Promoting Women in the Workplace

In a business climate characterized by accelerated change, Sojitz considers the empowerment of women and all diverse employees to be essential for achieving mid-to long-term growth as a company. For this reason, Sojitz’s president and senior management have continued to emphasize the message of diversity and inclusion to lead the way in fostering greater understanding among employees, including among managers.

In terms of promoting women in the workplace, Sojitz believes it is important to offer professional development opportunities and to create an environment in which all employees, regardless of gender, can set ambitious career goals and realize their full potential. Sojitz seeks to support all employees through a multifaceted approach of initiatives, including balancing work and childcare, strengthening skills for team management to allow diverse employees to excel, and promoting different working styles.

Sojitz’s Ongoing Initiatives for Promoting Women

We think it is important for young, female career-track employees to be given the opportunity to work abroad on assignment or participate in language trainee programs overseas at an early stage to build their careers over the long-term regardless of major life events. The company holds trainings for both employees and managers in order to provide career development for working women and to promote understanding within the company, while simultaneously creating a flexible environment for women to balance both work and childcare.

List of Systems Supporting Diverse Human Resources

Diversity as a Competitive Advantage: Initiatives and Targets for the Mid -to Long-Term Leading up to 2030

Sojitz views diversity as a competitive advantage and positions the promotion of women in the workplace as one of the most important goals under its human resources strategy. Sojitz aims to increase the percentage of female employees to 50% during the 2030s and will continue to build an environment in which women can naturally excel over the mid- to long-term by supporting the active development of its employees at each stage of their careers.

In order increase the number of female employees in decision-making positions within the organization, Sojitz has established specific quantitative targets for raising the percentage of female managers and female career-track employees, and Sojitz is working to support employee development by offering greater opportunities for female employees to gain experience through secondment in Japan and overseas. As a result, Sojitz will create a leadership pipeline with women at each career stage, support female employees in acquiring experience to realize their career objectives, and close the gender gap for experience. Sojitz is also implementing measures to support women through life events and promote employee retention and engagement.

In order to establish a leadership pipeline and promote career development, Sojitz has set a KPI to increase the percentage of pre-manager female career-track employees with secondment experience in Japan or overseas to 50% by FY2023.(As of end of FY2022, 42% of female career track employees had been on secondment.)

Additionally, Sojitz has appointed two highly qualified female executive officers (including one managing executive officer) through internal promotion and external recruitment.

Sojitz strives to create an environment that supports all employees, regardless of gender, as they balance work and childcare. Sojitz believes fostering a supportive workplace environment is imperative to creating a corporate culture in which female employees can continue to advance their careers through childbirth, child-rearing, and other life events. Sojitz has set a human resource KPI to have 100% of employees take childcare leave. (In FY2022, Sojitz achieved 100% rates of childcare leave for both male and female employees.)

Action Plan for Promoting Women in the Workplace

Based on the “Act on Promotion of Women's Participation and Advancement in the Workplace,” we will continue striving for the promotion of women in the workplace with the following plan for achieving these targets by March 31, 2023.

General Employer Action Plan (April 2021 - March 2024) established in accordance with Japan's Act on Promotion of Women's Participation and Advancement in the Workplace

Statistics on Women in the Workplace

System

Sojitz Initiatives

Building a Leadership Pipeline with Women at Each Career Stage

Professional Development for Managerial Roles

Sojitz has maintained a female new graduate recruitment ratio of 30% or more for career-track positions since FY2018, which is one of the company’s quantitative targets for promoting women in the workplace. To develop female managers, Sojitz is constructing a leadership pipeline and provides opportunities for female employees to gain experience outside the company in Japan or overseas early in their careers prior to major life events. Sojitz offers trainings for women at each career stage and is actively working to increase the number of female employees promoted to managerial positions with an increasing number of female employees gaining experience as assistant section managers before going on to be promoted to section manager positions.

Initiatives for Junior Employees

In FY2018, Sojitz gathered female career-track employees in their fourth or fifth year at the company for a mid- to long-term career development training session to discuss their strengths as individuals, and how to manage life events alongside a career. The training included a joint session for both female employees and their managers.

Starting from FY2021, Sojitz has continued to offer a mentorship program led by senior management geared towards female career-track employees in their late 20s and early 30s, who will be in the next generation of managers to lead the company a decade from now. Mentors support female career-track employees in clarifying their personal career goals and developing a vision for the future, with the aim of raising greater awareness of professional development opportunities for women.

