January 4, 2017 New Year Greeting

Happy New Year!

Last year, there were several striking events that occurred around the world. Particularly arresting was Britain's referendum on leaving the European Union as well as America's presidential election. Both events displayed a phenomenon where most opinion poll forecasts were quite different from the actual results. So, even in an era when data analysis and forecasting seems to be evolving, it can be very difficult to read ahead.

If we turn our focus to the company, a similar phenomenon can be witnessed. Organizations, like living things, continuously experience and grapple with issues and problems. Therefore, in order to solve the issues, companies must devise and implement a number of policies. However, while proceeding policy initiatives with various expectations, the results, whether in a positive or negative way, are often very different from the original assumptions.

I would like to introduce one such issue. A few years ago, we implemented measures to reduce employee turnover. Our turnover rate was generally around 12 to 13%, however it spiked to 16% - thus needing special measures. Fortunately, due to the endeavors of all staff the turnover rate has improved and is currently in the 8 to 9% range. Furthermore, we succeeded in reducing the cost of mid-career recruitment to one-fifth.

What differed from the assumption here is not the result itself but the main factor that lead to the good results. A key aspect was that executives identified the problem of staff turnover as a major obstacle to the growth of our organization and thus began taking serious efforts to build better manager and staff relationships (leadership facilitation). Our corporate group, especially human resources department, worked in cooperation with workplace teams to deal with this issue (direct cooperation). Then all teams, made up of 4 to 7 people, within each department, began to realize the importance of creating constructive colleague relationships (thus fostering a unitary team-wide sense).

Initially, it was thought that systems and structures were the cause of the problems, so our focus was only on form. However, to achieve desired results, we reviewed our direction and felt that individual attitudes were far more important, in other words for us it was imperative, and very natural, that we “treat people who are important to us as important people”.

With this, we aim to further advance our professional mindset and improve our technical strength - thereby continuing our role as a close, reliable partner for our clients that intuitively offers the best solutions. We look forward to your guidance and continued support this year, thank you.