Generally speaking, the role of businesses in a society is to (1) supply goods and services, (2) employ people and (3) pay taxes.
It is extremely difficult for businesses to maintain employment in today’s highly competitive economy because employees can be a liability as well as an asset. In order to succeed in competition against other companies, however, is it permitted for businesses to cut employment or payrolls easily?
We do not think so. We believe that a business has a corporate value only when it can strike a balance between the sense of purpose of employees and the existence of a business. In other words, when the dignity of hired employees is recognized in the company’s business activities, they feel a sense of happiness and fulfillment.
Our original HR policy called “HOPES (High-ideal, Open-minded Personal affairs by various Evaluation System)” was established in the hope of balancing the sense of fulfillment of our employees with the existence and prosperity of our company.
- HOPES: a triaxial independent evaluation system
Professional expertise, business performance and management ability (and ability of being managed) are considered as different abilities of an employee that are independent of each other and each employee is evaluated by these three criteria independently.
- ①The purpose of Career Education “Meister” system is to develop and evaluate those staff members who have highly professional expertise.
- Under this system the company gives a title of “Meister” and a monetary benefit to those who have participated, passed an examination and lectured in in-house training courses or have passed the company-designated outside national examinations, according to their job classifications.
- ②Business performance is evaluated through a totally transparent evaluation method.
- Each employee’s achievements are rated in an evaluation list which states degrees of his/her contribution to the company in a numerical value. They are added and the accumulated value is used for determining the promotion and demotion of an employee. This evaluation list is completely open to all employees so that they can find out how to gain points for promotion.
- ③A management position means only a function to perform a job, not a status-quo. Employee’s ability to be managed by superiors is also evaluated in this system.
- Management ability which a manager must hold is only one of the abilities required by a corporation. Therefore, it is not worth discussing relative ranking of management titles. Based on this idea, if a staff member who shows a superior management ability is found to be available, the person who have been occupying the position should be immediately replaced by such new person. In this way we can maintain the management-level staff at highest possible level.
Another unique aspect of our Management Ability System is to evaluate employees by their ability of being managed by superiors. It is defined as an ability of an employee to maintain the harmony of the organization and make efforts to obtain a goal of the organization by cooperating with each other.
