Employment, labor, and diversity

At the DOWA Group, we believe that human resources are at the core of all of our business activities. We have overcome challenges in our long history by mobilizing each individual person working on the front line of development, manufacturing, marketing, and management, etc., in the DOWA Group and by squarely facing and addressing problems that have emerged at different times. To achieve the sustainable development of the DOWA Group and to continue to be a corporate group that is truly needed by society, we aim to maintain corporate growth by combining the efforts of each member who shares our Corporate Mission.

Based on the belief that a diverse workforce with various values and perspectives that can fully demonstrate their individuality and abilities will lead to the growth of the Company, we are working to expand diversity. In addition, in our Values and Code of Conduct, we demonstrate respect for individuals and diversity in relation to labor, including the prohibition of forced labor. We translate our Code of Conduct into multiple languages so that it can be understood by all employees working in Japan and abroad.

The Vision (our goal in 2030) as it relates to human capital is to be an organization that continues to grow as it strives to create economic and social value. We have defined such an organization as meeting the following three conditions.

• A collection of people that sympathize with the value and role our business has in helping resolve wide-ranging social issues
• An organization that emphasizes teamwork and communication and can demonstrate results Groupwide
• An organization that is open to diverse workstyles and utilizes diverse human resources to accept changes and challenges

See the Human resource development page for information on “1. Securing human resources and developing core human resources” and “2. Developing human resources and promoting organization building that will create change”.

Based on the belief that employee happiness leads to the development of the company, we strive to enable each employee to maximize their capabilities by supporting diverse working styles and providing an environment in which they can focus on their work.
With the population expected to continue to decline in Japan, we believe it necessary to create an environment that allows employees to work for many years and experience self-fulfillment during their working lives, even as they go through different stages of their life, such as childbirth, childcare, and nursing care. Diverse workstyles provide a dual benefit. They give employees more power to choose the style that will bring them self-fulfillment. Further, an ideal workstyle will not only enrich an employee’s work, but their personal life as well. Put together, we believe these factors will raise productivity as well as our employee retention rate. In addition, households with both spouses working have become commonplace, and the idea of both partners raising children together is becoming more mainstream. The introduction of various workstyles shows respect for the different circumstances affecting each employee, and we believe that if we create an environment where individual employees can work to their potential, they will return the favor by putting the best of their abilities on display. 

We are promoting flexibility in working hours and working conditions by establishing a flextime system with no core hours, shorter working hours for childcare, and the regional work system (limiting the area to which employees are transferred). Furthermore, we are strengthening internal awareness of the need to increase the percentage of men taking childcare leave. As a result, the rate of men taking childcare leave in fiscal 2023 was 73.7%, an increase of 12 percentage points from the previous fiscal year.
In addition to a refreshment leave system that can be taken after a certain number of years of service, the company also maintains a leave system for volunteer activities.

Our Group’s career-track employees are expected to work in a manner that allows them to gain experience while relocating throughout Japan. However, in recent years, there has been an increasing number of cases in which employees have been forced to leave their jobs due to difficulties working with temporary transfers for reasons such as childcare or nursing care. In response to these circumstances, we introduced a regional work system in 2021 that allows employees to limit the scope of their transfers within a specific area for a certain period. This system is designed to be available to a wide range of employees, from those in their fourth year of employment and beyond to managers, although they must meet requirements such as being engaged in childcare or nursing care. Through this program, we support all employees of our Group in balancing work and childcare/nursing care.

The DOWA Group supports the volunteer activities of its employees by allowing the use of accumulated leave for up to five days when participating in volunteer activities recognized by the company.

We are working to prevent long working hours and encourage employees to take paid leave so they can work vigorously and in good health, both mentally and physically, and fulfill both their work and personal lives. As part of our efforts in work-style reform, we have set a Group policy of reducing total annual actual working hours to less than 2,000. We promote efforts to control and provide guidance on long working hours every month. The time and attendance system at the head office manages working hours using computer logs. It requires employees who exceed a certain number of hours to submit an improvement plan to management. We also require employees who work long hours to meet with an occupational health physician as a part of our efforts to manage working hours from both tangible and intangible aspects to optimize working hours. As a result, the paid leave utilization rate for fiscal 2023 reached 88.6%, an increase of 9.1 percentage points compared to the previous fiscal year.

Matters relating to working conditions, such as salary, working hours and holidays, occupational health and safety, welfare and service discipline, are a mandatory part of induction training. These are always posted on the company intranet and other websites and can be viewed by employees worldwide at any time.
In addition, meetings of labour and payroll managers attended by personnel from Group companies are held on a regular basis to share information on social trends and amendments to laws as appropriate, thereby promoting compliance with laws and regulations in labour management. We also conduct labour audits at Group companies to check whether appropriate rules and regulations are being developed and implemented in response to the ever-changing labour laws and social demands. In addition to identifying issues, the labour audits also provide advice on creating a good working environment.

