As globalization proceeds apace around the world, companies are seeking global talents, i.e., personnel who are open to the different culture and diverse ways of thinking from other countries and can embrace them. With the aim of enhancing global awareness and providing new ambitious career opportunities, we established new overseas training programs, along with overseas and domestic study programs, and are promoting initiatives that enable young employees to actively experience overseas assignments. In addition, we are providing opportunities for free communication (information exchange) between domestic and overseas bases.
Global Values Workshop (GVs) is held as an opportunity for employees in Japan and overseas to freely communicate with each other by using the timing when overseas employees come to Japan for business trip. All employees, regardless of nationality, generation, department, etc, can participate in the event. It is aimed to deepen mutual understanding, create a sense of unity across Idemitsu Group, and lead the employees to develop global awareness which eventually will bring Idemitsu to be more global.
The second GVs was held at our head office in Marunouchi, Tokyo on January 29, with two overseas staff from Idemitsu International Asia (IIA) as guest speakers; Ms. Iris Lam (Hong Kong member) and Mr. Robert Redsell (Singapore office). Participants exchanged opinions on "global company in my perspective" and "difference between Idemitsu and other global companies" Participants came up with common opinion that strengthening international connections within the group is paramount to bring Idemitsu to be more global. In order to be a sustainable global company needed by the society, we will work to further cooperate with overseas bases to demonstrate the strengths of Idemitsu Group around the world with a sense of unity.
Using the moment when the overseas staff visit Japan for business trip, Idemitsu held Global Values Workshop on September 10, 2019. This workshop provided opportunity for employees in Japan from any background to communicate freely with overseas staff, regardless their departments, generations, or nationalities. As two overseas staff from Idemitsu Lubricants America; the vice president and the manager of the general affairs came to Japan for another business occasions, we used this opportunity to conduct the first Global Values Workshop. Fourteen participants from various departments joined the workshop and together with the two American staff, they actively discussed about the globalization within Idemitsu Group.
Under the theme “Idemitsu to be More Global,” the participants discussed and shared ideas in order to make Idemitsu to be more global from three perspectives: improve, minimize, and start something new.
In the future, Idemitsu will keep holding Global Values Workshop with the cooperation with various departments in order to improve the global awareness of our employees.
We held cross-departmental workshops for executive officers on July 9 and July 30, 2020, to foster awareness of problems pertaining to businesses whose main operational areas are overseas. At the workshops, officers learned about business activities and business expansion undertaken by local staff overseas and shared their own experiences of success and failure. Over 110 management-level employees in departments working to expand business overseas participated in the workshops, engaged in lively Q&A sessions, and exchanged opinions. The discussions regarding the training of local staff and other global personnel were especially animated. After the workshops, participants said that the initiatives and trial-and-error experiences they learned about were useful references and that they would like more opportunities to exchange opinions and information in the future. Going forward, we will subsequently hold opinion exchange meetings for each region and theme. In addition, across all business departments we will promote similar activities on an informal level with the aim of working alongside corporate departments to enhance the Group’s global response capabilities.