The Future Pioneered by the ENEOS Group: Our HR Strategy to Ensure Every Employee Performs Their Best - Part 3

Part 3: Fostering a corporate culture where employees can work comfortably and with pride

Ensuring “KENKO Investment for Health” for maintaining psychological and physical health, “DE&I” for fostering diverse values that harness individuality, and “mutual recognition” for enhancing job satisfaction

――In Part 3, I’d like to ask you about fostering a corporate culture where employees can work comfortably and with pride. So far, you’ve spoken about leader development and job-based talent management, but I don’t think changing systems would be enough. What are your views on this?

Funo: Good question. First, I think we need a welcoming environment in which employees feel psychological and physical security, and they need to all align with the ENEOS Group Philosophy and Long-Term Vision. Each employee needs to be passionate about their work, trying diligently and voluntarily to achieve our targets, ultimately to contribute to the corporate mission. They must always respect their colleagues, feel a sense of their own growth and job satisfaction, and lead a fulfilling life with health and good work-life management. That’s a lot, but if we can offer such environments, I believe that everyone will be able to perform at their best. We’re investigating gaps between current and ideal workplace environments, by using engagement surveys and so on to fill those gaps, we plan various measures to run the PDCA cycle to make continuous improvements.

――What do you focus on when fostering a corporate culture?

Funo: The most important thing for employees to perform at their best is their psychological and physical health. Without it, no matter how great their working environment is, they won’t be able to maximize their abilities, and it will be hard for them to find joy or happiness through their work. Good working conditions have significant impact on productivity and creativity, as well as work quality and quantity, as I discussed earlier. If you aren’t in good health, you won’t feel like taking good care of your family, friends, colleagues, and the others around you. Health among everyone is the key to perform at their best, caring and supporting each other. So we put stress on “KENKO Investment for Health.” The ENEOS Group has consistently shared messages from our top management to promote “KENKO Investment for Health,” but to make ourselves clear that this is one of the management strategies that we focus on, we took this opportunity to declare Health Management once again. In particular, we take proactive approaches on anti-smoking that numerous data clearly show its harm to health.

――I see. What comes next after health?

Funo: Good working environments support everyone’s health. Of course, comfortable conditions and good relationships must be there, and on top of that, it’s ideal to offer work options to maximize performance, depending on each employee’s lifestyles, like teleworking or flexible work hours. Recently, the ENEOS Group is becoming more diverse, hiring more women, people with prior work experience, foreign nationals and people with disabilities. Providing work environments with care to those variations is one thing, but what’s more important is to respect diverse values and individual differences. We’d like to foster such a corporate culture, and that’s why I said in part 2 that I want everyone to speak out.

――So respect for diversity contributes to a better work environment. And then comes the job satisfaction?

Funo: A welcoming work environment and job satisfaction are very similar. A welcoming work environment is about enabling each employee to perform at their best by accepting their lifestyles and values. Job satisfaction is about employees realizing their growth through work. It’s very important to feel that one is contributing to the realization of the ENEOS Group Philosophy and Long-Term Vision. They become more engaged with the company by the cycle of their achievements being evaluated in the team, getting feedback, and being duly compensated. To achieve that, we need a mindset of mutual esteem.

――So based on health, you’re striving to foster a corporate culture of good work environment and job satisfaction. Where do you think the ENEOS Group is now?

Funo: Every year, the ENEOS Group conducts an engagement study to look at the gaps between its goals and where we are. One remarkable thing in the results is that employees resonate with the Group Philosophy higher than the benchmark. Our analysis shows that our employees have a solid sense of pride in handling energy and materials that support people's lives. On the other hand, there is room for improvement in whether employees feel that their work is evaluated appropriately and in their understanding and acceptance of diversity. Respecting diversity creates good work environments for everyone, and also helps employees share a variety of ideas and views to maximize their abilities as a whole. In this sense, we regard DE&I as an important policy to enhance corporate value, and have summarized our management thoughts and announced this as our “DE&I Commitments”

――You’re really carrying out a wide range of initiatives. That said, disseminating human capital management among the over 40,000 Group employees is not easy. Could you talk a little bit about your own resolve to achieve this?

Funo: The ENEOS Group has unique technologies, but the real source of the Group’s competitiveness is its people. I introduced the Group’s human capital management framework, but that’s not truly unique to the Group. Many companies are implementing human capital management. When it comes to what separates the Group from them, it all comes down to the power to see things through to the end. I think the Group’s great strength is the commitment to what we decided. We’re determined to carry on human capital management to the end, thoroughly embedding it in our systems and our corporate culture. My role is to create mechanisms for that and to drive everyone forward to our goals.

――I’m looking forward to seeing the way forward. Finally, do you have a message for job-seekers that might be reading this article?

Funo: If any of you are interested in the ENEOS Group, I recommend that you break down and examine our Group Philosophy on your own, clarify what you want to try in the Group and apply. I say this because the energy and materials we handle are part of the core infrastructure that supports people’s lives, so we must always be committed to ensuring safety and maintaining stable supply. Our Group Philosophy reiterates the word “normal.” Doing normal things normally has tremendous amount of steady, diligent work behind the scenes, and that work may not be glamorous or worth applause. But if you see the value and importance in this work and still choose the ENEOS Group out of many options, I assure you a world full of challenges and discoveries, where you can achieve growth.

■Summary

The ENEOS Group is focused on fostering a corporate culture where employees can work comfortably and with pride, the foundation of its human capital management. Based on psychological and physical health, the Group is creating work environments which respect diverse values and lifestyles, where employees can perform at their best. At the same time, it is working hard to provide greater job satisfaction, using appropriate evaluations and feedback to provide employees with a greater sense of their own growth. To deeply integrate human capital management throughout the Group, it is dedicating itself to carrying out its decisions to the very end.