Human Resource Development

At the Canon Marketing Japan (hereafter, the "Canon MJ"), we have a basic policy of evaluating job performance, awareness, and actions fairly and equally regardless of gender, age and educational background. We apply a similar policy to human resource development. We provide educational opportunities, including opportunities to receive IT literacy education and education for each employee level, fairly to all employees who proactively seek learning.
Further, in 2021, we defined our ideal human resources and began to work proactively on human resources development, aiming to achieve the objective of developing skilled human resources that is set out in the Long-Term Management Objectives.

At the Canon MJ Group, we provide basic training that is common to all job categories, training for increasing expertise in each field and developing personnel who can lead their departments, and selective training for the management executives of the future.

We aim to implement a cycle through which behavior will be transformed through learning, taking on challenges and change. More specifically, employees will learn autonomously, draw on this learning to take on new work challenges and this will result in them changing something or in a change in themselves. We see new employee training and rank-based training as an opportunity for change and will instill a new mindset and skills. Such training is provided based on a personnel training system that defines the ability to think, the ability to execute, and the ability to involve other people, in a stepwise manner, and we ensure that employees can acquire skills step by step in areas such as design thinking, career training and human resource development in addition to business skills such as logical thinking, marketing, accounting and strategy. In addition, we support growth by offering a wide range of learning opportunities including a system of support for the acquisition of new qualifications, distance learning and e-learning. We are also focusing on initiatives to strengthen IT skills, such as having all employees sit the IT passport, DX certification and DX business certification exams and having all employees take part in data literacy training focusing on data handling.

We provide rank-specific training, which is aimed at supporting the transition when employees move to a higher stage, and online training intended for all employees. In rank-specific training, employees strive to achieve their ideal, of which they have a specific image, by developing their skills and mindset.
Moreover, we have expanded the menu for improving project management skills, language proficiency, PC skills, and other skills so that anyone can achieve personal development with the San-ji (Three Selfs) Spirit.
We believe it is important to develop a climate in which every single person continues learning.

Employees are able to gain the basic business skills required for each rank at the time of promotion through systematic rank-specific training, and consolidate these skills through on-the-job training. Based on the Katz model^*, we aim to have employees hone conceptual, technical, and human skills.
In addition to rank-specific training, we also provide opportunities for voluntary learning to support the improvement of business skills used day-to-day through a variety of programs, such as self-selected distance education and external seminars.

Future management executives are selected by the Nomination and Remuneration Committee which is chaired by the President and made up of Outside Directors and Internal Directors. The development of personnel who will become management candidates is also discussed at the Human Resources Strategy Committee, which is a permanent committee. Matters such as important appointments and participation in selective training are discussed in detail and we have developed a framework for developing management personnel over the long term.

We provide selective training for general manager- and manager-class employees to develop diverse human resources as candidates for future management executives. We have been holding Quorum 12, which is selection for general manager-class employees, since 2014. This is aimed at honing management skills and also improving people skills. For example, we incorporate liberal arts training to encourage diverse perspectives and flexible thinking and refine trainees’ sensitivity and sensibility.
In addition, we have been holding Quorum 15 for manager-class employees since 2019 for the early development of human resources. Participants learn by trying their skills against others at business schools or taking part in regional revitalization fieldworks.
In both cases, we achieve the development of human resources with a wide range of knowledge and diversity by assigning participants to positions for which they have no experience after the training. This training functions as a practical framework that plays a part in the future selection of human resources.

In developing specialists for each position, we divided skills into specialized skills for specific business and transferrable skills that work across multiple businesses. As skills related to the IT solutions business fall under both categories, going forward we will link them with the Group’s positions, visualize the number of personnel we aim to cultivate for these positions, and provide training to improve their skills in accordance with the Digital Skill Standards^*.

In our recruiting activities, we are actively conducting mid-career recruitment in addition to the regular hiring of new college graduates. Our particular focus has been on human resources that will drive the IT solutions business and as a result, personnel with diverse backgrounds are playing an active role by breathing new life into our operations.
The R&B Promotion Center, which was newly established in January 2024, gathers innovative personnel discovered and cultivated within the company, and also welcomes experienced personnel from outside the company as leaders.
Going forward, we plan to continue recruiting professionals in new fields that will take on challenges in various fields as well as within the R&B Promotion Center.

Focusing on personnel involved in the SI business, we have put in place a personnel system based on the IT Skill Standards (ITSS) and supported the growth of personnel through skills training and support for the acquisition of qualifications necessary for each job; however, in recent years, roles that do not fit into the ITSS framework have also increased. As shown by the creation of the Digital Skills Standards (DSS) by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry at the end of 2022, the world now needs human resources that were previously undefined. Through the definition of personnel by job type based on business strategy and visualization of personnel numbers and also through the utilization of DSS, Canon MJ is working to develop highly skilled IT solutions personnel.

Canon Marketing Japan is committed to supporting the career development of employees, aiming to “increase job satisfaction by allowing employees to think about their own careers autonomously and work independently towards the career they want to pursue, and to foster an organizational culture invigorated by autonomous employees”.
In addition to regular career interviews between bosses and their subordinates, dedicated career consultants (who hold national qualifications) give career consultations, and we hold career seminars by rank and age group to help employees achieve career autonomy.

A career counseling service with internal career consultants

Age group-specific career training and personal interviews with internal career consultants

Career training for managers for acquiring the skills to support subordinates and personal interviews with internal career consultants

Career interviews with immediate superiors

It is important to be proactive in planning one's own career development. At the Canon MJ Group, we encourage employees to boldly take on new positions. We also implement the Job Opening Bulletin System (JOBS), an in-house recruiting program aimed at activating human resources in the Group. JOBS is a program that allows employees to transfer across departments and corporations and to put themselves up for new positions. The “company FA system” which provides employees with the opportunity to take on challenges of their own free will” has also been launched.