If I were to be asked if women are enjoying an environment where they can work freely when I started working in 1993, I would say no. That time, the Equal Employment Opportunity Law was already in full force from 1986. However, we are now in a society where it is normal for women to be able to work in her own ways. A lot of women right now are able to step up in their careers and join companies. This is a very pleasing and a very promising change for the country. Because of that, society is also significantly stepping up as a whole.The ratio of women is also increasing among our clientele, as well as the crews working in our stores. Even owners of our franchise stores do not only consist of men as more and more women are starting to own franchise stores from us.
If you really look at our current society, you will see that a lot of women are taking active roles in the workforce. I know this is already obvious, but jobs will not become attainable without women.Even for our company, which considers diversity as one of our corporate philosophies, it has become a norm for us to accept diverse values and prepare a more flexible working environment for our employees regardless of their gender or nationality. I believe that this is a common practice for the modern society.
Meanwhile, in addition to being selected by Toyo University as No. 1 in Female Success Index Corporate Ranking in 2017, we were also selected for four years in a row as an outstanding enterprise in the Nadeshiko Brand Initiative by MITE and Tokyo Stock Exchange for encouraging women’s success in the workplace. This recognition is a great honor, and so we would like to continue our efforts to make women more active in order to keep ourselves deserving for this recognition.As of 2017, the ratio of our female employees is at 16%, while the ratio of our female managerial employees is at 8%. In the future, we would like to make the ratio between men and women close to 50:50 even in recruitment. I believe that this is also what is natural in our workplace.
In addition, we host career development training for young female employees, provide information to female employees that are on childcare leave and train them towards their career development after returning work. These are just some of our active efforts to support the success of our female employees even after being hired. Aside from that, in 2014, we have built a facility named Happy Lawson Daycare in our workplace so that women can continue working while taking care of their children. Because of that, the rate of return from childcare leave has reached almost 100%. Due to marriage, childbirth, and other life events, women should have sufficient maternity and childcare leaves to be able to attend to their needs. For that, we would like to create a working environment for them to be able to go back to work while we devise specific measures tailored for their life events and create various work style options for them.
I believe that it is important for us, men and women, to respect each other to accept such diverse values. Women also have occasions for life events, and it is something that men should firmly understand and respect. More than anything, it is also important for both genders to work with each other with respect to these conditions.
Holding our principle "for the company", we are one of the organizations where many employees work together. Among these, we would like to create various work styles or even one working style that is regardless of time and place, so that each of our employees can offer value to society. That is why it is important for it to be respected by everyone.Always thinking of everyone's good in the workplace, we would like to create options for diverse work styles that suit the values of each of our employees in accordance to the changing of times.
