Hoshizaki • ism
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Have a dream.
Everything comes from a dream. Any dream will surely come true.
Everything starts with a dream.
Just thinking about it isn’t enough. Don’t give up.
To attain a big dream, set yourself a deadline and break it up into concrete steps, arranged chronologically. Then review and revise them once or twice a year.
If you hold onto your dream tightly and stick with it, you will be amazed to see your dream becomes a reality.
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The profitable corporation has a culture that generates profit.
Don't adjust yourself to others. Uniqueness will be the source of profitability.
We aim to be at the top in everything, and focus on generating profit.
When you are in a profitable corporation, generating profit is normal, and when you make a little less profit you feel strange.
In order to protect our culture of generating profit into the future, don’t adjust yourself to others.
We need to keep taking on new challenges without fear of failure.
If we do everything through consensus, we will end up as an ordinary company.
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Change makes progress.
There is no way to survive on the extension of the present.
In order to become and remain number one, we cannot be afraid of change.
Hoshizaki is an energetic company with a culture that generates profit, but we have many failed initiatives in our past.
If you think you have made a mistake, it is OK to fix it then and there.
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Don’t make money by money.
We are manufacturers. Our profit shall come from our core business.
Our founder always said that you should not judge things based only on gain and loss.
Although he made big purchases for our main business, he also told us not to make money by money; but to focus on our core business.
Because we have followed these teachings, Hoshizaki has come to be known as a rich company today.
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Broaden your horizons.
After all, you will find a brand-new perspective.
Even if you think something is a waste, if you put your all into it, you will find a brand-new perspective. Improve yourselves and widen your horizons.
Even the Toyota Production System, which thoroughly eliminates waste, inconsistencies, and unreasonable requirements in the pursuit of lean production, always retains the necessary safety inventory even as it focuses on just-in-time production. If you are only concerned about costs, you will be caught off guard.
Hiring
We work to hire talented human resources with the aim of improving our human resource capabilities, the foundation for sustainable growth. We hire a specified number of new graduates each year to ensure a stable workforce, and we actively reinforce our human resources by also hiring mid-career individuals.
As part of our recruiting, in addition to our traditional face-to-face interviews, we have also implemented online company orientation and screening.
We also strive to prevent post-hiring mismatches by providing information in a variety of formats, including opportunities to meet with company employees and enhancing the information on our website.
Each sales company in Japan performs hiring separately based on its future business strategy and employee composition.
Our comprehensive training program for after joining the company enables us to hire people flexibly and ensures that our hires can succeed after joining the company regardless of whether they come from technical or non-technical backgrounds.
We also carry out initiatives that leverage the strengths of our Group companies, with the Company’s Human Resources Department and hiring managers from each company collaborating and cooperating to strengthen the hiring capabilities of the Hoshizaki Group as a whole. Specifically, the Group jointly creates company brochures and websites, and streams seminar videos to evolve (deepen) its hiring activities in order to create opportunities to find more talented human resources.
Fair Evaluation and Treatment
Hoshizaki operates a fair evaluation system in order to ascertain the strengths and weaknesses of each employee, enabling them to utilize their capabilities to the fullest while continuing to grow.
We evaluate and give feedback to employees in general positions twice per year based on three criteria: job performance (status of efforts to produce results at work), ability (capability to perform work duties), and passion (attitude of commitment to execution of duties).
For employees in higher grade positions, we offer a management course for employees aiming for management positions, and a specialist course for specialized positions. Evaluations for both courses specialize in duty performance while incorporating a target management system.
In the past, our sales companies in Japan only used quantitative criteria, such as sales achievement rate, as evaluation metrics. However, in FY2020, we performed a full-scale revision of evaluation metrics and weights through an initiative to strengthen internal controls.
In order to eliminate excessive pressure to achieve targets and appropriately motivate employees, we have incorporated qualitative criteria, such as improvement of capabilities, alongside the traditional quantitative criteria, and shifted from evaluation systems delegated to each sales company in Japan to a unified Group-wide system.
In addition, we are currently reforming the human resource systems at our sales companies in Japan so that employees can feel a greater sense of fairness and job satisfaction. In FY2024, we reviewed the grading system that forms the backbone of our human resource systems.
We plan to gradually revise the evaluation and compensation systems going forward.
