Improvement of Employee Growth and Job Satisfaction (Kubota)

To promote K-ESG management, it is crucial for employees to practice the corporate philosophy and to gain the empathy and participation of internal and external stakeholders. As part of the Company’s efforts to advance the establishment of the organization in which employees, who are the driving force behind K-ESG management promotion, can feel proud and inspired, and that the organization is rewarding and easy to work for, the Company has been conducting engagement surveys since November 2021. Each corporate organization has addressed the issues identified and is working to create a better overall structure for its employees.

As the survey results vary between different organizations, it is best for each organization to take action suited to its own conditions, but the Groupwide trend is for issues to emerge in the scores for “adapting to change” and “communication.” To address this by promoting dialogue within our organizations and building resilience to change, since 2023 we have implemented organization-building initiatives as a tool to invigorate our organizations and improve engagement.
For further information on Employee Engagement, please refer to the Kubota Group ESG Report

• Kubota Group ESG Report

We believe that implementing 1-on-1 training along with fostering an understanding of its purpose and importance among employees—not only those in general administrative positions but also those working in frontline jobs—will help increase Group-wide engagement and promote a culture of dialogue. Last year, we conducted a two-day training program for some frontline job supervisors that focused on dialogue skills and attitudes that elicit proactive action from others.

This training provided participants with an opportunity to reflect on their own communication, think about how to build good relationships with their members, and foster better dialogue to solve problems and concerns together. Going forward, we will seek to expand this culture of dialogue to other business locations.

We are strengthening internal communication to become “One Kubota” from a communication perspective. As part of this effort, top management actively conducts town hall meetings with section managers (who form the backbone of Kubota operations), as do individual executives with newly appointed managers and younger employees. In order to build a culture of creative dialogue, we believe that managers engaging in direct dialogue with employees based on their own ideas and experiences will help increase employee engagement. In addition, we have worked to ensure effective dialogue for building relationships and cohesion among participants.
For more information, please refer to the Kubota Group ESG Report

• Kubota Group ESG Report

To strengthen global management and human resource utilization toward the fulfillment of GMB2030 and to stimulate local and global business growth, we launched a global leader training program in 2022 as part of efforts to develop global talent, particularly to act as executives in our overseas operations.

The Global Talent Development Program aims to achieve the following objectives: understand Kubota’s strengths and uniqueness, foster a sense of unity as “One Kubota,” and integrate diverse values that will serve as the foundation for global management. These objectives will be realized through group sessions using original case studies, dialogue with visiting executives, site visits, and group work involving a diverse array of members.

To keep up with progress toward global management, regional management companies engage in activities to deepen cooperation among management executives and to develop the next generation of leaders. Looking ahead, we will further link global and local human resource development efforts to produce leaders who can make optimal decisions on a regional and local basis while maintaining a global management perspective.

In order for Kubota to achieve further growth as a truly global company, every effort must be made to develop leaders with a global mindset and build a new global culture for the Company. To this end, we launched a global mindset development program for domestic general managers (Farm and Industrial Machinery Consolidated Division) aimed at further promoting the development of Kubota’s global culture from October 2024.
120 managers have participated in this program, which deepens self-awareness through individual assessments and broadens the mindset of participants through lectures by global leaders from overseas offices.

The working-age population is shrinking due to demographic aging and falling birth rates while working adults have increasingly diverse needs, including having to manage both childcare and nursing care for family members. To adapt to such trends, we face the important tasks of improving productivity through investment and innovation and at the same time putting in place an environment with expanded employment opportunities where staff can develop their abilities to the fullest and pursue their ambitions.

In response to the situation, Kubota enables employees to work in a variety of ways and allocate their time efficiently, provides expanded employment opportunities, and enables them to develop their abilities to the full and pursue their ambitions. This will in turn promote improvements in productivity, employee performance, and job satisfaction.

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• Working from home
  This system allows employees to work for a guideline maximum of three days a week at their home or an equivalent location (e.g. a location that the employee has registered with the Company as their place of residence, the residence of a spouse who is living separately for reasons of the spouse’s work or for other reasons to do with the employee’s circumstances, a property owned by the employee or spouse, a communal facility within the employee’s apartment block).
  
