Employment and Diversity Sustainability

We share our prized values of prioritizing sports and the environment, and living life without a boundary between work and play, as we engage in our day-to-day work. These values are connected to the accepting how employees live their lives, work, and think, as well as respecting the unique characteristics of individuals. We have defined this way of thinking in the GOLDWIN Group Policy on Human Rights, and are working to secure diverse human capital with zero discrimination based on sex, nationality, ethnicity, ability or disability, sexual orientation, or other characteristics.

Our transition to a job-type HR system in FY 2022 enabled us to operate our HR system with greater fairness, impartiality, and transparency regardless of how long the employee has worked at GOLDWIN, their age, or whether they joined GOLDWIN straight from school or mid-career. We will strive to create an environment in which diverse human capital can utilize their own abilities and experience and make contributions. In FY 2023, we will launch a task force to plan and introduce various systems for implementing human capital management, which is essential for a company’s sustainable growth.

Approaches to Ensuring Diversity

The diverse experiences and backgrounds of each employee are what drive the support and growth of our business. In order to achieve sustainable growth and improve corporate value, we believe that it is important to respect the diverse viewpoints and values of our employees, and we actively recruit people with different experiences, skills, and careers, while actively promoting them to core positions, such as managers, area managers, and store managers, without distinction as to whether they are women, non-Japanese, or mid-career hires. We will promote initiatives steadily while establishing specific targets and KPIs and communicating their progress both internally and externally. In FY 2022, we held a briefing session on securing global human resources, and we hired technical personnel with a view to training future leaders at our overseas factories.

Recruitment Policy

In terms of our recruitment policy, we are looking for a wide range of colleagues who share our values, regardless of gender, nationality, and disability and whether they are a new graduate hire or mid-career hire. “Even amid an uncertain business environment, develop and secure professional human capital to enable sustainable company growth”: having established this as our Basic Policy of Human Capital, to achieve this, we share our “model human resource” throughout the company. Recognizing that these model human resources are the human capital that underpins our corporate value, we are engaged in various measures to maximize them.

Model HR

Promotion Screenings

We engage in equal opportunity hiring with a focus on work experience and without distinguishing between the sexes or between new graduates and people in the middle of their career. From our focus on having employees understand our company culture and atmosphere, we have a policy of hiring people in the middle of their careers as contract employees. If they decide in the course of their employment that they would like to work for GOLDWIN long term, they undergo a promotion screening to become a regular, full-time employee. The system enables them to take on this challenge while considering what they want in their career. Promotion screenings involve a recommendation from the employee’s boss, followed by submission of a report, a written test, and an interview with corporate officers. Screenings used to be held once a year, but since FY 2022, they have been twice a year, and 71 employees received a change of employment status through the promotion screening system.

Our SPORTS FIRST philosophy is achieved when our employees’ lived experience of sports informs to our products and services. Women’s ideas and values are also key to this, and we are focusing in particular on women’s advancement in the workplace within our push to create a company atmosphere and conditions that allow all employees to fully unleash their potential. In promoting women’s advancement in the workplace, we recognize the issue of a gender gap in terms of aspiring for higher positions. In addition to improving the ratio of women in managerial positions, we are working toward our priority goal of actively promoting women to leadership positions, area managers and store managers, which in turn become candidates for management positions. In addition, through the development of employee-friendly workplaces, we are promoting flexible work styles so that employees can return to fulltime work after taking childcare leave.

Action Plan for Women’s Advancement in the Workplace

We established an action plan in 2020 based on the Act on the Promotion of Women’s Active Engagement in Professional Life. In FY 2021, we conducted informational interviews based on the work–life balance sheet with women employees who are raising children. As of March 2022, 100% of women employees had taken the interview.

In FY 2022, we created a new action plan to further expand opportunities for women’s advancement in the workplace during the three years until FY 2024. We are making additional environmental improvements based on the following three targets.

Career Planning Support for Female Employees

With a view to expanding the number of women in managerial positions, we have held the Women’s Chat Meeting for female managers since 2021 to understand the current issues and draw lessons for the future. In the first year, 20 female managers working at GOLDWIN participated online. The workshop started with an explanation by the Human Resources Department on the background and approach to promoting the advancement of women in the workplace, followed by the results of a questionnaire that participants had answered earlier. Group discussions were then held on two topics: How do you feel about being in a managerial position? What do you think is needed to make it easier for female managers to work at the company? and there was a lively exchange of opinions. In FY 2022, two of our external directors, Yuko Moriguchi and Rie Akiyama, were welcomed to the workshop and spoke about how women live their lives, their thoughts on work, balancing work and raising children, and the significance of women working in society. We also shared the results of an earlier questionnaire and asked the two directors their views on job satisfaction, issues in career development, and concerns and difficulties. On the day of the workshop, 14 people participated in person, and 193 online, with many male employees also viewing the event. We will continue to hold training and seminars for female employees to support them in developing their careers.

We aim to realize an inclusive society where diverse human capital can make contributions regardless of handicapped status. We are working to improve workplace environments so that employees with disabilities have flexibility and can continue working according to the circumstances of their disability. In FY 2022, 2.42% of our employees had a disability. We also provided Universal Manners training for employees to gain understanding and basic knowledge about not only people with disabilities, but also LGBTQ and other diverse people, and to learn how to support them.

We plan to develop workspaces including at stores and expand employment of people with disabilities. As the groundwork for this, we are holding trainings for managers in phases to build understanding for employing people with disabilities.

GOLDWIN KAWAGOE FARM and GOLDWIN HANNO FARM Initiatives

With the aim of realizing fulfilling lifestyles through sports and contributing to the development of society, at GOLDWIN, we are committed to the employment and retention of people with disabilities. As part of these initiatives, we opened GOLDWIN KAWAGOE FARM in Kawagoe City and GOLDWIN HANNO FARM in Hanno City, Saitama Prefecture, leveraging the IBUKI service developed by Startline Co., Ltd. providing employment support in indoor farming to people with disabilities. As of March 2023, there are 15 people with disabilities at KAWAGOE and nine people with disabilities at HANNO, who are engaged in growing and processing crops at the farms. At work, staff members wear uniforms made at NEUTRALWORKS. and feel a sense of unity as employees of GOLDWIN Group. The herbs produced at the farms are processed into herb tea and served in the staff canteen at the Tokyo Head Office. They are also used as novelty items at various events and at NEUTRALWORKS. Since 2022, the herb tea has also been on the summer menu at the GOLF CLUB GOLDWIN restaurant. Our human resources staff actively participate in the operation of the farms, providing support and assistance so that employees with disabilities can become get used to their work and remain in their jobs. Going forward, we will promote greater awareness and understanding of these activities within the company, and heighten awareness among employees of the importance of employing people with disabilities.

Amid a declining labor force, society as a whole needs to create an environment in which many people can continue to actively work for a long time, regardless of their age. At GOLDWIN, we have established a reemployment program for older workers, rehiring any employees who reach the age of retirement but want to keep working from the end of the fiscal year in which they turn 60 until the end of the fiscal year in which they turn 65. In FY 2022, the number of rehired employees was 158 and the reemployment rate was 82.3%.