The DOWA Group has introduced a stress check tool that allows employees to self-evaluate the state of their mental health. This step is intended to promote mental health management among employees by encouraging awareness of their personal stress levels and helping the Group improve areas in the workplace environment that may be causing such stress. We are committed to preventing mental health problems among employees by providing those with high stress levels with consultations and guidance and by formulating and implementing plans to improve workplace environments.

We believe that a diverse group of human resources utilizing a diverse set of workstyles is what sparks innovation. Diversity among a company’s core human resources is without a doubt an important part of corporate management, and we promote diversity for these core human resources and all others employed by the Group. Since this pursuit will also help us secure a labor force, we intend to make a strong Groupwide effort to achieve this goal. In terms of hiring, we are ramping up efforts to hire increased numbers of women and foreign nationals. In particular, we aim to raise the number of women hired as new graduates to 30% or higher by the final year of Midterm Plan 2024. At the same time, we plan to create an environment that promotes the participation and advancement of women by establishing welfare facilities, expanding career education, and making other efforts specifically for women.

At our Company, there is no gender discrimination in terms of working style, with women active in a wide range of fields. We also conduct merit-based evaluations in hiring, promotion and advancement. On the other hand, to address the issue of a lower retention rate for women compared to men, we hold roundtable discussions for women to help create a comfortable working environment. We are working to improve retention rates by establishing systems to support a balance between work and family life, such as a flextime system, subsidies for childcare expenses, and an expansion of the number of people eligible for reduced working hours due to childcare.
We will continue to support women in their career development, while aiming to be a company where people want to work for a long time, regardless of gender.

On March 8, 2024, which is the International Women’s Day, eight non-ferrous metal companies(*1) and the Japan Mining Industry Association held the DEI Forum 2024–The Beginning of Creation and Change, the first such event in the industry(*2) to promote DEI activities. On the day of the event, information was shared about the progress of DEI in the non-ferrous metals industry, daily management methods, and initiatives such as women’s career development. This provided a valuable opportunity for employees of each company to gain a broad understanding of the importance of DEI and to promote DEI measures across the industry in the future.

In order to cope with the future decline in the working population and to build a society in which older workers can remain active for a longer period of time, we have decided to raise the maximum retirement age for all Group companies to 65 years old. The system has been implemented at 51 companies by fiscal 2023 (implementation rate: 98%), and is expected to be implemented at all group companies by the end of fiscal 2024. Additionally, we regularly hold life planning seminars for employees who have reached a certain age, with the aim of providing information about second careers after retirement.

The Group is promoting measures to raise the maximum retirement age for all Group companies to 65. DOWA Holdings, which introduced the extended retirement age first, has raised the mandatory retirement age to 65 years old, allowing employees to work under the same working conditions as before until they reach the mandatory retirement age. At the same time, the Group introduced an optional retirement system, which allows employees to choose to retire before reaching the age of 65 if they desire to be rehired after retirement, with changes to working conditions. In addition, full retirement benefits are still available even when the optional retirement system is applied.

Concerning the employment of people with disabilities, we will make efforts to create a workplace environment where people with disabilities can work comfortably and play an active role by preparing to accept people with disabilities to meet the legally mandated employment ratio.

The Group’s human rights policy clearly supports the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. We support and respect fundamental rights at work (freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining, the elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour, the effective abolition of child labour, the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation, and a safe and healthy working environment).

• We pay our employees fair and equitable remuneration in compliance with all wage-related laws, including minimum wages, overtime and statutory benefits. We also set appropriate wages that are above the living wage in the countries and regions in which we operate.
• Overtime allowance is paid at a premium to the regular hourly pay rate per local laws.
• The details of payroll payments are communicated to employees at the appropriate time via pay stubs or equivalent documentation.

• In compliance with local laws, we manage working hours and strive to ensure that each regulation is not exceeded.
• We shall endeavour to control long working hours so that they do not exceed 60 hours per month, including overtime, except in emergencies and emergencies, and to reduce the weekly and total working hours.
• Employees are allowed at least one day off per week.
• In addition to managing weekly working hours, we strive to properly manage overall working hours through compensatory time off and the flex system.

The Group is promoting digitalization efforts to integrate vast amounts of human resources-related data and use it for various human resources policies, such as identifying talent, developing talent effectively, and treating employees fairly. In fiscal 2023, we began a new employee interview program, utilizing the cloud-based human resources information management service we introduced the previous year to directly listen to employees’ anxieties and concerns. Respondents can choose whether or not to share their answers with their superiors, providing an environment where they can feel comfortable discussing topics that they might find difficult to discuss with their superiors.