  • Another location authorized by the Company is also permissible but only in the case of an employee providing nursing care or attending a spouse who is giving birth
• Mobile working
  This system allows employees to work when they are on business travel using information devices in locations where it is possible for their regular duties to be carried out securely and appropriately (e.g. in vehicles or waiting rooms while on a business trip, at the office of the customer that is the objective of the business trip, at catering facilities where lunch is taken during the trip, at a hotel where the employee stays during the trip, at a shared office on the route of the business trip).
• Satellite offices
  This system allows employees for personal reasons to work at a satellite office space designated by the Company.
  
  • This is limited however to locations on the employee’s usual route to work or closer to the employee’s residence than the usual place of work
• Working in a distant location
  Employees can apply to work under this system if they wish to live together with a spouse who is currently living separately, or where a family member requires nursing care. It allows the employee to work from anywhere in Japan in cases where the distance from the residence to the usual place of work by bullet train is more than 200 km one way and where it is possible to travel in five hours or less using public transport between the nearest station to their residence and the nearest station to their usual place of work.
• Super-flextime system
  This is a flextime system with no core time that allows employees to decide for themselves the start and finish time and total number of work hours for each day as long as they meet the fixed monthly total of working hours.

To support employees who combine work with childcare or nursing care, Kubota is taking steps to put in place a work environment that helps male and female staff equally to maintain a work-life balance. In FY2022, we introduced a new system of child-planning leave for infertility treatment, through which we continue to support employees’ goals in life.

In promoting the action plan for general business operators set out in the Act on Promotion of Women’s Participation and Advancement in the Workplace, Kubota is eliminating consciousness of gender-based roles in responsibility allocation. We encourage all employees to take childcare leave, for which the rate of uptake is increasing year by year. Meanwhile, to dispel concerns about returning to work after childcare leave, we hold online support seminars for employees on childcare leave and their managers, thus creating conditions that allow staff to continue building their career at Kubota after returning from childcare leave. (Kubota emphasizes that taking leave to raise one’s children does not mark the end of one’s career. Accordingly, we refrain from using the term “holiday leave” and refer to this instead as “childcare leave.”)

The system for special leave to support employees combining work with family duties was expanded targeted employees in 2018. This enables covering special leaves not only for childcare-related issues, but also nursing care for family members. Expanding the number of eligible employees has had a positive impact in terms of increased workplace understanding for issues around balancing work and family needs.

Kubota has put in place a system that makes it easier for employees whose spouse has to relocate for work reasons by allowing them to obtain a work transfer to the same location or to take leave and later re-enter the Company. The system prevents as far as possible staff attrition due to spouse job transfers, contributing to employee retention and motivation to continue working.

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Kubota believes that taking paid leave is highly effective not only in helping employees maintain their mental and physical health and preventing excessively long working hours, but also in helping them to achieve a good work-life balance and thereby boost job satisfaction.
Kubota encourages the use of paid leave in cooperation with the labor union (Kubota Union) based on a jointly agreed promotion policy and specific incentive measures.

For more information, please refer to the Kubota Group ESG Report

• Kubota Group ESG Report

To engage in dialogue that helps build human resources value and to guide individuals toward independent growth, it is important to take action that not only involves understanding experience to date and preferred future area of work, but also organizing one’s own values, strengths, and aspirations while arranging and supporting future career challenges between managers and members. To this end, we established a system for employees to enter their own important values and attitudes in personnel reports to promote self-understanding and introspection, thereby enhancing individual growth and motivation to take on challenges in 2024.

In addition, we are working to support the growth of each member by developing guides that incorporate career theory and coaching elements in each workplace to deepen their career aspirations and promote active dialogue between managers and members at the time of personnel reporting.

To create a supportive environment for helping employees to take on the challenge of independent career development, Kubota offers: (1) entry via open application; (2) opportunities to take on a second in-house position; and (3) Cross My Field, a program of cross-departmental learning in and out of house.

