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. In addition to short-term semiannual performance, the evaluation items include items that contribute to the long-term development of the company, teamwork attitude and actions to create results, compliance, and risk management. 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 2022, the multi-faceted evaluation system (360 Degree Evaluation) was mainly conducted for employees in charge of organizational management, specifically new management employees or employees 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.

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 2022, President Mitsuyoshi held a discussion with five employees who are active at the forefront of decarbonized initiatives within the Sumitomo Forestry Group under the theme of "Mission TREEING 2030—Turning the Wood Cycle". The video of the event was filmed and distributed to convey the president's strong enthusiasm for realizing a decarbonized society and the passion of the employees for the project. We plan to continue this activity as an opportunity for direct dialogue between the president and employees and to increase communication among the group in fiscal 2023.

Employee Satisfaction Survey

Sumitomo Forestry conducted the 12th employee satisfaction surveys in July 2022.

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 4,995 full-time and fixed-term employees with a response rate of 91.1%.

As a result of the survey, 77.0% of employees answered either "absolutely" or "yes, if I have to choose" when asked whether they were satisfied working for Sumitomo Forestry.

Furthermore, this survey was also jointly conducted at 26 consolidated Group companies in Japan and Sumitomo Forestry since 2019. The questionnaire targeted 12,656 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)

Relationship with Labor Unions