Capability Development
Hoshizaki and our Group companies in Japan strive to enhance our training programs to enable all of our employees to utilize their capabilities to the fullest, and work with motivation and ambition.
Hoshizaki Group education system
Joint Group new hire training
In early April, Hoshizaki and our Group companies in Japan provide a two-day Group joint training course to all new-graduate hires.
The goals of the training include giving new hires a sense of the Group’s scale, getting to know manufacturing sites, and fostering horizontal bonds across the Group that go beyond individual companies (creating camaraderie among employees hired in the same year). Trainees not only acquire the basic knowledge needed by contributing members of society but also learn about our history and the significance of our management philosophy directly from management, developing a sense of belonging as a member of the Hoshizaki Group.
Position-specific training
Hoshizaki and our Group companies in Japan provide training to employees at each level of the company hierarchy.
In particular, we provide training and 360° evaluations to employees newly promoted to department and section manager positions in order to reinforce management behaviors and increase awareness of compliance.
Additionally, coaching training is required as part of new leader training. With this, we are committed to creating an open organization with smooth communication between superiors and subordinates.
Training to develop the next generation of management
Hoshizaki and our sales companies in Japan work actively to develop the human resources who will be involved in management in the future.
We select talented executives and executive candidates, strengthening their strategic conceptualization and planning capabilities by having them tackle business cases and internal issues in order to thoroughly train their logical thinking and problem-solving abilities.
Global human resources development program
In 2021, Hoshizaki started a new global human resource development program by updating various conventional training programs that were conducted to strengthen language and business skills.
We aim to further strengthen the development of human resources who can play an active role overseas in order to respond to the accelerating pace of globalization.
Main measures of the global human resources development program
- Visualize human resources by clarifying the requirements of global human resources
- Implement cross-division career management to develop global human resources
- Provide various types of training (see below) to improve the capabilities required by global human resources
Logical thinking training: Divided into four stages and offered in accordance with employees’ careers
International management training: Provides opportunities to learn the practical points necessary for managing a company overseas
Voluntary English-language learning support: Provides (web-based) learning tools and holds in-house small-group business English conversation classes taught by instructors who are native speakers.
Hoshizaki Training Center
The Hoshizaki Training Center was established as a place to improve the knowledge and skills of employees who support the Group’s strengths: its service and support systems.
For new hires scheduled to be assigned to service roles, we provide a two-month training program that includes electrical and refrigeration training, which are the basics of our service, and role-playing training to simulates work sites.
In addition, Hoshizaki conducts its own technical examinations after six months of employment to ensure and standardize the technical level so that we can provide uniform and high-level services to customers throughout Japan.
In recent years, it has been used not only as a place to improve the technical skills of those in services roles but also to enhance the knowledge and skills of employees throughout the Group.
Diversity
Hoshizaki and our Group companies in Japan are committed to advancing diversity, including promoting women’s participation, based on our belief that incorporating diverse people and values is vital for creating new value.
Promoting participation by women
Since 2010, Hoshizaki and its domestic sales companies have promoted the Kagayaki Project, a vision of promoting women’s advancement involving becoming a company where talented employees can work comfortably and play active roles, regardless of gender.
With the LADIES10 goal of increasing the percentage of female executives to 10% or more, we have provided support for women’s career advancement and create a comfortable working environment.
In FY2021, a new Kagayaki Committee was established to take over the Kagayaki Project and carry out its activities.
After reviewing the results and challenges of the Kagayaki Project for a decade up to FY2020, this committee set new targets for the promotion of participation by women looking ahead to FY2025 and will strive to achieve them.
Promotion of hiring people with disabilities
Hoshizaki and our Group companies in Japan promote the hiring of people with disabilities, and are committed to creating a workplace environment where they can work happily.
As of December 2023, Hoshizaki’s employment rate of people with disabilities was 2.39%, and that of our Group companies in Japan was 2.18%.
Initiatives to Achieve Work-Life Balance
Hoshizaki and our Group companies in Japan are strengthening our initiatives to achieve work-life balance, with the aim of creating a comfortable working environment where our diverse human resources (employees) can utilize their capabilities to the fullest.
Support for taking childcare leave and returning to work
In FY2023, Hoshizaki’s childcare leave utilization rate was 100% for female employees and 60% for male employees.
