retirement. From fiscal 2018, we will improve the level of compensation offered when rehiring to increase the numbers of employees who wish to continue working.

Ratio of Re-employment for Retired Employees (Mitsui Chemicals, Inc. registered employees)

Understanding LGBT

We held lecture meetings on LGBT in fiscal 2017 for employees who are in charge of consultation services for harassment at all domestic sites, inviting lawyers to provide the LGBT-related knowledge required for HR members. We also included some new topics such as discrimination and harassment over sexual orientation in the harassment lecture in the compliance e-learning program targeting at all employees, in addition to conventional topics, including sexual and power harassment. From fiscal 2018, we included a diversity seminar as a part of the New Line Manager Training Program. The seminar explains about Sexual Orientation Gender Identity (SOGI) harassment and teaches about actions that line managers should take when they are consulted by their subordinates about gender issues. From fiscal 2020, our New Employee Training covers consideration for LGBT matters and SOGI harassment. All attendants of the program receive a leaflet from which they can learn more about LGBT matters.
As an optional event, in fiscal 2019 we showed a movie with a storyline involving gay issues.^* Those who viewed the movie gave us comments such as “It gave me a good opportunity to think again about LGBT matters” and “I realized that gay issues are closer to us than I imagined.”

*Movie: Pride, distributed by Cetera International

Understanding Multiculturalism

Since fiscal 2014 we have provided the Global Business Skill Training, to teach the skills needed when working with multicultural teams. This training program is targeted specifically at employees who have been assigned abroad and engaged in overseas business, that involves managing multicultural teams and negotiating with business partners from different cultural backgrounds. About 30 employees are selected to participate in this program each year. The participants learn about religions, cultures, and ways of thinking in different countries and regions through concrete case studies of business communication, in addition, the program aims to improve employees’ language ability by learning how to give presentations and case studies and hold meetings in English. In fiscal 2019, we held a cross-cultural exchange seminar with an external lecturer, to which employees could attend by choice. Attendants learned the "Dos and Don'ts" to enjoy cross-cultural communications.

Training and Lectures related to Diversity Promotion

Work Style Reform in Career-track Production Technology Positions

We are proactively recruiting women as production technology human resource for Works, however, balancing family life and engineering work is challenging. As the number of families with two earners increases, this challenge is not only for women but for all of our young employees, including men. For this reason, we provided a training program to consider ways of working and a career that enables and encourages diverse human resources to play an active role in the workplace for all young production technology employees. The program was held jointly with Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd., which is also facing the same issue.

Support for Female Operators’ Participation and Advancement in the Workplace

In the quarter century since 1992, Mitsui Chemicals has hired women as operators at manufacturing sites, and moving forward, will further promote the active participation and advancement of women at its Works. In fiscal 2016, briefings on the social background of the promotion of women’s active participation and advancement in the workplace, the initiatives that companies, organizations and individuals should take as well as Mitsui Chemicals’ goals and action plans toward the promotion were conducted for line mangers at all Works in Japan. In fiscal 2017, we provided a training session to workplaces that are accepting female operators for the first time under the themes of women’s empowerment and managing female employees. In fiscal 2019, we asked female operators from Works across Japan to gather at the Head Office to take an educational program to cultivate their approach to their careers and networking.

Women’s Careers and Health

It is now common that women work throughout their lives, yet it is still true that there are events in their lives when they may find it difficult to continue working, such as during pregnancy, childbirth, menopause, or when facing female-specific diseases. Since fiscal 2017, we have been holding a lecture entitled “Women’s Careers and Heath” to help women to continue working by teaching them about specific health issues and how to manage them in a way that minimizes their impact. The fiscal 2017 lecture, given by a gynecologist, for younger employees focused on how women can manage their physical condition, and for older employees, on the menopause. For the fiscal 2018 lecture, we invited the gynecologist to speak about gynecological cancers. The lecture was followed by a talk by an employee about her experience of cancer. In fiscal 2019, our industrial physician gave a lecture on how to read the comprehensive health check results and gave some advice and tips for daily life on maintaining healthy levels of cholesterol, liver function, and carbohydrates. This lecture was distributed to other sites through a web conferencing system to share this information.

Dispatching Female Employees to External Career Training Programs

We dispatch 10 to 20 female employees to external career training programs every year. Such programs include those to motivate female employees who aim at managerial careers and improve their management skills, and programs designed for prospective general managers to impart business management skills and establish a human network outside the company. Exchanges with other business women in similar positions from different companies give employees an opportunity to meet women who can become a role model and raise their career awareness.

Participant’s Comments

Learning Business Management and Leadership with Female Managers in Different Industries

I attended the Female Manager Step-Up Support Program hosted by the Japan Business Federation. This program was held over four months and we had a group discussion and presentation after each lecture. Topics covered in the program included “Business environment from the viewpoint of the global situation;” “Frame of mind as a leader to form a successful team;” and “How to make an action plan for a strategically important project.” All of these were very practical and provided me with the skills required by a person at my career stage. Moreover, working on the program’s assignments together as a team, provided me with a precious opportunity to gain new insights by learning about the varied values of women in similar life stages to me but in different industries. I also renewed my awareness of the importance of articulating my ideas. I am truly grateful for this program for enabling me to form human networks in which I can continue to share information in the future.

Fiscal 2019 Result (Cumulative total number of participants: 835)

Fiscal 2018 Result (Cumulative total number of participants: 539)