Human Capital Initiatives
Human Resource Strategies Aimed at Supporting Our Pursuit of Value Creation as well as Employee Well-Being
The Resona Group has formulated human resource strategies centered on the concept of “resonance” and based on its Purpose and Corporate Mission with the aim of realizing its Long-Term Vision “Retail No. 1.”
Our human resource strategies feature three pillars; namely, (1) engagement (resonance between employees and the Company, (2) professionals (resonance among diverse expertise and (3) resonance for co-creation (between the Company and external partners). Based on this, we aim to create a positive and continuous cycle for value creation and well-being.
The Resona Group’s long-cherished organizational culture values integrity, promotes diversity & inclusion and embraces the challenge of reform. Building on this foundation and taking into consideration the constant evolution of management strategies and people’s perception of work, we have identified the six strategic drivers that will ensure that our culture is always up to date and relevant into the future. These drivers are (1) Leadership, (2) Transcending boundaries, (3) Specialty, (4) Employee autonomy & support, (5) Job fulfillment and (6) Worker friendliness. We have set goals for each of these drivers and are currently promoting initiatives accordingly.
Goals We Aim to Achieve through the Power of Six Drivers
| Drivers | Goals | Initiatives |
|---|---|---|
| Leadership |
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| Transcending boundaries |
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| Specialty |
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| Employee autonomy & support |
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| Job fulfillment |
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| Worker friendliness |
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- *1Individuals equipped with strong specialist skills enabling the resolution of issues customers are confronting and with a personal dedication to enhancing customer happiness
- *2LMS: Learning Management System; TMS: Talent Management System
Human Resource Strategies (Six Drivers)
Leadership: Nurturing Diverse Leaders
We are striving to secure a diverse portfolio of human resources who can serve as leaders and, to this end, nurturing candidates with varying attributes in terms of, for example, gender, experience and age. These endeavors are aimed at facilitating a greater degree of entrenchment of diversity & inclusion (D&I) in our workforce and promoting the co-creation of value among diverse human resources from within and outside the Group.
Specifically, we provide job rank-based training programs designed to help employees enhance their management and leadership skills as well as similar programs for selected candi dates. We also enable employees to work in tandem or interact with those with different cultures through secondment and external training. Moreover, we conduct 360-degree feedback sessions that provide multifaceted assessments aimed at improving employees’ self-awareness and updating their perception of their duties. In these ways, we offer a diverse range of training opportunities in a way that gives due consideration to each employee’s competencies and aptitudes.
Empowering Women to Achieve Success
In addition, our targets for the development and promotion of female leaders are included in our Long-Term Sustainability Indicators. We consider women’s empowerment a matter of particular importance and therefore provide female workers with ongoing career development assistance.
Our specific initiatives to this end include a mentoring system through which female employees who have been newly appointed as senior managers are given appropriate support touching on aspects of their duties and emotional health. We also offer leadership training to foster our female employees’ career awareness. Furthermore, we introduced a trainee system designed to prepare them for the challenge of handling unfamiliar operations.
Meanwhile, the “Resona Women’s Council,” has been active since 2005 as an advisory body operating directly under management. This council consists of female employees chosen from business units across the Group. Each of the council’s members has taken the lead in developing workplace environments, assisting women’s career development and otherwise proposing a variety of measures. The council is now considered a symbol of women’s empowerment at Resona Group.
A Trainee System for Nurturing Female Branch Managers
In FY2022, we launched a trainee system designed to enable female employees whose careers have been centered on branch-counter operations and individual customer transactions to take on challenges in unfamiliar areas and gain the experience necessary for appointment to branch manager or other higher-ranking position. Over a six-month period, candidates undergo training sessions that include lectures given by staff from specialized Head Office departments and front-line on-the-job training (OJT) overseen by branch managers in charge of target tasks. To date, seven individuals have been promoted following training under this system.
Recruiting Mid-Career Hires
Also, as part of efforts to secure specialist human resources and promote D&I, we are focusing on recruiting mid-career hires. As a result, we have seen a steady increase in the number of midcareer hires who leverage their skills and experience accumulated at external corporations to play active roles as managers.
In FY2023, we began implementing training sessions and interaction meetings for mid-career hires who have amassed business experience at the Group for a certain period of time to empower them to find even greater success. We are thus endeavoring to enable these human resources to leverage the fresh perspectives and unique insights they have acquired since entering the workforce from external companies.
