Basic Policy

Sumitomo Forestry strives to create an environment that facilitates free and vigorous expression as well as an exchange of opinions by employees so that they can perform their responsibilities with vigor, integrity and consideration for others. The Company wants each and every employee to grow within a corporate culture of respect for individual employees, and fair evaluation of accomplishments and efforts.

Communication in Employee Evaluation and Job Execution

Sumitomo Forestry has a policy of providing all employees feedback on their evaluation results, with the main objective of nurturing and developing human resources through employee evaluations. Meetings between individual employees and supervisors must be held once every six months, providing an opportunity to set targets and receive an explanation of evaluation results.

In fiscal 2019, we also adopted value evaluations to assess the management skills of employees in general management roles, cultivate the ability for staff to think independently and take action, and to realize corporate development and employee growth not only in the short-term but also long-term performance. A value evaluation defines "value" as something that contributes to future corporate growth by ensuring the full understanding of the corporate philosophy, Our Values and management challenges as well as adherence to the Code of Conduct. In addition, we have partially revised the value evaluation system as "NEW Value Evaluation" in order to make it more concrete and easier to grasp since January 1, 2022.This system is intended to evaluate employees who proactively consider what they can do to improve corporate value and generate new value, as well as who take on challenges without fear of failure.

In fiscal 2021, the multi-faceted evaluation system (360 Degree Evaluation) was conducted for management employees in charge of organizational management, employees new to management or who intend to become management. From these results, we provide feedback to help each employee precisely recognize the current situation (awareness), gain hints into specific management actions as well as help them formulate and execute independent action plans. In addition, these evaluation results also provide feedback to supervisors of the organization where these employees belong as reference for their own evaluations and guidance to each employee.

Sumitomo Forestry also recognizes the continuous service of employees who have worked for 10 and 20 years to thank them for their contributions to the company over so many years. In addition, the Personnel Department conducts direct self-report hearings of all employees once a year to ascertain opinions on jobs and workplaces, transfer requests and family circumstances, among other matters.

Casual Discussion

Casual Discussions have been held on a regular basis as a platform for discussion between the President and employees in Sumitomo Forestry Group since 2007.

In fiscal 2021, Sumitomo Forestry Group invited participants to discussion sessions twice, the majority of whom were young employees of the Group. The participants discussed the things they value in their professional and personal lives under the theme “What we Value” in the first discussion. The president and several mountain climbers gathered to explore the issue of “Mountains” in the second discussion. Many employees were able to get a glimpse of the president’s intimate side by capturing and disseminating the video, which they would not have seen otherwise. We plan to continue this activity as an opportunity for direct dialogue between management and employees and to increase communication among the group in fiscal 2022.

Employee Satisfaction Survey

Sumitomo Forestry conducted the eleventh employee satisfaction survey between July and August 2021.

The survey asked 91 different questions in 11 categories: work, work load, workplace, supervisor, evaluation/treatment/skill development, career, management and vision, customer first, compliance, satisfaction, and conscious action.

The questionnaire targeted 5,009 full-time and fixed-term employees with a response rate of 93.1%.

As a result of the survey, 78.2% of employees answered either "absolutely" or "yes, if I have to choose" when asked whether they were satisfied working for Sumitomo Forestry. The items that have improved over time include "Positive outlook on the future of our company" "Improved awareness of diversity in the workplace" and "Workplace supportive of childcare and nursing care", indicating that Diversity and Inclusion initiatives are becoming more widespread.

Furthermore, this survey was also jointly conducted at 26 consolidated Group companies in Japan and Sumitomo Forestry. The questionnaire targeted 12,246 full-time and fixed-term employees (including some part-time employees) with a response rate of 88.5%.

Sumitomo Forestry plans to introduce the employee satisfaction survey as an annual survey throughout all consolidated Group companies in Japan to understand yearly changes.

Employee Satisfaction Survey Response Rate (Sumitomo Forestry)

Employee Satisfaction Survey Trends (Sumitomo Forestry)