Initiatives for Assistant Managers: Pre-Manager Training Program

Since September 2019, Sojitz has held a three-month career training program for female career-track employees in assistant manager positions that includes coaching and discussions with managers and executives, as part of its efforts to support the promotion of women to section manager and general manager positions.

External Manager Training

As a way to strengthen management capabilities, Sojitz sends female managers to cross-industry “Step-Up Training” for female managers hosted by the Japan Business Federation and to business school training programs. Female managers gain further management experience through appointments to executive officer roles leading Sojitz Group companies. Sojitz appointed its first female executive officer through internal promotion in April 2021.

Initiatives for Managers: Outside Trainings for Managers

As a way to strengthen management capabilities, Sojitz sends managers to business school executive training programs in addition to outside management experience through executive officer appointments at Sojitz Group companies. Sojitz also appointed its first female executive officer through internal promotion in April 2021. A second female executive officer was appointed through external recruitment in December 2021, bringing the total number of female executive officers to two.

Other Initiatives

Career Talks with Outside Directors

In FY2022, Sojitz hosted a total of three career talks with outside directors to reinforce the company’s theme of transforming diversity into competitiveness and to build an environment in which all employees can excel, regardless of gender. Speakers included three female outside directors who shared their career trajectories, values as business professionals, and perspectives on Sojitz as outside directors, among other topics.

Talks with outside directors on women’s careers

Round table with Female Executive Officers

Roundtable discussions with female executive officers are held to encourage employees to build communication networks through exposure to diverse perspectives to broaden their horizons. In FY2022, Sojitz hosted a total of six roundtable discussions with externally appointed female executive officers. The roundtables were made up of small panels with participation from several male general managers for an animated exchange of opinions.

Small roundtable discussions with executive officers

Career Paths for Administrative-Track Employees

In order to meet the needs of our employees as they plan their career paths and encourage the success of our administrative staff, we revised our human resource system in FY2019 to include a new upper tier of job grades for administrative staff as well as a new region, position, and field-specific career track. A number of administrative track employees have already transferred to the career track and are beginning to leverage their expertise and expand their opportunities to excel at Sojitz.

In FY2021, we also revised our human resource system in order to allow administrative-track employees to leverage their skills and experience and transfer to the career track that is region, position, and field-specific at an earlier stage, for those employees seeking to take on new challenges through the career track. Sojitz hopes to expand opportunities for administrative-track employees by providing career counseling and other educational programs that encourage employees to pursue diverse career paths.

Activities for Fostering Business Creation

Since FY2019, employees of different gender, age, and position work together as part of diverse teams on the Hassojitz Project, Sojitz’s new business creation competition. As part of the FY2020 project, a femtech team formed that is currently working to commercialize their project idea. Utilizing technology to address women’s health issues relating to menstruation, pre-conception care, pregnancy, childbirth, menopause, and other gynecological conditions, the femtech team is creating a tech business that supports women’s health and empowers women to choose their own unique lifestyles and career paths.

ご参照Hassojitz Project

Women’s Health Initiatives

Sojitz maintains its record of having 100% of employees participate in the annual health check and actively encourages employees to attend any recommended follow-up appointments. In FY2022, Sojitz expanded eligibility for routine cervical and breast cancer screenings to all female employees and strengthened its efforts to support women’s health. In addition, Sojitz added a dedicated gynecologist at its health clinic and offers fertility treatment consultation services. Employees can now take online seminars by doctors and specialists and receive fertility counseling services for themselves and their partners, which will be offered through a contracted outside company. The company also invites medical specialists to hold seminars on maintaining good health including self-care techniques to reduce health risks specific to women and address physical changes due to aging.

Related Data

Percentage of female employees hired

Statistics on women in managerial positions

Women in Assistant Manager Positions

Additional Data

• ・Percentage of female employees
• ・Percentage of female management-level employees
• ・Percentage of women hired
• ・Difference between men and women in years of continuous employee service
• ・Percentage of female directors