Transcending Boundaries: Familiarizing Employees with Diverse Value Systems and Developing Interpersonal Network
Boundary-Transcending Programs
We aim to enable employees to acquire fresh perspectives and expand their openness to different cultures while helping them develop diverse interpersonal networks that promote co-creation. Accordingly, we offer them opportunities to gain experience that transcends boundaries of the business units they belong to and interact with peers within and outside the Group.
For example, we implement secondment programs that place employees at external corporations and government agencies or enroll them in university graduate schools in addition to conducting co-creation activities involving collaboration between Resona Group employees and human resources from different sectors to help them gain experience in the development of new businesses. When determining where we will send an employee, we take into account that employee’s competencies and aptitudes. In addition, as part of efforts to assist employees in their pursuit of selfmotivated learning, in FY2021 we introduced an in-house posting program that sends employees to external business schools. Furthermore, we annually enhance the lineup of boundarytranscending programs based on in-house postings as we proactively provide whoever puts themselves forward with these and other opportunities to interact with people from external corporations.We also began holding roundtable talks attended by individuals with boundary-transcending experience. These events enable those who have first-hand experience to communicate to their colleagues how and why transcending boundaries can be fascinating, the lessons they have learned and how the experience has contributed to personal growth. This, in turn, leads to a virtuous cycle of encouraging other employees to put themselves forward to take on new challenges. Having set a non-financial target for the number of people who have transcended boundaries among newly appointed senior managers, we have seen steady growth in the representation of such individuals not only at the management level but also across the entire workforce. In this way, the Group is moving forward toward its vision.Furthermore, we constantly allow Group companies to second their employees to one another. Through the robust exchange of human resources, we are giving employees opportunities to gain new experience and achieve personal growth even as we strengthen the integrated management of the Group.
Developing the Alumni Network
The Resona Group maintains an alumni recruitment system that allows ex-employees who have gained experience outside the organization to rejoin and play key roles in the workforce. In March 2024, we established the alumni network to cultivate deeper twoway lines of communication with former employees. In these ways, we not only maintain a mechanism for alumni to rejoin the Group but also strive to cultivate diverse connections with them with the knowledge that they could one day become our customers or even business partners with whom we have transactional or collaborative relationships or alliances. Our aim in such endeavors is to ensure that Resona Group employees and ex-employees together achieve growth through the creation of a career network transcending organizational boundaries, with the aim of expanding our human capital, which will in turn, support the co-creation of new value.
Specialty: Nurturing and Securing Professional Human Resources Capable of Addressing Diverse Issues
The Resona Group is striving to enable all employees to become professional human resources, namely, individuals equipped with strong specialist skills enabling the resolution of diverse issues customers are confronting and with a personal dedication to enhancing customer happiness. To that end, we focus on helping employees enhance their strengths in their fields of specialty via on-the-job training (OJT) and other in-house and external training programs while promoting reskilling in step with the times. Currently, the latter initiative involves the provision of various training and learning content designed to enable employees to obtain DX, SX and AML/CFT knowledge as well as to raise their practical capabilities to handle these matters.
Number of Employees with Certification (as of March 31, 2024)
(persons)
| FP 1st grade | 1,364 |
|---|---|
| FP 2nd grade | 13,772 |
| SME management consultant | 107 |
| Social insurance labor consultant | 107 |
| Real estate notary | 5,786 |
|---|---|
| Pension actuary | 54 |
| IT passport | 4,787 |
| AML/CFT standard | 15,691 |
Nurturing Human Resources with Highly Specialized Expertise
We are aware of the need to secure and nurture human resources equipped with the highly specialized expertise they need to offer in-depth consulting to customers seeking to resolve the increasingly diverse and complex issues they are confronting. Based on this awareness, we have set a target of raising the number of such human resources to 3,000 by the end of FY2030 and are stepping up human resource-related investment to this end. In FY2023, we recruited a growing number of specialist human resources, mainly mid-career hires. We also enhanced our lineup of specialist-course training programs involving external lecturers and specialists while upgrading supportive systems designed to encourage employees to acquire certification requiring highly sophisticated expertise. However, FY2023 results relative to the abovementioned nonfinancial target were down year on year on the back of a decline in overall headcount due to the progress of structural reforms, fluctuations in staff composition by age group and other changes resulting from hiring and resignation. Nevertheless, we will continue pursuing this target over the medium to long term while taking the time frame of human resource development into account. On the other hand, the number of human resources with highly specialized expertise has been growing among employees in their 40s or younger. Moreover, such human resources now account for ever larger proportions of the workforces of Group companies within the scope of calculation. In addition, the number of employees earmarked for in-house specialist courses has steadily increased, constituting a robust pool of candidates who will potentially grow into human resources with highly specialized expertise.
