Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Work-Life Management Initiatives in Japan

The Ricoh Group will improve its corporate strength by ensuring every employee plays an active role with a sense of fulfillment, which will lead to innovations and contribute to the sustainable development of society. To realize this, we need to create an environment where diverse people can play active roles. Each employee needs to manage both their work and private life and work with high productivity.
Based on this policy, the Ricoh Group positions Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Work-Life Management as one of its management strategies.
The Ricoh Group has set three axes of “Cultivate awareness and corporate culture,” (the key element), “Promoting the Active Engagement of Diverse People” and “Supporting Work-Life Management and Reviewing Work Styles,” and is taking initiatives for each.

Employees with different cultures and backgrounds perform at their full capacity to generate innovation that creates new value.

Efficient working styles help employees lead a fulfilling life at work and home alike, and thus increase their productivity.
We aim to realize the above-described vision to increase corporate value and employee motivation (performance).

When promoting the Active Engagement of Diverse People and Supporting Work-Life Management and Reviewing Work Styles, it is essential to raise the awareness of each employee and develop a corporate culture to accept these initiatives. With this understanding, we conduct various activities to enhance employeesʼ correct understanding and Cultivate Awareness and Corporate Culture.

Also, employee awareness surveys focusing exclusively on work-life management are conducted with the aim of making these systems better known, improving employee awareness, and understanding employee needs regarding this theme.

To support employee work-life balance, Ricoh introduced childcare leave and shorter working hour programs in 1990, even before the enactment of the Child Care Leave Law.
These programs have been enhanced as appropriate to respond to the changing needs of employees, including those related to family care-giving.
The program lineup has been broadened to offer a range of options for shorter working hours and/or days, remote working, among others that can cater to the various lifestyles of individual employees.

Ricoh actively works to reduce total working hours through reforming workplace attitudes and establishing organizational systems. Seeking to change work style, we emphasize the importance of effective time management and appropriate working styles for increasing productivity and efficiency at work, advising employees to work intensively and take adequate breaks to refresh. Increased efficiency is expected to help curtail overtime hours. We also promote more active use of paid leave.
Specific measures in place include: Fresh Up Days, under which all staff, in principle, are encouraged to leave work on time on two common designated days of the week; a system in which checks are made with supervisors if their subordinatesʼ overtime exceeds the prescribed hours; and management training programs on personnel management affairs.
To facilitate the use of paid leave, a range of measures have been implemented such as: setting aside specific days and months to encourage large numbers of employees to take such leave; launching a program to promote a five-day consecutive leave period; and offering leave on an hourly basis.

We have revised the work style systems according to new work styles, including removing the core time from the flextime system and removing the limit on the number of days of remote work and the restriction on remote work places. In addition to these, we added satellite offices and adopted digital tools to improve work efficiency at the workplace. These revisions have realized optimal work styles for employees, allowing them to choose hours and places that fit their job type and contents and combine office work and remote work.

Level-based thematic seminars and forums for women

In line with its founding principles of “Love your neighbor, love your country, love your work,” Ricoh believes that all persons, with and without disabilities, should be given adequately fair treatment and opportunities to exploit their individual abilities to the fullest in the pursuit of self-fulfillment and meaningful work. Based on this belief, we have been proactively promoting the employment of disabled people and introducing to our sites, as necessary, access facilities such as ramps, accessible toilets, and dedicated parking spaces as well as specially designed work-related equipment.
At the Ricoh Group, to step up our efforts in this area, we set voluntary disability employment rate targets higher than legal standards, and have expanded job opportunities to offer positions particularly to people with intellectual or mental impairment. We will further raise our targets and expand opportunities for employing disabled workers.
For more details, please see Diversity KPIs.

We work on creating work environments where rehired employees can play active roles by utilizing the expertise and skills they have cultivated. We have adopted flexible time work, remote work, short work, and other work style systems to realize diverse work styles for employees. We also offer in-house recruitment and in-house secondary jobs to provide opportunities to employees to choose workplaces where they can demonstrate their skills and experience. Many employees continue working with a sense of fulfillment in the Group after their retirement.