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Development Trainings / HR Programs

Talent Development and Diversity Management for Achieving “Global One Suntory”

Of the Suntory Group’s 38,000 global employees, 60% work outside of Japan. In order to become “Global One Suntory” founded on the ceaseless daring of each individual, we have instituted “company-wide talent management” and “diversity management” as basic HR policies. These two concepts, which affect every employee-related policy, have driven our company to create new value and to push the “Yatte Minahare” attitude of all our employees even further.

Company-wide Talent Management

People, the Lifeblood of Suntory

Each Employee the Right Person for the Right Job

“People are the lifeblood of Suntory. Each person putting maximum effort into their job leads to company growth.” Guided by this way of thinking, we develop highly detailed talent development policies with a variety of working styles in mind, and we apply each employee in the way most suited to him or her. Our end goal is to become “a global company in which each employee, working as an independent professional, can design his or her own career and continue to create new value.”

By promoting the assignment of the right person for the right job through on-site training based on “Suntory leadership competency” (being qualified for management-level positions) and “prudent action items” (being qualified for member-level posts) as well as inter-company and inter-departmental job rotations guided by the “career vision” of each employee in cooperation with their supervisors, we are working to achieve a workplace in which all employees can enjoy fulfilling careers.

Exploring Possibilities Through Individual-specific, Long-term Perspectives

At the heart of Suntory’s talent development system is the idea of a “career vision” that involves the employee, the HR Department, and the employee’s supervisor. The employee looks toward his or her own future career and fills out a “career vision sheet” that envisions where that employee wants to be in ten years’ time, establishes medium-term goals based on that vision, and identifies experiences the employee would like to have for achieving that vision. On the basis of that sheet, the employee is interviewed by a manager to identify long-term goals and establish a plan for working toward them.

Employees are a company-wide asset. Individuals should receive company-wide training.” Based on this thinking, we actively carry out job rotation between companies, businesses, and departments, from the perspective of maximizing the individual’s skills. The intranet’s Career Vision Information Site publicizes information that can assist employees with diverse career design.

In addition to a “career vision” interview once a year, employees have discussions with supervisors and subordinates regarding their individual duties and performance evaluation four times a year. At the member level, an assessment is made regarding the employee’s level of achievement toward the objectives and processes of the work plan established by the employee’s supervisor at the beginning of the year, and the employee receives evaluation feedback that compares his or her performance to the “prudent action items” that indicate what image is required of the individual as a Suntory employee. Through a framework for providing plain feedback that includes publicizing the evaluation standards and holding thorough discussions about everything from the plan establishment to results with the employee’s supervisor, we aim to have an evaluation system that is both fair and highly satisfactory for each and every employee.

Establishing Suntory University for a More Advanced Training System

We opened Suntory University in April 2015 as a large platform that encompasses all our talent development programs. Its mission is to improve the skills of everyone at Suntory and to create appealing human resources through future-focused continuing education and the creation of an environment of continuous growth. Furthermore, its aim is to achieve our ambition of “Global One Suntory” by ensuring that all 38,000 global employees of the Suntory Group understand the Founding Spirit and believe in our company’s values.

Overview of Suntory University
Domain Description
The Founding Spirits We develop initiatives aimed at group companies in Japan and overseas to promote the understanding and permeation of our corporate philosophy and the Founding Spirits as expressed through such slogans as “Yatte Minahare” and “Giving Back to Society.”
Leadership development We provide opportunities for self-development through effective training for business leaders. In addition to the incorporation of diverse points of contact outside the company, overseas, and in different industries, we provide opportunities for self-development from a young age through our “career challenge program” and “overseas training trainee program,” which help employees make the most of opportunities for proactive learning on the job.
Infrastructure human resource development This training helps all employees in Japan to realize that they control their own careers, and it provides the opportunity for them to open up new paths. We have established programs for diverse level-specific training and career support.

Sharing Core Values

Awards ceremony for Walk the Walk – Yatte Minahare Award

We actively work to disseminate our “Yatte Minahare” slogan, which expresses the Founding Spirits, throughout the Suntory Group, both in Japan and abroad. In 2015, we established the Walk the Walk – Yatte Minahare Award for which all Suntory Group employees may qualify, and we award it to a team that spends a year taking on a challenging task based on a new idea. This award is also offered overseas, and more than 500 teams worldwide have applied to receive it.

Awards ceremony for Walk the Walk – Yatte Minahare Award

The Ambassador Program offered through Suntory University has had over 700 overseas employees participate since its launch in 2012.

Ambassador Program for overseas employees
  • At Suntory Hall

  • Mizuiku, Suntory's natural water education program for children — Simulation activity

Promoting Rapid Growth

In order to be able to entrust responsibility-laden jobs to individual employees one year after their entry into the company, we are providing training for new recruits that includes both on-the-job and off-the-job training.

