Dentsu Integrated Report 2018

Ensuring a Safe, Civilized Work Environment

Development of Human Resources

Recognizing that human resources are its greatest asset, the Group provides employees with appropriate capability-developing opportunities and supports employee self-development, in line with each individual’s career and the organization’s goals.

Diversity Promotion

Promoting Female Participation

Dentsu helps develop and support the careers of female employees. To maximize the Company’s strength, we formulated an action plan for the promotion of diversity to run from January 1, 2015 until December 31, 2019. Through the plan, Dentsu is striving to expand its existing female-friendly work environments so that female participation in the workplace might increase.

Summary of the Action Plan ➡ https://www.dentsu.com/csr/workingenvironment/workplaceenvironment.html

In FY2013, we launched the Female Employees Promotion Project, to create a working environment in which temporary leaves of absence will not jeopardize employees’ careers. In addition, at an early stage of their careers, women are given ample opportunities to think about their careers at, for example, lunch meetings with senior female employees. This gives them the chance to hear about the experiences of others, and to attend career seminars held by lecturers invited from outside the Company.

Employing People with Disabilities

As part of its efforts to promote the employment of people with disabilities, in April 2013 the Company established Dentsu Solari, a wholly owned Group company that was designated as a special-purpose subsidiary in November of that year. The employment rate of people with disabilities at three Group companies (Dentsu, Dentsu Works, and Dentsu Solari) is 2.14% (as of 1st of June, 2018). The Company also employs people with disabilities in account management, as well as in creative and other areas. Along with Dentsu Solari, we are trying to expand their employment opportunities.

Working Environment Reforms

Our Working Environment Reforms Commission, in seeking to improve the Group-wide working environment in Japan, announced our Working Environment Reform Plan in July, 2017.

The reforms comprise four stages: Commitment, Target Setting, Challenge Identification, and Attaining the Goal. Currently, we are implementing various improvements and reforms, involving from in-house facilities and environments to work processes. Recognizing that employees with healthy minds and bodies are the foundation of management, we aim to foster the self-actualization of each employee while reducing working hours and increasing operational quality. In 2017, the pillars of reform were comprehensive labor management, enhanced worker protection, review of workflows through job inventories, and smart work styles. As a result, we are implementing reforms that cover labor management, business processes, internal infrastructure, the office environment, personnel evaluations, and health management systems.

Through the resultant changes, we will fundamentally alter the work style of Dentsu employees and implement reforms to create a new Dentsu.

With regard to the progress of our reforms, the Independent Advisory Committee for Labor Environmental Reform Activities, comprising outside experts, is engaged in ongoing monitoring of our efforts.

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  Compliance training

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  Enforced lights-out hours between
  10pm and 5am

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  Refurbishing open workplace

Costs relating to the working environment reforms

In terms of costs incurred related to work environment reforms, we spent ¥1.3 billion for an urgent increase in employees; ¥4.0 billion for operational efficiencies, including the introduction of IT, RPA, and ICT for inhouse work inventories, policies such as outsourcing, and labor management; and ¥1.7 billion for office environment improvements, amounting to a total of ¥7.0 billion.

In 2018, we plan to invest a total of ¥13.0 billion, broken down into ¥8.0 billion for promoting the creation of a foundation for future growth through the acceleration of various measures and work environment reforms; ¥2.5 billion for office environment improvements; and ¥2.5 billion for the hiring of additional employees.

Three key programs started from 2018:

1. Trial introduction of "Input Holiday"— a monthly no-work day to encourage employees to take "input" for their "output"

An "Input Holiday", a monthly company-wide no-work day, has started from June 2018 on a trial basis. This is outside the statutory-based paid holidays and is set on a Wednesday or Friday of the second or third week of every month.

Employees are encouraged to take in "input" that is considered to have a positive influence on their "output," including doing something beneficial for their health or spending time on selfdevelopment. The Company aims to promote a notion that healthy employees with adequate rest is good for employees themselves, their families, our clients, and Dentsu. We will continue to study the effectiveness of holiday programs, including this one, to develop the most appropriate holiday system.

2. Introduction of "Vitality Note"— a tool to visualize employees' everyday condition

"Vitality Note," an automatic health-check tool, has been fully launched throughout the Company from July 2018. Employees receive objective analysis of their health conditions by instinctively answering a question that pops up automatically each day they first log on to their office PCs. It has been introduced on a trial basis since this April.

The "Vitality Note" system has been internally developed based on five metrics (PERMA) used in the field of positive psychology, an advanced study that helps people to attain their well-being. The system is beneficial to both employees and management because employees can learn their health conditions and managers can grasp the condition of an entire team, leading to the creation of a healthier work environment.

3. Learning opportunity of more than 100 hours a year per employee to help them grow

We have been developing various training programs for employees who have different capabilities and career plans based on our philosophy of emphasizing "employees' growth is the source of the Company's growth." To further our effort, we will develop programs that focus on the growth of individual employees.

We are currently developing a wide variety of programs with bold ideas and a scale never seen before. The programs have been gradually implemented from October, aiming to offer more than 100 hours over one year of learning opportunity per employee.

Other programs to be implemented:

• CoE (Center of Excellence) Services: Helping employees focus on core operations by freeing them from non-core operations and allocating them to specialists
• Digitalization of work flow: Comprehensive management of on-going jobs utilizing a cloud system
• Work-from-home, flextime, and rest interval systems
• Additional improvement of office environment (including IT)
• Review of HR systems

Going forward, we will continue to execute our reform programs steadily, focusing on full compliance with labor regulations, the reduction of long working hours, and the physical and mental health of our employees.