Corporate Topics：「Back to Basics Project」

As a "Global Innovation Company," the Rakuten Group aims to create world-class innovative services. One of the things we value most is a corporate culture that allows a variety of people and ideas to flow openly. We promote the creation of systems and environments that allow each and every one of our employees, who come from different backgrounds, to demonstrate their abilities to the fullest.

The number of our employees has continued to increase over the past few years as the business has grown, with the number of countries/regions of origin represented now exceeding 100, and the company environment changing at an astonishing pace.
I think there are very few examples of an environment as diverse and open as Rakuten exist in Japan, and I am very proud of that. On the other hand, communication becomes more complex and mutual understanding more difficult as the diversity and scale of the business continues to expand. The "Back to Basics Project" was launched to overcome this issue, to create an environment that draws out the full potential of each employee, and to achieve the goal of "building winning talent and winning teams."

The "Back to Basics Project" is starting to show some positive results.

In terms of recruitment, efforts to improve the recruitment process and strengthen recruitment branding have led to results such as securing the number of hires and improving our recruitment brand ranking.

In terms of "development", we started with the company-wide introduction of weekly one-on-one meetings between managers and team members. The supervisor should not only pay attention to the "results" of a member's work, but also listen to the "process" and occasionally give suggestions or advice. If they think highly of their members, make sure they know it. We are aiming to revitalize communication through by including such tangible and easy-to-understand feedback through these meetings, we aim to revitalize our in-house communications. Of course, feedback also requires certain skills, so in parallel, we also started "feedback training" for managers. In addition, we developed 38 new group learning and experiential training programs. According to the results of a survey of participants afterward, over 90% were satisfied with the efficacy of these programs.

In terms of retention, we updated the evaluation and remuneration system to reflect employee performance more fairly. Moreover, we have established a new severance payment system for long-term employees, expanded teleworking and staggered commuting, and introduced a flex system to promote a variety of work styles to meet the needs of employees. Finally, we created a "human resource development map." The goal of this initiative has been to clarify the skills and careers that can be gained at Rakuten, thereby enabling employees to map out their mid- to long-term career plans at Rakuten.

Besides these efforts, we also worked on improving the infrastructure of the human resource management system and other systems, including the introduction of one that allows simultaneous talent and personnel management for the entire Rakuten Group. When we first started this project, an outside consultant told us that such a radical change would take five or six years to demonstrate results, but we saw results in just one and a half years. I believe this is something that only Rakuten, with its swift pace of implementation, can do.