In the group training that new recruits receive, we offer a program related to global business and implement business etiquette simulations. Furthermore, employees in the second half of their first year undergo a two-day Value Training trip, where they do hands-on activities to learn about the slogans that express our Founding Spirits: “Yatte Minahare” and “Giving back to Society”.

We also actively rotate young employees through different job positions. In addition to a yearly “career vision” interview with their supervisor and the HR Department, we have a framework for interviews between the HR Department and all company employees in their fourth and ninth years of employment, so we can obtain a direct understanding of each individual’s career vision and aptitudes. Local top management and HR are united to help individual employees grow by providing transfers between companies, business areas, and departments, providing experience in everything from sales to public relations, marketing, and systems.

The following are some specific examples of young employee job rotation.

  • Gaining experience in sales and then switching to an advertising/marketing path

  • Working in marketing but switching from non-alcoholic beverages to liquor

  • Working on the merger/acquisitions of an overseas company for the Finance Department, and then working in financial management at the company that was acquired

  • Gaining experience in a production job, and then switching to product development or flavor development

Global talent development

We pour all our energy into training the company’s global human resources talent in order to support Suntory’s global development. We have a program for employees to attend business school in Japan or abroad to obtain a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in English, and our career challenge program for establishing and acquiring skills needed for global business execution on an individual basis. Additionally, we have established our Trainee program for sending employees to overseas group companies or to external institutions and schools in overseas areas where our group has yet to expand (e.g. developing countries).

Furthermore, we have established our Global Leadership Development Program, which lasts for half a year and is available for employees at the team leader level who have been selected from the Suntory Group in Japan and abroad. Through this program, roughly 20 employees from various countries get to develop their leadership skills.

Diversity Management

Earnest Guidance Toward Diversity from a Sense of Crisis

At Suntory, we have established “diversity management” — which creates greater value by promoting diversity in our talent and by embracing and utilizing diverse value systems and ideas — as a basic policy, and, as of 2017, we have set forth the Suntory Group Diversity Vision as our approach to promoting diversity worldwide throughout the Suntory Group, in order to provide greater momentum for these activities in each group company.

Suntory Group Diversity Vision:

We respect each individual for who they are. We trust each other.We Suntorians find greater value in each other through our diversity.We are united.We are flexible and tolerant toward diverse ideas, approaches, and experiencesAs One Suntory, we will create a bright future for the group.

We have established “four barriers” that we would need to prioritize in order to achieve this, and we are working with five priority issues.
As a “global ‘Yatte Minahare’ group” letting the individuality of every single person resound, we aim to go on creating new values as we take on intriguing challenges.

Priority Fields in Diversity Management — Results

No Barriers in Gender

A series of measures intended to strengthen diversity in recent years have started to bear fruit.

As a result of efforts that go beyond the individual to encompass the entire workplace with the purpose of promoting female involvement, such as hosting a Female Manager Forum aimed at all female managers, supporting women who return after maternity leave through pre-maternity-leave guidance and post-leave follow-up seminars, and “guidance for supervisors” aimed at supervisors who oversee maternity leave returnees, the ratio of female management-level employees has risen to 10.0% at present.

No Barriers Between Countries

In our pursuit of diversity at the global level, we have begun a variety of initiatives based on our strategy in the human resource community, which our main group companies participate in.

As a specific example of these initiatives, through participation in the Boston Career Forum and campus caravans based mainly in the US, we have increased our employment of non-Japanese nationalities. Today, Suntory Holdings employs 40 non-Japanese employees from 19 countries, and we have established a post-hiring support system that helps them get used to life in Japan, provides assistance for commuting to Japanese language schools, and so on.

Additionally, we have standardized our “Suntory leadership prudent action items” for manager-level employees globally. We are pushing forward with initiatives for achieving our Global One Suntory vision, such as the establishment of global standards for “prudent action” evaluations apart from performance evaluations.

No Barriers in Age or for the Disabled

We have introduced a retirement age of 65 to meet the needs of senior employees. And in addition to hiring persons with disabilities, we have worked to improve how they are accepted in the workplace. 2.78% of Suntory Holdings Limited employees and 2.21% of Suntory Beverage & Food Limited employees are persons with disabilities.

“Support Measures Born from Employee Feedback”
— General Handling of Serious Issues in Female Participation

With the goal of making Suntory “a company where women can easily work and thrive,” we have pushed to enable women to quickly return to work in “full mode” after maternity leave. To provide support for mothers to care for children while working, we have established a system that provides a babysitter service at a cost equivalent to a licensed day care for up to seven months. We also hold seminars for pre-maternity-leave guidance and post-leave follow-up.

We have also begun reforming our working style under the name “Workstyle Innovation.” We are developing a framework that eliminates restrictions on work locations and times to enable more diverse working styles. Because of its convenience, 80% of our employees are registered in our telecommuting system, which requires coming to work only three days per week, and which can be used in ten-minute increments.

