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 regular technical positions, regular 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)

Ratio of Female Employees Hired through the Regular Recruitment (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 and the systems to enable them to exchange and share information on a daily basis via the internal social networking service (SNS). 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 their compatibility with 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.

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 training programs for newly appointed line managers. 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. It also included a lecture by a transgender person to discuss gender diversity and problems associated with this issue.

Understanding Multiculturalism

Since fiscal 2014 we have provided the Intensive Fundamental Program for Managing Multicultural Teams, 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.

Training and Lectures related to Diversity Promotion

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. We also held a training session inviting female operators from different works across Japan to the head office to develop their career awareness. We plan to organize a second-term session for newly joined female employees in fiscal 2019.

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 who conducts regular health checkups for employees at head office to speak about gynecological cancers. The lecture was followed by a talk by an employee about her experience of cancer. The attendees commented that they were able to learn about the importance of cancer screening and of consulting a doctor if they felt unwell.

Improve Work Efficiency with Integrated Expertise

Mitsui Chemicals has hired many female employees in general administrative positions who are called “veterans” because of their long career experience. The knowhow of these female employees, who have a detailed understanding of work operations, is invaluable as we move forward with business reforms. Given this, in fiscal 2016, we implemented training in which we invited external instructors so that employees engaged in sales support and delivery operations could learn basic schemes for improving their work efficiently, as well as to explain how to convert frustrations, such as the inefficiencies or difficulties they experience in the course of their daily work into challenges. Over the course of six months, we conducted this training in order to find solutions to these challenges. In fiscal 2017, eight of 25 female employees who had participated in this training took part in a new project in which they progressed from the “proposal” stage, to “taking action.” The project theme was involved training in the SAP system that is employed in delivering the Company’s products. SAP processing is categorized vertically in terms of the product or application, and which results in operational expertise not being shared. To solve this problem, a portal site managed by the participants was launched. The site includes FAQs pages based on participants’ experience and educational materials for beginners. In addition, the project developed a training environment in which beginners could practice SAP input, with the aim of improving SAP processing skills. In the fiscal 2018 training session to which new members were invited, many requested an opportunity for skill improvement through learning. In response to this, a lecture on communications between male leaders and female staff was held.

Dispatching Female Employees to External Career Training Programs

Mitsui Chemicals dispatches 10 to 20 female employees to external career training programs every year. Some of these programs are designed to motivate female employees who are about to begin managerial careers and improve their management skills, while programs for female prospective general managers aim to impart business management skills and establish a human network outside the company. Participating in exchanges with other women in similar positions from different companies gives employees an opportunities to meet women who can be role models and raises their career awareness.

Participant’s Comments

Learning How to Think as a Business Manager

I participated in the Third Management Strategy Program for Women Leaders 2019. Sixty female managers with various backgrounds and from different companies participated in the program. We spent a week together in a hotel with three lecturers from the Harvard Business School to discuss a range of topics in both small and large groups, as well as conducting self-study. All the sessions in the program were fruitful and practical, and it was an opportunity for me as an executive to learn new ways of thinking and a code of conduct. The motivation of the participants was so high that I was overwhelmed by their active engagement in the lectures, networking skills, leadership within a group, and presence and behavior. As soon as the program was completed, various voluntary study groups were formed. Continuing to study with participants and even to enjoy playing golf with them is perhaps the greatest asset I acquired through participating in this program.

Fiscal 2017 Result (Number of participants: 629)

Fiscal 2018 Result (Number of participants: 539)