The SCREEN Group aims to support the sustainable development of society while working to solve social issues through the development of products and technologies. To achieve this goal, we worked hard to enhance SCREEN Value (corporate value), which comprises Sustainable Value (social value) and Economic Value, under the Value Up 2023 medium-term management plan. FY2024 is the final year of Value Up 2023, during which we should lay the groundwork for the next medium-term management plan, in addition to reaching the goals set in the strategy. To wrap up Value Up 2023, we will formulate and implement a human resource strategy tied to our management strategy, positioning the development of “solution creators” as a key measure and continuing the effort to build up our human resource portfolio. 

Human Resource Strategy and Policy to Produce Solution Creators

Human Resource Strategy and Policy to Produce Solution Creators In April 2023, we redefined our corporate philosophy to more clearly articulate the Group’s purpose, which serves as the foundation for our decision making. In this highly uncertain era of drastic changes in the business environment, the new corporate philosophy will help employees think independently and continue to add to SCREEN Value. In line with this, the Group’s Management Grand Design sets “Be a Solution Creator” as the theme for our 10-year vision. A solution creator is a person who can independently act and take on challenges. Our goal is that we, both as an enterprise and as employees, act as solution creators and become what the world needs. To realize this management strategy, we are developing the human resource strategy that will lead us to attain an ideal human resource portfolio through a cycle of personnel acquisition, development, and retention. By pushing forward with efforts in these three areas, we will strengthen our human resources, driven by organizational motivation and personal growth, and support sustainable corporate growth.

Group-wide Surveys

To implement the human resource strategy, and even the management strategy, it is essential to assess the current situation and achieve strategic alignment throughout the SCREEN Group. In October 2022, we conducted an engagement survey and a personal survey across the Group for the first time. The purpose was to facilitate growth and motivation as solution creators by identifying organizational and personal issues to be addressed and incorporating them into Group-wide measures and personal skills development. One of the upcoming key measures derived from the survey results is enhancing job-level-specific training and educational materials available for voluntary learning. We will also provide more opportunities for employees to talk with management (more than 30 opportunities provided in FY2024) to drive their commitment to work and unite the organization under a shared vision. Group-wide surveys will be conducted regularly to observe changes over time.

Strengthening Personnel Acquisition

Amid forecasts of a decrease in the working-age population and staff shortages in the semiconductor industry in particular, it is essential to create innovation through diverse human resources for the Company’s medium- to long-term growth and value enhancement. In the acquisition of talent who support the foundation of the SCREEN Group, our focus is on securing future solution creators who would proactively and boldly tackle the resolution of social issues in Japan and overseas. We are expanding the staff according to the needs of each business strategy and further expanding career paths for diverse personnel, including women, foreign nationals, and mid-career hires.

Acquisition of the Talents That Underpin Growth
As competition to hire engineers and other talent heats up, SCREEN is tackling two issues in the acquisition of personnel who can act as solution creators: 1) discovering personnel who align with our corporate philosophy and culture and 2) enhancing compatibility in hiring. In FY2023, we focused on expanding internship programs for engineers and provided more plant tours at our sites to enhance the understanding of our businesses, which aim to solve social issues, and help applicants learn more about the jobs we can offer. To increase the recognition of SCREEN, we took a multifaceted approach that includes visits to universities and research laboratories by recruiters and personal scouting, thus enhancing opportunities to contact potential applicants. We also implemented job-specific hiring, in addition to holding briefings and discussion sessions focused on each business operating company, so that applicants can choose areas of work where they will be able to fully demonstrate their capabilities by leveraging their majors or research specializations from their student days. We are promoting the understanding of the workplace and job types we offer and motivating potential applicants to join the SCREEN Group by deepening mutual understanding in various ways and giving first-hand information on the jobs, workers, and working environment in the SCREEN Group. Going forward, we will acquire outstanding talent more strategically by building new screening processes and providing more career paths for highly skilled professionals.

Ensuring Diversity
Under the Group’s CSR Charter, which serves as its Code of Conduct, we outline the philosophy of supporting the performance of our diverse workforce. We are creating environments that nurture diversity and proactively hiring human resources who offer diverse perspectives, such as women, foreign nationals, and mid-career professionals. This reflects our belief that driving innovation by empowering diverse talent is essential for an enterprise to achieve sustainable growth and enhance its medium- to long-term value.