Our evaluation system is also undergoing reform. Employees with attendance below 100% receive evaluations based on presumed full attendance in order to prevent promotion delays due to childcare. Furthermore, our endeavors to change people’s way of thinking throughout our group include hosting Life Career Map Event Cafe for women and net working event for women in management positions, providing guidance for men who rethink their work style upon becoming fathers, and recommending childcare leave for men.

Other Programs

Benefits Programs

We have created an environment where each and every employee can work with peace of mind, participating in a state of good health both mentally and physically.

Allowances

Housing allowance, family allowance, commuting allowance, and more

Insurance and Savings

Comprehensive company health insurance, worker savings plan, company savings plan, mutual benefits association, and more

Health Checkups and Services

  • We conduct health checkups for employees, with detailed tests that go beyond legal requirements. Employees age 30 and up receive subsidies for thorough medical checkups, and employees age 40 and up receive a required checkup once per year in the form of a periodic health examination covering items specified by the company, at no charge to the individual.

  • For early discovery and prevention of mental illness, we have mandatory mental self-checks for all employees, workshop-based training for employees and managers, sharing of information and programs, and freely available counseling services offered by mental health professionals and clinical psychologists.

  • At our Odaiba and Osaka offices, we have established “health care rooms” (on-site massage rooms) with nationally licensed therapists who perform massage, acupressure, and other therapeutic services. Some 2,300 employees use these services each year as a means of physical and mental health recovery and rejuvenation.

Other

  • Special incentive leave program: After ten years of employment, employees take breaks every five years under this program in order refresh mind and body. They can take up to four weeks off and receive a bonus as well.

  • Bankable vacation / caregiving vacation program: Up to ten unused days of vacation can be carried over to the next year, with up to sixty days bankable, and these can be used as sick days or to care for family members.

  • Recreation-related: Employees benefit from membership rates at nationwide members-only recreational facilities. In addition to subsidized accommodations, employees get corporate member access to the company-owned sports center and fitness club in Osaka.

  • Lifestyle support for employees and their families: We have established external support services (emotional counseling, telephone counseling, crisis counseling, etc.) that provide counseling for employees and their families on issues ranging from health to legal issues. We also have a program for subsidizing the cost of thorough medical checkups for qualifying family members.

External Evaluations

Suntory has received high external evaluations for its efforts surrounding working style reforms and strengthening diversity.

◆Workstyles◆

• Awarded at the Nikkei Smart Work Awards

NIKKEI Smart Works

Awarded Grand Prize at the Second Nikkei Smart Work Awards We achieved five stars—the highest accolade—at Nikkei Inc.’s Nikkei Smart Work Survey 2018, and have received the S++ rank for the second year in a row with the Personnel Utilization category in particular. Our numerous efforts in promoting diversity through the utilization of female/senior citizen personnel and the establishment of a collaboration center, and in creating diverse and flexible work styles with active roles by work style reform leaders and incorporation of robotic process automation (RPA) software in all of our companies, etc. have led to this solid reputation.
(Reference: “Nikkei Smart Work Awards 2019,” http://smartwork.nikkei.co.jp/pickup/2019/01/smart-work2019.html)

• Fortune Fourth Place in “The World’s Most Admired Companies”

We were ranked fourth—the highest ranking ever of a Japanese company—in the “Beverages” industry in US magazine Fortune’s “The World’s Most Admired Companies” in 2019.
Note: US magazine Fortune has been presenting and ranking authoritative global companies since 1997. A scope of approximately 650 influential companies around the world are ranked based on the answers to questionnaires from approximately 4,000 company managers, financial analysts, etc.

◆Promotion of Diverse Workforce Activity◆

• Achievement of the Eruboshi Award‘s highest level (level 3) as a company promoting women’s activeness in the workplace and highest recognition as a company supporting parenting with the Platinum Kurumin Award.

NIKKEI Smart Works

(Reference: Eruboshi; Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare website;
https://www.mhlw.go.jp/file/06-Seisakujouhou-11900000-Koyoukintoujidoukateikyoku/0000135784.pdf
Platinum Kurumin; Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare,https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/kodomo/shokuba_kosodate/kurumin/index.html)

• Reception of the highest rank of Gold from an evaluation index for work with LGBT individuals and other gender minorities.*

* Awarded through the first evaluation index (PRIDE Index) in Japan for work with LGBT individuals and other sexual minorities in the workplace, finalized in 2016 by Work with Pride, a private organization promoting and supporting diversity management concerning LGBT individuals and other gender minorities.
(Reference: “The Suntory Group’s CSR,” official Suntory website,
https://www.suntory.co.jp/company/csr/highlight/201812/)

NIKKEI Smart Works

・Awarded as a company contributing to the work of the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education with high acclaim for employment promotion contributions to special needs schools

(Reference: Official Suntory website,
https://www.suntory.co.jp/news/article/13338.html?_ga=2.124397452.760354381.1547102380-1113107732.1428294689)