The Next Forum is a company meeting for employees and management to directly discuss, exchange opinions on, and make proposals about company-wide issues with the aim of co-creating a better company. Meetings are held twice a year, and forum members (a total of 110 persons from all 57 departments) selected from each department gather opinions from the workplace and directly communicate with management. In FY2020, meetings were held online in September 2020 and February 2021 as a precaution against COVID-19.
Drawing on input gleaned via dialogues at the Next Forum, a number of initiatives are being implemented to improve company- wide issues. In this way, we are reflecting employee voices in company-wide activities. Going forward, we will continuously strive to enable all employees to achieve growth and self-actualization through work at the Company and maintain a consistent feeling of engagement and pride.
We conduct an employee engagement survey once a year to quantitatively and continuously analyze employees’ engagement, mutual trust, and unity. The results of the survey are fed back to management and all employees. Then they are analyzed in detail, and specific action plans are formulated and implemented based on it. The results of these analyses and plans are then confirmed in the next year’s survey. This is the PDCA cycle.
Company-wide management issues identified in the surveys are discussed by management and employees at the Next Forum. This was the motivation for launching the following company-wide projects: the DTK Project and the reform of workstyles at manufacturing sites. Moreover, input gleaned from the surveys and via dialogue at the Next Forum included employee ideas that led to the April 2021 codification of our management philosophy. In addition, regarding departmental management issues, in each department, the general manager and other managers formulate action plans to address these issues, reflect them in the next fiscal year’s policies, and promote and monitor the plans in daily tasks, thereby conducting the PDCA cycles.
Using the PDCA cycle shown in the diagram at right, we identified five key company-wide issues from among issues identified based on results of the FY2020 employee engagement survey. Following the exchange of opinions at the Next Forum between management and attendees, we launched various measures aimed at addressing these issues. In addition to promoting these measures, we will monitor their effectiveness via the FY2021 employee engagement survey. By doing so, we will brush up these measures while considering our next move.
| Five Issues | Measures Being Undertaken |
|---|---|
| Understanding of the Corporate Vision and the Medium-term Management Plan as well as their relationships with the respondent’s own job role |
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| Views on Idemitsu’s future and its direction regarding new business initiatives | |
| Whether company-wide measures are firmly implemented and whether tangible changes in employee behavior are felt | |
| Regarding measures to assist individual employees in their independent career development efforts, whether counseling opportunities and assistance tools are sufficiently provided |
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| Relationship between novel workstyles, operational streamlining and improvement in productivity and added value |
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On July 19, 2019, the Second Next Forum was held. This was the first Forum since the Idemitsu Kosan and Showa Shell managerial integration. 78 Forum Members from 55 bases nationwide and 14 senior managers, including President Kito, participated in the meeting.
On March 19, 2020, we held the 3rd Next Forum. To prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, we quickly changed venues from Daiba Office to an online meeting through Microsoft Teams. A total of 143 people participated, including President Shunichi Kito, Executive Officer Tomonori Okada, and Corporate Sustainability Department General Manager Michiyo Terakami as well as 97 forum committee members and executive officers from 54 departments nationwide. This was Idemitsu’s first attempt at such a large Teams meeting. Over half of the participants joined from home, giving many people an opportunity to see firsthand the usefulness of implementing new work style reforms.
After receiving the results of the job satisfaction survey conducted in summer 2019, we uncovered a total of 129 companywide issues from each workplace among 55 departments by December. We thoroughly discussed these issues between late January and mid-February through seven committee member pre-meetings joined by a running total of 112 forum committee members. As a result, we sorted the issues into six categories; organized them into background information, ideals, and wants; and presented the list to the management team in advance of their meeting. On that day, President Shunichi Kito directly provided answers, and so did each department, including the Human Resources Department and Manufacturing & Technology Department. In addition, the forum committee members, department general managers, and management-level employees in charge of human resources worked together to begin solving the issues in their respective departments. The Advanced Technology Research Laboratories formulated a 10-year vision and introduced case studies of Kansai Branch and other branches as well as their COMPATH activities* they routinely undertake to implement PDCA cycles for reforming the workplace culture and training personnel.