■ Expanding career paths for women, foreign nationals, and mid-career hires
Regarding the empowerment of women at the SCREEN Group, by FY2031 we aim to double the percentage of women in management positions from the level at the end of FY2019 and increase the percentage of women among all employees to at least 15%. Our recruitment of women has been increasing in recent years, but to achieve our FY2031 targets, we will focus on maintaining and increasing the percentage of women among new hires at 20% and are actively hiring and cultivating women who will be responsible for the Group’s core operations. As for specific initiatives, as part of activities for hiring new graduates to address the issue of the small percentage of women in science-related jobs, we hold discussion sessions wherein senior female employees who actually work as engineers are able to interact with science-focused female students. In addition, we publish the SCREEN CAREER & LIFE BOOK for women, a pamphlet that introduces the Company as one geared toward women, and promote specific career building ideas for women in the Group. The Group companies in Japan currently have around 54 foreign national employees. At overseas subsidiaries, over half of full-time executive posts are filled by locally hired foreign nationals. In FY2023, we held recruitment seminars and selection meetings for foreign students. We are also eager to hire mid-career professionals, with such hires accounting for 61.8% of the full-time employees hired in FY2023. We strive to have at least 50% of employees consist of such diverse personnel as women, foreign nationals, and mid-career professionals by FY2031.

■ Promoting the employment of people with disabilities
Our special subsidiary, SCREEN Business Expert Co., Ltd., promotes the ongoing employment of people with disabilities (employment rate as of June 2023: 2.64%). To add to the existing hiring practices at Hikone Plant (Hikone Parte), we have established Kyoto Parte, an employment organization for people with disabilities, in our Head Office. There are 70 employees with disabilities working in the SCREEN Group as of June 2023. There are also other efforts that demonstrate our commitment to diversity and inclusion. For example, we organized a seminar on the employment of people with disabilities, with the attendance of an expert invited from Kyoto University, to explore the role that the SCREEN Group should play as an enterprise.

Strengthening Personnel Development

We believe that if an enterprise is to enhance its corporate value, both the enterprise and its individual members must continuously pursue growth and ambitions. This will create an organic cycle driven by the enterprise’s vitality and profit generation and individuals’ growth and accomplishments. Under this basic philosophy, we are building a system that supports the growth of human resources at all levels and that enables individual employees to feel their growth. At the same time, we strive to develop the next generation of business leaders who would understand the concepts of our medium-term management plan and bear the Group’s management perspective.

Engineering Personnel Development
The Engineer Development Committee conducts the SCREEN Group’s education programs in the development and technology field. The committee works to enhance the technical knowledge of new hires and provides them with visualizations of career development plans for up to three years from joining the Group. In FY2023, we have started the Next-Generation Engineer Development Course, a new project manager development training program open to all engineers in their fourth year at SCREEN. With its purpose of training leaders capable of creating solutions that address social issues, this program is designed to enhance project management capabilities and general manufacturing assessment skills. In addition, aiming to ensure career development for engineers, we maintain an ongoing inter-business rotation system for mid-career engineers. Nine people participated in the first rotation in April 2021, eight people in the second rotation in April 2022, and another eight people in the third rotation in April 2023. They have taken advantage of the opportunity to gain experience to enhance their capabilities as engineers in different organizations.

Cultivating Next-generation Business Leaders
In order to cultivate the next generation of capable business leaders, we have run 17 rounds of the Business Leader Training Course for managers and six rounds of the Junior Business Leader Training Course for non-management positions. Participants selected from group companies take part in content-rich training programs throughout the year. These programs include talks by directors/corporate officers, specialized lectures by external instructors, and cross industrial interactive training carried out with employees from other companies. In addition to providing practical business knowledge, participants develop a more managerial outlook and the ability to think and act independently as future business leaders. A new initiative launched in FY2023 is the SCREEN Business Leadership Academy, an in-house training program which targets next-generation leaders. As we grew in size and scope, our business operations have become more complex, involving a larger number of employees in managerial positions. Developing a pool of executive candidates has become a key issue, in order for us to seamlessly assign C-suite leaders prepared to address new challenges. At SCREEN Business Leadership Academy, an educational program proposed by Chairman Kakiuchi, former SCREEN executives are invited to share their real-life experiences as business leaders, including how a certain management decisions were made in the past, with an intention to pass practical management skills and knowhow on to new generations. With Chairman Kakiuchi himself serving as the teacher, 36 employees from across the Group attended the program in FY2023. Multiple sessions will be held in FY2024, too.

