Advancing Value Creation Through Human Capital Human Capital Strategy

The IHI Group has a responsibility to deliver lasting value to society and its customers by securing high standards of reliability, safety, and quality. The Group’s technological capabilities, expertise, and talent foundation, which underpin this responsibility, are among its strengths.
At the same time, the Group’s tendency to place strong emphasis on proven track records and certainty can make it difficult to move beyond established ways of working. As a result, even when changes in the business environment or customer needs reveal new challenges or opportunities for improvement, it can be difficult to develop initiatives that go beyond existing frameworks.
And once new initiatives begin, it often takes time for them to be adopted and established across the organization.

This is something the IHI Group must change. The Group wants every employee to recognize challenges and opportunities for improvement in their daily work and take concrete actions. And rather than allowing those efforts to end with the individual, the Group needs to ensure that others recognize and embrace them so they can develop into initiatives across the organization.

This is the organizational culture the IHI Group seeks to build, “a culture where challenges and support reinforce each other.” Rather than placing the burden solely on those who take on challenges, the people around them think things through together, move initiatives forward together, and help carry them into what comes next. Without creating this kind of environment, the Group cannot generate the ideas or take on the challenges that lead to unprecedented technological development and business growth.
Creating new value also requires the IHI Group to bring together people with different experiences and areas of expertise. By combining their diverse strengths, they can discover new ways of understanding challenges and approaching them.
An important aspect of this process is using differences in opinions as a source of input to develop better ideas. By bringing diverse perspectives together through open dialogue and constructive debate, the Group can develop improvements and new initiatives that its people could not have conceived alone.

And encouraging new challenges, providing support, and making the most of a diverse workforce all depend on mutual understanding between employees and the company.
When management’s direction is understood and reflected in day-to-day operations, and the challenges and insights that emerge there are fed back to management, a cycle is created. Only when this cycle functions effectively can initiatives avoid ending as one-off efforts and instead build up within the organization over time.
In addition, as mutual understanding between management and employees deepens, the Group begins to see behavioral changes where employees are conscious of how their work connects to the broader goals. It is precisely for this reason that the Group places importance on maintaining ongoing dialogue with employees and continually aligning the understanding of management and those on the front lines.

Every new initiative involves uncertainty. Asking people to “embrace new challenges” is not enough. Leadership must also share the risks by providing the necessary support, making decisions, and taking responsibility for the outcomes. As the Managing Executive Officer responsible for Human Resources, I am committed to embedding this initiative throughout the Group’s organization.
The IHI Group believes that when challenges arising from day-to-day work inspire others to take on challenges of their own, and this mindset becomes embedded in the organizational culture, it creates a positive chain reaction. A workplace where the diverse perspectives of the Group’s people and open dialogue are harnessed as organizational strengths is, the Group believes, the foundation that will support the IHI Group’s sustainable growth.