Indicators Related to Human Resources with Highly Specialized Expertise
(persons)
| Item | FY2021 | FY2022 | FY2023 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Human resources with highly specialized expertise | 2,438 | 2,481 | 2,468 |
| In 40s or younger | 622 | 653 | 670 |
| Proportion in workforce | 9.2% | 9.7% | 9.8% |
| Earmarked for in-house specialist courses | 844 | 952 | 1,062 |
Nurturing DX- and IT-Related Human Resources
For the Resona Group to execute its digital strategies, it is essential to enhance the overall digital skills of its workforce in addition to its pool of DX- and IT-related human resources. Accordingly, we have been engaged in ongoing efforts to this end.
In FY2023, we updated learning content and training programs by classifying necessary subjects into three categories, namely, DX literacy, data utilization and IT skills, to effectively enable employees to raise their digital skills in line with their respective goals and the levels of achievement.
Looking ahead, we will enhance the content of training programs related to AI in light of the spread of its in-house use in addition to continuously providing training on programing and data utilization.
Employee Autonomy & Support: Assisting Every Employee in Their Autonomous Pursuit of Career Development
To encourage employees to autonomously pursue career development, we instituted a comprehensive career support system in conjunction with the 2021 introduction of the multipath personnel system. This career support system aims to help employees navigate through various career development processes (learning about available career options, seeking consultation on career development and taking action to realize career goals).
In FY2023, we enhanced Career College programs designed to accommodate the needs of those who want to learn about available career options via the updating of internship and one-on-one dialogue programs. For employees about to take action to realize their career goals, we expanded options available via in-house posting programs to support those willing to be seconded to external companies or otherwise transcend boundaries. In these ways, we have stepped up assistance to employees who autonomously take on challenges.
Empowering every employee to pursue autonomous career development and work with a sense of fulfillment is key to securing sustainable improvement in corporate value. We will continue to enhance the content of the career development assistance available, provide even more abundant opportunities to take on new challenges and otherwise step up efforts to empower our employees to realize their own career visions.
| Want to learn about available career options |
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| Want to seek consultation on my career |
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| Want to realize my career goals |
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Job Fulfillment: Securing an Open-Minded Workplace Environment That Allows Employees to Thrive in Their Jobs while Discovering a Sense of Fulfillment
Enabling Each Employee to Spontaneously Choose from among Career Options and Take on the Challenge of Career Development
The Resona Group revised its human resource system in April 2021 in line with its aim of securing an environment in which all employees are empowered to realize their full potential irrespective of their gender, age, job category or other attributes. This revision was also intended to develop a system designed to enable each employee to develop as a professional.
As a result, a multi-path personnel system has been instituted, with 20 career courses now available to employees to promote the transition to a human resource portfolio with a greater focus on securing diverse workers boasting strengths in their areas of specialty. At the same time, we are encouraging employees to take on the challenge of career development in a way that lever ages their unique strengths, to this end enabling them to make spontaneous choices regarding career options. Moreover, a number of the individuals recruited as mid-career hires and new graduates are earmarked for specific career courses. In this way, we strive to develop an environment in which individuals can fully leverage their competencies and strengths in their areas of specialty and earn success in their chosen business fields.
Furthermore, we are providing employees with options regarding retirement age, which can range between 60 and 65, and have made available a “senior smart employee” system that allows individuals in this age group to cut back on their working hours and days. By doing so, we ensure that each employee can spontaneously select their work style in their 60s. In October 2019, we also decided to allow those past retirement age to continue working until they are 70. We are thus striving to empower employees to remain active members of the workforce over the long term.
Developing a Workplace Environment That Respects Diversity and Ensures a Robust Sense of Psychological Safety
Advocating for the Understanding of Diversity and Respect for Human Rights
Every year, we implement various training programs for all employees to facilitate mutual understanding among employees and create an open-minded workplace environment.
These programs handle such topics as countering unconscious biases and ensuring respect for human rights, with the heads of each workplace unit serving as lecturers to help employees gain a deeper understanding of these topics.
We also provide all employees with annual e-learning program aimed at preventing the occurrence of sexual harassment and power harassment and teaching how, if such an incident were to emerge, to correctly handle the situation before it escalates and provide remedy for the victim.
Invigorating Communications
We introduced one-on-one meetings to create an open minded workplace through the further invigoration of communication between managers and their staff and to assist the latter in their autonomous pursuit of personal growth.
We also provide training for managers looking to enhance the quality of one-on-one meetings as well as improve employee engagement among their staff and better motivate them to pursue personal growth.
