Expanding employment opportunities for the elderly and people with disabilities, and promoting gender equality in the workplacePrograms for helping employees to maintain a good work-life balanceProviding employees with the scope to realize their aspirations in workplaces that also offer safety and securityDiversity in human resources
Employment opportunities
The NTT Group sees its human resources as the heart and
soul of its business operations, and focuses on hiring people
capable of performing in strategic areas of the rapidly changing
information and communications sector such as IP and
broadband technologies and international business.
We are also committed to expanding employment opportunities
for people with disabilities. In fiscal 2004, we established
a special subsidiary, to promote the hiring of people with disabilities,
and though our employment rate for people with disabilities
is still below the mandatory level of 1.8%, as of June
2006, it stood at about 1.7%1, an increase of 0.1% over the previous
year. We shall continue with our efforts to further boost
hiring of people with disabilities throughout the NTT Group.
The NTT Group has since 1999 also maintained a continuing
employment system that allows retirees to continue to work until
the age of 65 if they wish. Numerous people have used this
system to contribute their accumulated experience and skills
to our companies.
1. Figures for wholly owned NTT Group companies, as well as three listed companies: NTT DoCoMo, NTT DATA, and NTT Urban Development
2. The five core group companies are: NTT EAST, NTT WEST, NTT Communications, NTT DATA, and NTT DoCoMo
3. As of March 31, 2006
4. As of April 1, 2006
Initiatives
Creating jobs for people with disabilities (NTT CLALUTY* activities)
NTT CLALUTY employs people with disabilities to carry out such work as the administration of a portal site for disabled and elderly people, web accessibility diagnosis, and digitization of printed materials, and the company uses various means to ensure employees with visual, hearing and other disabilities can communicate with each other. For example, for meetings attended by both visually impaired and hearing impaired employees, comprehension is facilitated by the use of PCs, projectors and screens. Participants enter their comments into PCs for projection onto the screen to enable themselves to be understood by hearing impaired employees, who can then enter their own comments. Other participants can read these comments out loud for enable visually impaired participants, thus enabling dialog between all participants.
* An NTT subsidiary established to promote disabled employment, and certified by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare as meeting its requirements
Achieving a good work-life balance
The NTT Group has established policies for child care and nursing
care benefits that allow our employees to maintain a good
work-life balance that goes beyond legally mandated levels.
To encourage NTT employees to take advantage of these benefits,
we have also created an NTT Group Child Care and Family
Care Support site on our intranet where employees can find
information on both the NTT system and the Japanese social
security system. Online/distance learning courses and information
about NTT business developments and industry trends
are also made available to employees on maternity and other
leave to enable them to fit in again smoothly when the time
comes to return to work.
With the declining birthrate, we have shifted weight from spouse
to children and other dependents in calculating family allowances
by implementing revisions to allow increases without an upper
limit imposed when a certain number of dependents is reached.
The NTT Group is committed to developing forward-looking
policies based on the principles espoused in Japan's Law for
Measures to Support the Development of the Next Generation,
and as such, we endeavor not only to establish necessary programs,
but also to ensure that these programs are easy and
convenient to use and are taken advantage of by our employees.
Personal growth for all employees
Personnel and pay system
In 2001, the NTT Group introduced a performance-weighted
pay system, and in April 2006 revised this system to place even
more priority on personal performance with the aim of further
boosting employee motivation.
Under the revised system, in addition to the continued implementation
of already established systems for providing training
in performance evaluation and gathering feedback from employees
on their personal performance evaluations, we are
seeking to enhance the impartiality of our performance evaluation
system and employee satisfaction with it through introducing
multi-source evaluation, providing high performance
case studies, enhancing training for improving reciprocal evaluation
skills of both evaluators and employees, and developing
online guidance to help employees to better understand
how the system works.
We feel that the above enhancements to our pay system will
create a better motivated, better disciplined workforce capable
of demonstrating initiative and improving performance.
Developing human resources
To nurture its employees as professionals who play key roles
supporting ubiquitous broadband communications, the NTT
Group endeavors to provide each and every employee with the
opportunity to actively and independently develop their abilities
in accordance with their own career plans. To such an end,
we provide a wide range of educational programs, including
group training, e-learning materials, online/distance learning
courses, in-house certification of skill levels, and support for
the earning of qualifications. In addition to providing such opportunities
for gaining knowledge and skills, we aim to nurture
highly motivated employees who are always ready to take on
new challenges.
Creating opportunities to seek new challenges
In order to provide ambitious employees with the opportunity
to seek new challenges, we run in-house recruitment programs
such as NTT Group Job Challenge and NTT Group Venture.
NTT Group Venture is a program permanently open to all NTT
employees that aims to create and develop new venture businesses
and foster entrepreneurship. The program has already
led to the establishment of two new companies.
A workplace where everyone feels safe and secure
Occupational safety
All NTT Group companies recognize the importance of proactively
implementing occupational safety programs to prevent
accidents in the workplace. Work conditions and standard operation
manuals are constantly under review, and case studies
are used to inform employees and maintain their awareness
of occupational safety issues. In the unfortunate instance
that an accident does take place, the NTT Group performs an
internal review of conditions, contributing factors, and measures
for preventing recurrence, which is promptly shared with
all Group companies.
We make every effort to ensure that our employees are well educated
about safety issues, are constantly reminded of the
importance of workplace safety, and are able to apply their
knowledge in the prevention of accidents. Some of our facilities
also hold thorough safety inspections on a monthly basis.
The NTT Group is committed to ensuring occupational safety
in each of its member companies.
Employee benefits
The NTT Group has implemented a wide range of social welfare
policies and benefits that are intended to provide security
and ensure that its employees are able to devote themselves
wholeheartedly to their duties from the time they join an NTT
Group company until they retire. Employees are able to take
advantage of these policies and benefits in accordance with
their own personal life plans.