• Third-party assurance on women in the workplace

Various Support Systems for Work-Life Management

Supporting Work and Childcare

At Sojitz, employees are authorized to take six weeks of paid leave leading up to the birth of a child. Beginning in April 2022, Sojitz also amended its existing parental leave system to include a new type of leave available to both male and female employees following the birth of a child. After childbirth, both male and female employees are entitled to take paid parental leave for a maximum of 40 days (standard working days) in the period up until the child turns 12 months old. There are no restrictions on how leave is divided, and employees are free to utilize parental leave as many times as desired during this period. While employees in Japan are legally permitted to take six weeks of unpaid parental leave prior to childbirth and eight weeks following childbirth, Sojitz’s specialized system ensures that employees are compensated throughout their time on parental leave. In the event the child is not accepted into a daycare and the employee cannot return to work, parents have the option to extend childcare leave until the child is two-and-a-half years of age. This extension largely exceeds the duration for childcare leave under Japanese law. In order to make it easier for employees to return to work, we have a corporate contract with a local preschool near Sojitz’s offices for employees whose children could not be admitted to their neighborhood daycare. Sojitz also offers employees the option to use a babysitting service subsidized by the company.

Promoting Flexible Working Styles

Sojitz’s flextime system was revised in November 2017 to eliminate “core working hours,” or hours during which employees were required to be present at the office. Now employees may work anytime between 7AM and 8PM. Working parents may also adjust their start and finish times to be earlier or later under Sojitz’s shortened childcare working hours. In addition, we promote a flexible work environment for working parents by allowing employees raising children to work remotely as part of a telework trial being conducted throughout the company.

Measures to Support Women Returning to the Workplace

In October 2019, Sojitz implemented a new system to support women returning to the workplace. Under this measure, employees who return to work after taking maternity/childcare leave (by the 1st of the month after the child turns 9 months) will be eligible for subsidized daycare.

This system helps support women who want to return to the workplace more quickly, as well as incentivizes and encourages women striving to build their careers.

In addition, Sojitz allows employees returning to the office to do so as part of a gradual process in which parents can create a schedule of reduced work hours or workdays. This process supports parents as they catch up on work duties and establishes a comfortable working pace to balance work and childcare.

Reemployment System

We have introduced a reemployment system for female employees who accompany spouses transferred overseas, thus allowing these female employees to resume their careers when they return to Japan.

Employees rehired through the reemployment system：

Childcare Leave for Male Employees

In April 2022, Sojitz revised its parental leave system to allow both male and female employees to take leave following the birth of a child. Employees are now entitled to take paid parental leave for a maximum of 40 days in the period up until the child turns 12 months old. There are no restrictions on how leave is divided, and employees are free to utilize parental leave as many times as desired during this period. While maternity and child-care leave was limited to eight weeks after childbirth under the previous system, the applicable period under the new system will be extended to one year following childbirth.

In recent years, Sojitz has increased accessibility to leave policies and conducted management-level training related to child-care leave. As a result of these initiatives, the company has seen a significant increase in the percentage of male employees taking childcare leave and in FY2023, the number of male employees who took childcare leave reached 100%.

Sojitz seeks to further support working parents by raising awareness regarding male child-care leave within the company and fostering understanding among managers and colleagues. By supporting employees to more easily balance work and childcare, Sojitz seeks to create an environment in which all employees can excel regardless of gender.

Digital signage introducing examples of male employees who have taken childcare leave

Percentage of male employees taking childcare leave：

Childcare Concierge

Sojitz works with an outside expert who acts as a childcare concierge for employees returning to work after childcare leave. The childcare expert provides private consultations on topics such as how to search for preschools and how to balance work with childcare. Events including seminars and social gatherings for working parents are held regularly. Many male employees have participated, and the service allows both male and female employees to exchange opinions on childcare.

Sojitz has been named a Nadeshiko Brand Company

Based on our efforts, Sojitz has been named a “Nadeshiko Brand 2023” company this March, a designation given by METI and the TSE that recognizes Sojitz as a listed enterprise for its exceptional work to promote the success of women in the workplace. This year marks the seventh consecutive years that Sojitz has received the “Nadeshiko Brand” designation.

Sojitz Receives Encouragement Award in the Ikumen Enterprise Awards

In November 2020, Sojitz received an Encouragement Award in the Ikumen Enterprise Awards 2020 organized by the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare. The Ikumen Enterprise Award recognizes companies who are making an exceptional effort to encourage male employees to participate in child rearing while also carrying out their job responsibilities.

Related Information

• External link: Nadeshiko Brand Designation
• External link:Ikumen Enterprise Awards (Japanese)
• External link: Keidanren Member Action Plans for the Appointment of Female Executives and Managers (Japanese)
• Diversity Management| Sojitz ESG BOOK