Sustainability

Personnel Retention and Trainings

Policy/Philosophy　

At Nissan Chemical, we advance human capital management through a focus on three core capabilities: the ability to take on challenges, the ability to co-create, and the ability to identify opportunity. Together, these form the foundation of our people development initiatives.

The ability to take on challenges means the drive to act autonomously toward creating new value, beyond the boundaries of one's defined role. The ability to co-create means generating ideas and outcomes that no individual could reach alone, through dialogue with people of different expertise, experience, and perspective. The ability to identify opportunity means recognizing the early signals of future value in customers, society, and technology — and exercising the judgment to determine where to focus. We regard this capability as essential for every employee, regardless of function or department.

These three capabilities are deeply interconnected. A culture of active challenge-taking and co-creation nurtures the judgment to identify where real value lies, which in turn drives further initiative. Together, they form a reinforcing cycle at the heart of our people strategy.

We believe the foundation of people development lies in each employee's intrinsic motivation to grow and continuously invest in themselves. We are committed to building an environment and culture where self-directed individuals collaborate across functions and disciplines to achieve sustained growth. To that end, we pursue a broad range of initiatives — from fostering open, two-way communication within and across teams, to actively seconding employees to external research institutions and overseas locations.

Indicators

Human Resource Development

• In FY2022, some of training programs was postponed due to personnel system revisions.

Activities

We aim to cultivate an organizational culture where diverse talents co-create while enjoying innovative challenges, in order to realize ideal state in 2050. To accomplish this, we are implementing the following new initiatives:

• Human resource development in accordance with expected roles to realize "A group of co-creators that face challenges for change with a strong passion"
• Introduction of a career design program to promote individual "challenges," called the 10% Challenge (a system where individuals can tackle themes of their own choosing using 10% of their regular working hours)
• Strengthening the early development of management talents, business creation talents, and global talents.

Fair Personnel Evaluation

We have positioned dialogue as a means of “communication to overcome conflicts and co-create by freely communicating with each other”, and we are striving to improve the quality and speed of business through the management of objectives.

In addition to this target management, our evaluation system is designed to enable employees to develop their strengths and demonstrate their personality through two-way communication between themselves and their superiors so that “self-independent individual” realizes how one wants it to be, thereby enabling them to work with enthusiasm while realizing growth. We are enhancing transparency and employees’ satisfaction, and strive to fairly evaluate personnel according to results and contributions.

The final evaluation is fed back by the Personnel Department to the department, the secondary evaluators, the primary evaluators, and the employees under the four objectives of 1) to motivate them to take on challenges, 2) to improve their satisfaction, 3) to foster a sense of human resource development among their superiors, and 4) to clarify their development items of competency.

In our annual evaluator training sessions, we aim to educate evaluators on two main objectives: (1) understanding the role and significance of the evaluation system within the personnel system, and (2) creating mechanisms for the appropriate operation of the evaluation system as the cornerstone of talent development. Evaluators are trained to grasp the basics of evaluation that they should be aware of, and are then educated on evaluation methods, key points for providing appropriate feedback, and other related topics.

Training and Capability Development

Educational Training System

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List of training programs (implemented in FY2025)

Self-start training

For the purpose of laying a foundation for self-driven employees who proactively think, define what needs to be done, and take action, this training program is conducted over a two-year period, consisting of two one-year cycles. Participants independently set their own themes and take full responsibility for the entire process—from the development of original proposals through to their execution.

Throughout the program, each participant is closely supported by a work implementation mentor (primarily senior colleagues) and a supervisor (primarily direct managers), who continuously provide guidance to help transform participants’ ideas and aspirations into tangible outcomes. In addition, senior employees from other departments related to each participant’s theme serve as advisors, offering perspectives from different specialties and roles. This multi-layered support enables participants to refine their proposals into more comprehensive, high-quality initiatives that incorporate diverse viewpoints.

At the end of each fiscal year, participants compile their initiatives into a formal paper and convene for a discussion forum alongside colleagues from diverse professional fields. This forum serves both as the culmination of their efforts and as a valuable opportunity to gain new insights through active, cross-disciplinary dialogue.

By transcending departmental boundaries, this training program functions as a driving force for future innovation. In practice, many ideas proposed by young employees through this program have been adopted and successfully applied to actual business operations and projects.

Overseas language study program

In order to collaborate with people with diverse backgrounds, we believe it is important not only to enhance communication skills but also to create deeper mutual understanding by sharing the cultural background and values of the other party.

Therefore, we have introduced an overseas language study program with the aim of having employees learn by experiencing and following different cultures.

While trainees diving into different cultures and experiencing language barriers, by independently continuing to communicate with people with various thoughts and ideas, we have been able to clearly see the growth of each trainee.

Since the program started in 2014, a total of about 50 employees have dispatched to 12 cities in 7 countries. Following their return, many of the trainees have expanded their opportunities for success by involving overseas business, thus significantly influencing their subsequent career development.

Awards Program

Every year we grant awards to employees who have made beneficial inventions, devised improvement measures, or made remarkable achievements and contributions. Regarding intellectual properties, we also reward excellent inventions selected from among patent-pending inventions at an early stage in an effort to create greater incentive for R&D, discover excellent inventions and improve upon their quality and creativity.

FY2025 Award (Award-winning projects: FY2024)