Our People Policy

We believe the growth of the individual drives the growth of the organization. The company’s role is therefore to maximize the potential of our talent and invest in our people. Dentsu Group believes each individual has autonomy, which combined with a passion for collaboration, creates a basis for learning, development and growth for all of our people.

Dentsu Group is a place where 65,000 individuals come together to be the best they can be. We value and nurture talent within the Group and those who join us, to drive success in everything we do.

Our initiatives

Providing opportunities where all employees can thrive is a group-wide initiative, rather than one limited to the HR department. We believe it is important to foster a corporate culture that aims high, radically collaborates and promotes personal growth rooted in the spirit of our 8 WAYS to the Never Before: ways that we believe are closer to the needs of society and add value to life. This cannot be achieved in the short term; it is the culmination of daily employee experiences that fosters organizational culture. Accordingly, our goal is to incorporate “experiences that expand one’s possibilities” in all of our activities.

This includes efforts to attract brilliant new talent to our family, to engage with employees to work with good motivation, and to support individuals and teams to grow.

It is also important to promote and develop the capabilities of outstanding leaders, who will be the drivers of corporate culture in all areas. We will foster development to ensure we upgrade the skills and capabilities of our leaders including programs like: change leadership, inspiring inclusion and inspiring leadership focused on communications and storytelling. We continue to invest in technology platforms that allow us to see the talent we have across the entire Group, so we can best serve our clients.

Our leaders are our influencers and the drivers of our culture and how we work—investing will drive a virtuous circle to attract even more talent to the Group.

Attract

Competition for talents is intensifying in all industries and markets. In order to transform the business and pivot towards new growth areas, we must attract talent with new and different skills.

The Group engages in a wide range of specific activities to respond to differing business needs and HR trends in each market. Our efforts focus on enhancing talent acquisition teams and recruiters, introducing cutting-edge technology and acquiring professionals in the area of Customer Transformation & Technology.

As it is also important to eliminate gender bias and create fair and equitable opportunities, we provide recruiters with appropriate training and we have publicly stated targets to have a more balanced leadership team at the most senior levels of the Group. We want to attract diverse talent, skills and bring richness of perspectives into our business.

In order to expand the pools of talent from which we recruit we have initiated a number of programs. The Code, our digital educational curriculum for schools, is an enabler on bringing in early careers talent across the Dentsu International (DI). The Code opens the doors of our industry to students from diverse backgrounds, through immersive workshops, work experience opportunities and apprenticeships, etc.

Engage

In order for all of our employees to demonstrate true potential and play an active role, it is essential that the appropriate environment be created and the necessary support provided. But, before all else, comes the wellbeing of our employees.

We focus on what matters to employees; specific areas like mental health have been an important focus. We have introduced additional wellness days across the Group, encouraging open and honest conversations to reduce the stigma around mental health—and we are continually looking at ways we can better support the needs of our people including introducing the training of mental health aiders (in some markets).

We encourage everyone to be their best self and aim to create an inclusive culture, and an open and safe environment. In the area of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), we are also engaged in efforts to make diversity the Group’s strength. For example, in the Path of Tabei Leadership Program, women from different countries and companies partner to target growth together. Dentsu Japan Network (DJN) held a DE&I Week with a wide range of programs that varied from business, government policies, to technologies in an effort to raise awareness within the Group.

We listen to our employees on a regular basis across the Group. This includes through employee engagement surveying with DI and DJN taking part. It provides a good opportunity to understand where we are doing well and where we need to improve across the business. In 2021, DI reached a record high employee engagement score despite many of our people working remotely.

Voluntary collaboration such as the study of best practices is already taking place among Group companies.

Grow

We fervently hope to continue being a group where people grow. To this end, we are engaged on a Group-wide basis in three areas of support: learning, growth through work, and career development.

First, with regard to learning, we provide a total of over 10,000 training resources to the Group through our online learning platform. Dentsu university, established in DI, has contributed to this enormous amount of programs. DI has introduced a learning allowance, providing access to a range of learning to suit everyone and we encourage everyone to learn by doing, through collaboration and integrated projects. DJN, meanwhile, is focusing its efforts on the practice of Integrated Growth Solutions by linking Group company solutions and knowledge, a combination it calls “Re-capability.”

Second, learning through daily work plays an important role in personal growth. To this end, we encourage dialogues throughout the year, starting with goal-setting, one-on-one meetings with managers, reviewing progress and encouraging feedback throughout the year to enable career conversations.

Finally, with regard to career development, we aim to go beyond individual companies and create growth opportunities for the Group overall.

There are more than 65,000 jobs worldwide throughout the Group, which means more than 65,000 potential career paths. To this virtually limitless possibility, we are developing a Career Framework in order to create a future in which all employees have a fair and transparent opportunity regardless of nationality, gender, age, or other attributes.

We of course support not only the mechanism, but also internal mobility to open the door for a wide range of roles. We plan to reinstate talent exchanges between DJN and DI that have been temporarily suspended due to COVID-19.

Leadership

The involvement of our leaders in all aspects of Attract, Engage, and Grow is extremely important. This is because they, as people leaders, will lead the overall Group to grow through nurturing talents.

Based on this concept, the spirit of THE 8 WAYS is incorporated into leadership expectations and reflected in leader assessments and development programs. Through the succession planning for Group management, we develop top leaders who embody a desirable culture and bring stability to Group management.

In terms of compensation, the Group revised its system to support leader commitment. By incorporating non-financial indicators such as engagement scores, female manager ratios and CO2 emissions as assessment criteria for executive compensation, we aim to prompt leaders who will drive a culture that contributes to our people and the society.

Technologies & Data

In a business like Dentsu Group, where our people are everything, accurate talent information is vital for strategic management decisions. Further, in order for each employee to achieve desirable growth through work, it is important to provide opportunities that meet each individual’s needs. In other words, it is essential to accumulate and utilize (through analysis and service provision) data on talents for both management and employees.

We are shifting to global platforms that will allow the Group and its leaders and managers to have a consistent, accurate view of the talent available across the organization to ensure we can support career planning.

Starting with the visualization of talent information and operational efficiency across the Group, we plan to develop career support tools for more than 65,000 employees.