EY Japan Integrated Report 2023
People highlight
EY Japan recognizes that talent is vital for a professional services firm to accurately identify client issues and respond quickly to change.
We start by encouraging each individual to reflect on their lifestyle and values with a focus on providing opportunities to discover a point where their individual My Purpose is mutually aligned with EY’s Purpose. As a people-first organization, we enhance the value of our people, which improves the corporate value of our clients and allows us to contribute to society. This in turn enhances our own corporate value, completing a value cycle to activate our own purpose: Building a better working world.
We are also promoting diversity, equity and inclusiveness (DE&I) and advancing initiatives that inspire positive change toward the achievement of equity with the aim of eliminating the systematic inequality and disparities that are deeply rooted in society. In FY2023, we worked toward realizing equity and our purpose through a video campaign in which individual EY members shared the story of their own personal experience.
Encouraging diverse people to thrive
Diverse Abilities Center
In June 2022, EY Japan launched the Diverse Abilities Center (DAC) with the aim of improving the employment and working conditions of neurodiverse* people with a diagnosis of mental or developmental disorders.
DAC is an organization enable individuals to thrive and to create value. The goal is for people to improve their skills in areas in which they demonstrate talent, enhance their own value, and advance their careers. This group can take advantage of flexible working practices and is supported by specialist staff who understand the nature of their specialized needs. Since its establishment, the center has welcomed 29 people to the firm. Eight staff members were later transferred to other EY organizations after receiving excellent performance evaluations at DAC and are now thriving in their new workplaces. Following the success of this program, we intend to recruit at least 10 new employees within FY2024 (July 2023 to June 2024).
We want DAC to be a model that can be replicated across society, to spur transformation both for our clients and also at EY, in business and in wider society, in order to create long-term value (LTV) for all stakeholders.
* The word “neurodiversity” is a combination of the word “neuro” and “diversity.” The concept is based on the idea that “differences in the brain, nerves, and various characteristics derived from them at the individual level are mutually respected as diversity, and that these differences should be used by society.” In particular, this concept views the phenomena that occur in developmental disabilities such as autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and learning disabilities as “natural and normal variations in the human genome,” rather than as a lack of ability or superiority or inferiority.
Source: Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Promotion of Neurodiversity
Building Workplaces Where Women Can Play Active Roles
We provide women with position-specific leadership training. The syllabus is aligned with the skills and experiences of individuals at different stages in their career in order to draw out their potential and motivate them to advance their careers. Our programs also encourage women to inspire each other and build new networks by bringing together participants of similar ages and career levels but with differing areas of expertise.
We are also supporting working parents by issuing a comprehensive guidebook for information on childbirth and post-childbirth leave, childcare leave, and other systems and services that support the balancing of work and child raising, as well as a guide to communicating with supervisors.
In recognition of these initiatives, EY Japan was ranked 8th overall in Nikkei Woman magazine’s 100 Best Companies Where Women Actively Take Part
LGBT+ Inclusiveness
Our human resources systems offer equal treatment to our people in same-gender relationships as those who are legally married. Our people can use personal medical leave when receiving gender-affirming surgery in Japan or overseas, and we also provide a list of medical facilities that can which meet their needs.
EY Japan Para and Deaf Athletes
EY Japan employs para and deaf athletes*1*2 who are actively competing in sport. We support these athletes as they continuously challenge themselves and take on the best in the world.
Takamasa Ishida was commended by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology for his success in deaf athletics., Osamu Hirai won his second successive Wheelchair Softball World Series in 2023, and Uchu Tomita won a bronze medal at the Manchester 2023 Para Swimming World Championships .
*1 Para athlete: Athlete who mainly competes in events for persons with physical disabilities
*2 Deaf athlete: Athlete who mainly competes in events for persons with impaired hearing
ey.com/ja_jp/people/ey-japan/ey-japan-para-and-deaf-athletes
Promoting flexible workstyles
EY Flex & Remote
To reflect changes in society and values, EY Japan introduced EY Flex & Remote as a means of empowering our people to design personalized ways of working that allow them to perform at their best, regardless of location or time. Offering flexible workstyles that are unaffected by where someone lives or major life events allows EY to attract a wide variety of people and give them opportunities to thrive. In 2022, we introduced a remote working scheme for EY people living long distances from major urban areas and more than 100 people take advantage of the scheme to work remotely from regions all over Japan.
Promoting well-being
We believes that the human value is core to increases in long-term value and is hugely dependent on well-being (i.e., a feeling of fulfillment). At EY, the well-being of our people raises productivity and fosters a desire to work with not only colleagues, but also other stakeholders. We believe that it enables us to continue providing value to customers and society in the long term.
Specific examples of our efforts include our involvement in the cross-sectoral Well-being Initiative, external collaborations with other companies, and EY-specific initiatives that we are implementing internally. We are also working to visualize the levels of well-being felt by our people and a well-being strategy determines which initiatives to carry out.
Our goal is to become an organization in which all EY people can find happiness and which can lead to the realization of well-being throughout society.
Growth opportunities at EY - a full lineup of education and training programs
We to foster a professional culture that encourages ongoing personal development and design our talent systems to support this.
In addition to various groupwide education programs that equip EY people with the specialist knowledge necessary for their roles, and the hard and soft skills required to raise their people value, we also offer a wide range of support that empowers employees both to acquire skills that align with their individual situations and to provide high quality services.
In concrete terms, we have established the EY Badges on-demand education program and provide employees with opportunities to obtain master’s degrees such as the EY Tech MBA and EY Masters in Sustainability by Hult, offered in association with Hult International Business School. These shared global programs are available entirely free of charge to all of EY’s c.400,000 people in over 150 countries and territories. Using an innovative virtual learning model, they allow our people, wherever they are in the world, to develop relevant skills in related technology, including AI, leadership, and business in a way that best suits them.
Promoting and propagating diversity management
Received the Rainbow award for the third consecutive year in PRIDE Index,*1 an indicator of how companies have implemented initiatives to promote LGBT+ inclusion
EY Japan has received the Rainbow award for the third consecutive year in the PRIDE Index, an indicator of how companies have implemented initiatives to promote LGBT+ inclusion. The Rainbow award was newly introduced in 2021 to recognize companies that have promoted initiatives with collective impact. The award was given in recognition of our proactive attempts to work across sectors in order to deepen understanding of the LGBT+ community and advocate for social equity. We also received the Gold award, the highest rating, for the seventh consecutive year.
*1 The index is a metric for gauging corporate action that was launched in 2016 by “work with Pride,” a non-profit organization set up to promote and institutionalize LGBT+-related diversity management, as well as a system*2 for commending LGBT+-related actions at companies, organizations, etc. EY Japan has been a participant in PRIDE Index since 2017, and in 2023 earned Gold for the seventh year in a row.
*2 The awards system is scored and classified in five categories which are:
1. Policy, 2. Representation, 3. Inspiration, 4. Development and 5. Engagement/Empowerment.
Uplift Social Equity
We are promoting DE&I and advancing initiatives that inspire positive change toward the achievement of equity. We aim to eliminate the systematic inequality and disparities that are deeply rooted in our society. The world is changing dramatically and the outlook is uncertain we believe in times like these that we must direct our attention to what is closest to us.
To realize an inclusive and equitable society that allows people to be themselves and feel have the mutual trust with of those around them, we need to build a deeper understanding and better relationships with each other. We have taken the first step by creating videos introducing the experiences of a diverse selection of EY people in order to start conversations which bring people with different experiences and perspectives closer together.