In order to ensure the smooth return to work by female employees who take childcare leave, the department manager and the employee planning to take maternity leave meet before taking leave, before returning to work, and after returning to work to discuss her career going forward. Additionally, we have introduced the online wiwiw Career and Childcare Balance Support Program service as a form of support for employees during maternity and childcare leave.
This program can be used from six months before taking maternity and childcare leave until five years after returning to work. During maternity and childcare leave, users can take online courses at home; the program provides a social media service where users can gain advice on careers and childcare from people with childcare experience.
Male employees whose spouses are expecting are given guides with information on childcare by their superiors with the aim of encouraging the employees to take childcare leave.
Support for balancing work with nursing care
We support balancing work with nursing care by posting on our company portal site a checklist of things to know before and while providing nursing care.
Support for employees on temporary assignment away from families
Hoshizaki and our Group companies in Japan have a program that enables employees living away from their families due to transfers to return home once a week, in order to enable the employees to be together with their families as much as possible.
In addition, we have introduced a system (known as the Happy Monday System), under which employees who have been transferred and who have returned home for the weekend, and who then have a longer commute, are considered to have worked their usual hours even if they cannot get to their workplace on time on the Monday due to the extra commuting time.
Certification as excellent companies based on law
Hoshizaki and our Group companies in Japan have been accredited as Excellent Companies, with 17 out of 19 companies receiving the Next-Generation Certification Mark (nicknamed the Kurumin Mark) (of these, 15 received the Next-Generation Special Case Certification Mark, nicknamed the Platinum Kurumin Mark), and 3 out of the 19 receiving the Women’s Active Participation Promotion Mark (nicknamed the Eruboshi Mark).
We will continue to work to create comfortable working environments where our employees can play active roles, as we aim for certification by all Group companies in Japan.
* As of December 2023
Platinum Kurumin Mark
Eruboshi Mark
Employee Satisfaction Surveys
Hoshizaki and our Group companies in Japan conduct employee satisfaction surveys of all employees each year.
Based on the results of these surveys, we analyze employee motivation and employee-friendliness for each company, and then create action plans with the aim of improvement and work to improve employee satisfaction.
We also look at both numerical data and qualitative open-ended comments to gain a firm understanding of issues on the ground that cannot be measured by numbers as we implement necessary countermeasures.
Club Activities
Hoshizaki supports sports and cultural activities conducted on an independent basis by employees.
Six clubs are currently active.
Employees are free to participate, which helps foster teamwork, improve physical fitness, and leads to a greater understanding of traditional cultures.
Some employees continue to play the sports they played as students.
Employees can also submit applications to launch new club activities.
Table Tennis Club
Member of the Aichi Prefecture Adult League
Main achievements
- - Participation in group leagues (Spring and Fall)
- - Participated in table tennis tournaments sponsored by the Toyoake City Table Tennis Association
Tennis Club
Member of the Toyoake City Tennis Association
Main achievements
- - Participation in group leagues
- - Participation in doubles team competitions
- - Participation in individual competitions (Toyoake Resident Tournament, etc.)
Basketball Club
Member of the Tokai-Hokushinetsu SB2 Regional League
Main achievements
- - Won the 2023 Aichi Prefecture Championship
- - Participated in the first round of the 99th Emperor’s Cup All Japan Basketball Tournament
- - Reached the Best 8 of the 2023 All Japan Adult Basketball Regional Leagues Championship
Baseball Club
Main achievements
- - Participated in the 2019 East Japan Rubber Baseball Tournament (Miyagi Prefecture)
- - Participated in the 2021 East Japan Rubber Baseball Tournament (Yamanashi Prefecture)
- - Participated in the 2024 East Japan Rubber Baseball Tournament (Nagano Prefecture)
- - Participated in the 2024 Prince Takamatsu Cup Rubber Baseball Tokai Tournament (Shizuoka Prefecture)
Track & Field Club
Main achievements
- - Placed first in the 2024 Lake Shinji Round-the-Lake Ekiden Relay Race (Winners of past races 14 times)
- - Participated in the Chugoku Corporate Ekiden Relay Race
- - Participated in the Chugoku Corporate Track & Field Championship
- - Participated in the Shimane Track & Field Championship
- - Participated in the Izumo Kunibiki Marathon
- - Participated in the Unnan City Track & Field Association Long-Distance Race
- - Participated in the Chugoku Corporate Long-Distance Race
- - Participated in the Izumo Track & Field Championship
Tea Ceremony and Flower Arrangement Club
