Fostering an Inclusive Culture

The Kao Group in Japan continuously releases educational videos, seminars, and best practices inside the company on various themes related to diversity (such as women’s empowerment, LGBTQ+ issues, employees from different cultures, employees with disabilities, balancing work and childcare, and balancing work and family care), based on the Inclusion Promotion Plan. This enables us to encourage employees in the Group to understand DE&I and ultimately implement these concepts throughout the workplace.

In 2023 we updated the DE&I Portal, which is increasingly being used as “a site for disseminating information to help employees of the Kao Group in Japan learn about DE&I and put it into practice,” to make it easier for them to access important information. In addition, the “Kao DE&I Square,” a team of employees interested in DE&I who gather voluntarily, is used every day to share information on DE&I-related topics inside and outside the company and to exchange opinions from a variety of perspectives, serving as a venue for interactive communication.

Underlying the educational content we regularly produce and disseminate are basic policies and ideas the company values established for each theme. As an opportunity to communicate these messages in a consistent manner, we released four special pages on the DE&I Portal in 2023 in conjunction with International Women’s Day in March, Pride Month in June, Employment Promotion Month for People with Disabilities in September, and Family Care Day in November, and distributed a variety of information to raise awareness.

“Kao Mates,” which focuses on the real faces of Kao Group employees from diverse backgrounds and introduces episodes of equity and inclusion in the workplace, has grown to become popular content with over 5,000 page views each time in the first month of publication. In 2023, we introduced a female employee who became the first manager at a key plant and an employee who is piloting a Japanese language learning program for non-Japanese employees working in Japan based on their experience working overseas. By reading the articles while comparing themselves to familiar employees who practice DE&I, many employees have an opportunity to think about what they can do and change their behavior.

We are drawing focus on Kao Group members’ activities to promote inclusion, and are continuing efforts aimed at sharing these activities. In 2023, in an interview article titled “The Secret Story behind the Creation of Listening and Understanding Hair Styling: Weaving Thoughts,” employees who were mainly involved in the planning and production of the 12 hair styling audio information contents on the Liese brand website, offered their cherished thoughts, difficulties, responses, and subsequent action they took.

In the second year of the “Quiz to Learn DE&I,” which is designed to have fun while learning about current DE&I topics and Kao’s DE&I promotion activities, approximately 2,700 employees participated, even though it was voluntary. The eight-question case study on topics that can actually happen in the workplace was well received, as it was in 2022, and “My DE&I Experience at Work” received more than 400 comments.
The DE&I EXPO, a special project on the portal to consolidate the educational content released in 2023 and to see and feel the “now” of Kao’s DE&I, took place from January to April 2024. Under the theme “Feel the DE&I,” we are creating opportunities to reach more employees by repeatedly making it visible to them.

Toward creating an organizational culture that focuses on dialogue, we are promoting activities to increase understanding of psychological safety, unconscious biases, and microaggressions.

In 2023, the e-learning program “Basic knowledge on psychological safety” was launched as a mandatory program for all Kao Group managers in Japan. The course consists of a lecture, self-reflection exercises, a check test, and a declaration of one action for the future. The course is available in an on-demand viewing environment, making it easy for managers to take it at any time. This has created an opportunity for managers to gain insights into their own positions in light of their own experiences, such as, “I gained a deeper understanding of psychological safety, which I thought I knew about, and it gave me an opportunity to reflect on my own behavior.” We will continue to provide learning opportunities in the future, aiming to establish psychological safety as part of the organizational culture.

As a global company, we held an executive study session, with outside experts giving lectures in September, on the theme of “How to create an inclusive organization through actions addressing unconscious bias.” The lecture, which used global examples, provided an opportunity for participants to confirm their awareness and practice of DE&I. Feedback included comments such as, “I realized once again that I have unconsciously applied my own biases to various matters” and “In order to become an inclusive leader, I would like to further strive to understand diversity and manage with attention to the individuality of each person.”

We conducted the e-learning “Basic knowledge on unconscious bias” as part of the Dialogue Festival, a program to improve the mindset and skills with regard to communicating. The aim was to learn points to recognize and address one’s own unconscious bias and to practice them in the workplace. The program comprises video clips of cases that are likely to occur in the workplace and how to deal with them, individual self-reflection exercises, and a declaration of one action for the future. Although the course was voluntary, approximately 700 participants took it. Participants commented, “I thought I was aware of it, but there were a number of areas that made me think,” and “I want to always be aware of any bias in my thinking and check with those around me.” The course provided an opportunity for employees to rethink their own unconscious bias and gain hints on how to address it.

In addition to continuing training on unconscious bias, we have initiated training on microaggressions and allyship. By providing employees with the tools to recognize and address microaggressions in these efforts, we are fostering allyship and creating a more supportive and understanding work environment.

For Summer DE&I Training Sessions, we offered two sessions each in German and English on microaggressions for the German Employee Committee and salon sales leaders in the U.K.