Interview

SCREEN BUSINESS SCHOOL
SCREEN BUSINESS SCHOOL, which supports employees’ autonomous growth through education and training, conducts SKIP (SCREEN’s Key learning for Innovative Process) training for learning the business skills needed to be a solution creator, such as critical thinking and coaching. We established a new career design training program for newly appointed leaders and supervisors. We aim to foster a mindset for autonomous personnel who proactively enhance the skills needed for their own careers and build a career development support system in which supervisors encourage subordinates to be self-sufficient. In addition, with the aim of realizing diversity and inclusion, we conducted the Women Empowerment Promotion Program in FY2023, which comprises career design training for female employees, as well as unconscious bias training for managers, and joint sessions for female employees and managers. A wide range of other programs are available, including those featuring external lecturers. For example, we give employees access to external workshops for cross-industry exchanges, considering that personnel development needs vary by company or division in the Group. In this way, we are systematically working to newly establish and reform programs while addressing changes in social conditions and demands from society. As a result, a total of around 2,400 people participated in these programs in FY2023.

New Employee Training
Upon joining the company, new employees receive three weeks of education and training on SCREEN employee attitude, basic knowledge, and skills conducted via lectures, practical work experience run by in-house and outside instructors, Zen meditation seminars, and other instructional sessions. After this, employees undergo specialized training to cultivate their business skill set. New employee follow-up training is also held at the end of the term to help new employees review their first year and to encourage further growth.

Study Abroad and Business School Opportunities
Employees are provided with opportunities to further their professional education. These include study-abroad programs for engineers and overseas law school enrollment for those seeking to acquire qualifications to practice law in the United States. We also send promising employees to business school so that they can earn their MOT or MBA and, thereby, better contribute to the future business of the SCREEN Group.

 Education and Training Costs 

 Education System 

Strengthening Employee Retention

To continue enhancing corporate value amid a rapidly changing business environment and social conditions, all employees of various generations with diverse values need to come together and actively work in the same direction. Toward that goal, we will increase engagement by aligning the business with the aspirations and direction of employees by engraining our corporate philosophy. At the same time, we will create an environment in which employees can succeed regardless of their age by offering them opportunities to demonstrate their abilities through the implementation of our human resource strategy. Helping each employee experience real growth through their work will lead to better engagement and thus increased personnel retention.

Revising Human Resource Systems to Encourage Employees to Take on Challenges
We continue to work to create an environment in which all skilled human resources can feel engaged and make an ongoing contribution regardless of their age, gender, or other diverse attributes. Reflecting a concept that emphasizes roles and performance while shrinking the importance of seniority factors, we eliminated the system of skill-based qualifications for both management and non-management positions and integrated to a role classification system based on employee roles (positions). In April 2021 we switched the personnel system for reemployed retirees to one that emphasizes employee roles while introducing an evaluation system and reflecting it in remuneration. Moreover, in April 2022, as part of our efforts to upgrade environments that accommodate the work styles and diverse needs of older personnel, we formulated new systems related to reemployed employees’ side jobs and concurrent employment. In April 2023, we started transformations to better accommodate diverse personnel, such as reviewing promotion requirements in such a way as to facilitate the selection of young talented employees and building systems to nurture highly skilled professionals. Other than that, in FY2022, we upgraded the new self-education support systems as part of our overall employee welfare system. We continuously support the self-directed growth and skill development efforts of individual employees through initiatives such as partially subsidizing book costs and course fees for foreign-language classes.

Creating Rewarding and Sustainable Workplace
Since FY2018, we have been pursuing work style reform. We are now deepening our focus on work style reform as part of our Sustainable Value 2023 efforts, seeking to implement “sustainable, new work styles” that will ensure business continuity in the face of a variety of challenging socio-economic conditions while also providing employees with a rewarding work environment. In FY2023, we implemented measures under the themes of “Transforming and Improving Operations: Workplace-oriented Approach to Work Style Reform” and “Promotion of Work-Life Balance,” while continuing efforts to increase productivity, including those to change the traditional mindset.

■ Work style reform initiatives
The SCREEN Group shortened regular work hours by 15 minutes from April 1, 2022 to change the way employees work toward higher efficiency within a shorter time. The total hours actually worked by employees has decreased more than 100 hours during the six years since FY2018, when this initiative started. In light of the situation, in FY2023 we replaced the Group-wide standard program with workplace-level approaches to focus on the issues faced by each organization. There are ongoing Group-wide initiatives to expand flexible work styles not tied to any one place, such as improving the work-at-home system and reducing bookshelves in offices with the aim of going paperless. We expanded and/or moved facilities to meet employee needs for online meeting rooms and individual work spaces at the Head Office and business sites as well as at the satellite office. In addition, with the aim of raising employees’ IT literacy, we distributed video educational materials and email newsletters related to IT tools and conducted development training for digitalization promotion personnel. We are working to make operations more efficient by enhancing productivity.