・Cross My Field (cross-departmental learning in and out of house) This is a human resource development program that offers employees the chance to step beyond their current organization and area of operations to interact with a wider range of people and experience the real world of business, providing a tangible sense of personal growth. Since the system was launched as a trial in 2021 with Kubota products as its theme, it has offered the opportunity for employees to challenge themselves through a range of programs each year, with the host institutions of its cross-departmental learning programs including in-house facilities as well as external enterprises and institutions in Japan and overseas.

• Kubota Leadership Training (KLT)
  KLT is provided for section managers and develops capabilities of looking at the future from a better vantage point and considering business direction. It also brings about leaders who can plan and develop strategy.
• K-WAVE (training for the personnel who will be the next generation of executives)
  Targeting mid-level administrative/technical employees, we work to quickly identify and train the visionary leaders who will drive new business and innovation in the future.

• Optional seminars for managers
  These lectures on the theme “Stimulation, knowledge, and experience” are offered in order to extend beyond management the opportunity to broaden horizons and build core capability as a manager.
• K-Step
  This is a program for mid-level employees to impart the knowledge and skills required to carry out projects and high-added-value operations and lead a team.
• Foundation training for adult professionals
  For young employees to grow rapidly into human resources capable of performing high-added-value operations, we have identified the core business skills required to put in place a training system. We recommend employees to attend.

Overseas Trainees

Since 1997, Kubota has dispatched around 20 employees each year to its overseas subsidiaries and affiliated companies for training purposes. In this manner, we have placed considerable emphasis on training global human resources who are capable of playing an active role globally. In specific terms, we have provided opportunities to gain practical experience at overseas sites and to spend time immersed in foreign cultures and environments.

This trainee program provides our younger employees with opportunities to take on new challenges without fear of failure and to acquire experience at local sites. This in turn helps nurture courage while developing problemsolving skills. The knowledge and experience gained during this period also play a significant role in career development after the program ends, while paving the way for multiple career paths, both domestically and globally.

We will continue to actively conduct this program as an effective approach toward training global human resources, and will work to develop human resources who can succeed within the international community.

Program of Sending Employees to Emerging Countries (Corporate Volunteering Program)

In 2023, we introduced a Corporate Volunteering Program with the aim of nurturing Kubota’s future global leaders who will drive solutions to social issues through business. This program will promote solutions to social issues by sending employees to non-governmental organizations and social enterprises in the emerging economies in Asia.
Following on the heels of Cambodia and the Philippines in 2023, we called for program applicants in 2024, dispatching the selected employees to India for 3 months. Together with the CEOs of local social enterprises^*, these employees attempted to use their skills and experience acquired at Kubota on projects to address social issues.

We will continue to send employees to this program with the aim of nurturing global leaders. We are confident that the experience gained during the program will not only serve their personal growth but also prepare them to take the lead across Kubota as a whole.

• Social enterprises are companies that work to address social issues in tandem with the pursuit of profit.

Introducing the Global Mobility Program

In 2024, Kubota launched the Global Mobility Program, through which it dispatches local employees from overseas sites to Japan as expatriate workers. Program participants are allowed to perform duties and undergo training. As the first case, we dispatched an engineer from Thailand to perform analysis tasks as part of durability testing for harvesters and tractors in July.
The local overseas employees are able to learn about Japanese technologies, as well as the differences in communication and work styles at the departments to which they were dispatched. This in turn is serving as a positive stimulus for both.
We will continue to promote the dispatch of employees from overseas in an effort to train global human resources.

Introducing a Selection-based English Global Communication Enhancement Program

In order to further enhance its profile globally and to expand business as a company that aspires to become a Global Major Brand (GMB), Kubota recognizes the importance of human resources that can utilize English to play a role on the world stage.
In June 2024, we therefore conducted a questionnaire on English competency levels at all Kubota workplaces, and visualized the gap between the current state of duties carried out in English at each department and our expectations. At the same time, and as an outcome of a cross-analysis of the questionnaire results and employee English scores, we recognized the need to put in place a program that would help develop the practical level of language capabilities required to perform international work. This program will differ from the self-development type learning programs we have offered thus far as an employee benefit.
In January 2025, we launched a practical English language program that revolves largely around a debate and discussion format in an effort to strengthen English language and global communication skills.
For more information, please refer to the Kubota Group ESG Report

• Kubota Group ESG Report