Human Resources Strategy of the WILL GROUP

Message from the General Manager of the Human Resources Division

Drawing out the potential of employees and the organization to realize the vision through individual empowerment and a strong organization

The mission of the WILL GROUP is to bring positive change to individuals and organizations. We call every employee who is responsible for realizing that mission an agent of change. Our value to society lies in developing these agents of change and bringing about a transformation in the world through our business activities and we believe that this will lead to realizing our vision.

The WILL GROUP, since being founded, has continued to take on challenges and grow. We will continue to be an organization that celebrates challenge and growth. Our corporate culture is based on the value, Believe in your possibility, which supports the spirit of the challenge and growth that makes up our DNA. To draw out the belief of employees in their own potential, we have established opportunities for employees to grow by taking on new challenges. These opportunities include an internal recruitment system and free agent system, bottom-up business development, and awards commending employees for the challenges they have taken on. External opportunities include the introduction of a sideline work system and actively supporting growth. We also have a culture of celebrating individual empowerment and hold an awards ceremony recognizing employees who have been empowered by taking on challenges at the annual WILL GROUP Kick-Off.

We have also conducted well-being surveys since April 2019. These surveys have shown us that employees with a clear sense of well-being also perform strongly and that the ability to derive a sense of happiness in the workplace (a workplace atmosphere of trusting relationships) affects the well-being of employees. In other words, creating a robust organization with a high level of engagement is essential for individual empowerment. To maximize individual empowerment, we use surveys to form teams, create a work environment that provides a strong sense of psychological safety (as an environment where every person can demonstrate their abilities), operate a team-building program to improve the quality of relationships, and build the organization through dialogues.

This foundation of challenge and growth has enabled the WILL GROUP to achieve continual progress up to now and we will bring more positive change to the world in the future through a repeated cycle of challenge and growth to achieve both continuous and discontinuous or disruptive growth.

Human Resource Development Policies

For the Group, Improvement in human capital is one of our material issues. Underpinned by our belief that all of our people are the source of our value creation, so we believe that the growth of every individual leads to the growth of the Group. We support our employees in obtaining qualifications and provide opportunities for self-education so that they can not only improve their skills, but can also develop their ability to address their own career options and the strength to transform themselves, in this way promoting their progress and enabling them to achieve their self-directed career development.

Examples of Initiatives

WILL GROUP Kick-Off

We hold the annual WILL GROUP Kick-Off meeting to foster a sense of unity among and increase the motivation of employees as well as time to reflect on the past, talk about the future, celebrate one another, and develop a sense of connection beyond their work.

The theme of the KICK-OFF in April 2023 was New Will, One Will and the meeting was packed with special events, such as the management handoff from previous members of management to new ones and announcing the new Medium-Term Management Plan, in addition to reflections on past performance and presentations of employee awards. Roughly 1,500 employees from Japan and overseas gathered in one hall, providing an opportunity for them to interact on a deeper level as well as to share laughter and some tears.

WILL Summit

The WILL Summit is held twice a year for employees at the general manager level and above. The purposes of the summit are to allow participants: to take a break from the short-term viewpoint; to explore multidimensional medium- and long-term perspectives; to learn from these perspectives; as well as to take time for individual awakening and commitment to growth and to reflect on what they have tried and learned over the past year.

A series of discussions on themes, such as DX, global, start-ups, and the empowerment of women, help them to dig deeper into the WILL Vision and to develop it further.

Promoting the Empowerment of Women

The Group has a vision of creating a strong brand with high corporate value and becoming No. 1 in the business fields of Working (W), Interesting (enjoyment) (I), Learning (L) and living (L). To realize this vision and bring positive change to the world, it is absolutely essential to empower all people with their many and varied characteristics, without being caught up on the male and female stereotypes created by society. The notion of empowerment in this respect refers to a state of progressing toward a future ideal while working energetically and deriving enjoyment from work. This type of empowerment is what we hope for all employees, regardless of gender.

One program that helps achieve our objectives is career training, which provides participants with the opportunity to see how they can empower careers best suited to themselves by gaining an understanding of and developing their strengths and potential. We also promote the WILL Color project. The purpose of this project is to empower employees to have colorful careers in the WILL GROUP by communicating information on various themes, such as women and careers, balancing work and childcare, and diversity and communication, as well as holding lunch meetings for employees on childcare leave and roundtable discussions for employees who are fathers.

Leadership Program

WILL GROUP Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., which manages our overseas business operations, is pursuing a learning and development (L&D) strategy to draw out the maximum untapped potential of overseas subsidiaries and team members. This strategy targets five objectives: acquiring and retaining key human resources; skills development; building a corporate culture work experience based on values; raising the presence of subsidiaries in the market; and increasing the motivation and engagement of team members. This strategy allows employees to grow and to be empowered, regardless of their role, function, age, region, or other attributes.