Furthermore, since 2003 we have hosted town hall meetings in which employees and members of top management exchange opinions. These meetings provide opportunities to ensure that employees and top management share the same vector while encouraging the former to develop a sense of ownership regarding business management and otherwise acquire new perspectives.
Meanwhile, Kansai Mirai Bank and Minato Bank introduced the new communication tool “Mecha!” in April 2023 as part of its efforts to create an organizational culture that encourages employees to commend one another and to foster an atmosphere that ensures psychological safety.
Worker Friendliness: Developing an Environment in Which Employees Can Work with Confidence and Strike a Work-Life Balance while Promoting Health Management
As part of efforts to create an environment in which employees can work with confidence, we are providing them with diverse work style options aligned with their lifestyles and life stages while promoting initiatives to help them improve their emotional and physical health.
Helping Employees Strike a Balance between Work and Family Duties
To develop an environment supportive of employees striving to strike a balance between work and child rearing, we maintain childcare-related leave programs while enabling eligible employees to opt for cessation from work or to shorten their working hours for child rearing. At the same time, to aid in the smooth reinstatement into the workforce of employees returning from childcare leave we have introduced a program that includes various seminars.
In addition to designating the first 14 days of postnatal paternity childcare leave as paid leave, we have upgraded various supportive systems while constantly striving to raise the awareness of employees regarding the importance of striking a balance between work and child rearing. As a result, the ratio of eligible male employees who have opted for cessation from work for child rearing rose, as did the average number of days of such cessation. In April 2024, we also lengthened the period in which employees can shorten their working hours or enjoy other special arrangements to secure time to engage in child rearing or nursing care. At the same time, we have begun providing new allowances and otherwise enhanced the volume of wages as they strive to be paid to employees who need economic support to strike a balance between work and child rearing. In these and other ways, we have constantly stepped up our support extended to employees striving to strike a work-life balance.
Diverse Workstyles at Resona: Relaxed Dress Code
In November 2023, we relaxed the employee dress code to encourage more autonomous behavior and facilitate unconstrained thinking. We respect the values and diversity of our employees and strive to align our approach with changes in value systems in society at large. The above-mentioned decision is an example of our efforts to this end and is expected to help create a more employee-friendly and rewarding workplace. In this way, we hope to break away from the conventional image of a bank and invigorate wide-ranging communications involving people within and outside the Group.
Health Management
For the Resona Group to enable all employees to realize their full potential, it is essential to help them maintain and improve their emotional and physical health while creating a comfortable and hygienic workplace environment.
Accordingly, in FY2023 we announced the Health Management Declaration, clarifying our intention to promote health management via concerted efforts involving the Company, the Health Insurance Association and employees. To inform our health management strategies, we have also created a map illustrating connections among challenges to be addressed via health management, the expected effects of health management and specific initiatives. Currently, we are verifying the effects of these initiatives by collecting various numerical data.
| Health management | We not only implement legally mandated periodic checkups but also provide comprehensive medical checkups at Company-designated healthcare facilities to employees in their 35th year and, in years when their age is an even number, to those over 40. |
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| Mental healthcare | Conduct stress checks while providing interviews with industrial physicians based on findings from the collective analysis of stress check results. Provide various training programs on self-care and line-care while conducting one-on-one meetings. |
| Help employees raise their health literacy | Host walking events (approx. 3,000 participants in FY2023) Provide business school programs focused on health-related topics, such as sleeping |
| Foster a sound workplace environment | Assign staff specializing in industrial health and tasked with offering health-related support in addition to appointing industrial physicians Smoking has been banned during working hours since April 2020 |
| Development of the relevant structure | Develop a promotion structure supporting Groupwide collaboration Utilize a health management system |
Supporting Employees’ Financial Wellness
We also aim to help employees resolve anxieties regarding their finances and livelihoods and ensure an environment in which they can work at the Resona Group over the long term with confidence, believing that doing so will contribute to both their well-being and higher productivity. Based on this belief, we have introduced systems to support their asset formation efforts and encourage them to appropriately utilize such systems, empowering them to gain robust financial literacy and otherwise supporting their asset management efforts.
In FY2023, we also distributed a special guidebook to employees to help them raise their asset formation literacy. *10
| Asset formation support |
Pension (corporate DB/DC + matching contribution) Employees shareholding association (ESOP trust and subsidies) Asset formation savings |
|---|---|
| Asset management support (education) |
Implement sessions on various asset formation support measures as part of new recruit training Implement annual investment education for all employees (e-learning) Distribute an asset formation guidebook for employees (July 2023) |
- *10 Other measures include providing loan conversion assistance to help employees secure financial stability as well as making various welfare programs available to them in step with life events