DRIVEN BASE

CHRO MESSAGE

Enhancing Corporate Value by Promoting a Free and Open Corporate Culture and the DENSO Spirit

    Kenichiro Ito : Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) Member of the Board of Directors, Senior Executive Officer

Since its founding, DENSO has always promoted management that valued people. Management that values people helps improve the well-being of each employee and leads to the provision of new value that satisfies the customer. The first step in achieving such management is ensuring that employees can work in good health and with peace of mind. The next step is enabling employees to work with enthusiasm in an environment that facilitates good communication. In addition, it is also important to have each employee act on behalf of the customer and society and be able to express themselves freely.

Recently, we launched PROGRESS, a vision and action plan for our people and our organization, with a view to enhancing employee well-being. Under PROGRESS, we have declared our intention to reform various personnel systems so that we can become a group of professionals who take action and implement concrete measures to bring happiness to people and society and who are able to envision their dreams and make them a reality. In this integrated report, I have the privilege of reporting the essence of such initiatives.

The driving forces for realizing the goals of PROGRESS are a free and open corporate culture and the DENSO Spirit, which serves as a guideline for the actions of our employees. If we can embody the DENSO Spirit within a culture where there is little distance between employees and executives and supervisors and their subordinates and where employees can exchange their honest opinions based on respect for one another, then we can truly invigorate our people and our organization.

DENSO is entering the period of its second founding in which it is taking on such challenges as creating value in the CASE era and realizing carbon neutrality. Being able to continue to deliver new value to our customers and contribute to society going forward will depend on several factors. These include how we will increase the number of employees with diverse thoughts and ideas and how we will empower such employees so that they can work with enthusiasm. These also include the kind of steps we will take to further enhance employee well-being. In that regard, it is now more important than ever that we maintain a free and open corporate culture and share the DENSO Spirit with all of our diverse employees.

As chief human resources officer (CHRO), I have worked to create opportunities to speak about the relationship between DENSO’s management policies and strategies and the human resource development initiatives we are promoting under PROGRESS. I have also spoken about what I have learned through my personal work experience and my experience putting the DENSO Spirit into action. In addition, I have held numerous dialogues with a wide range of our global employees, from new recruits and regular employees to managerial personnel and executives. At DENSO, the leaders of Group companies and heads of departments in each area around the globe value this kind of communication and execute their duties with the utmost respect for communication. As we enter into the period of our second founding, we find ourselves in an opportune time to focus our efforts on maintaining and passing on a free and open corporate culture and the DENSO Spirit. Going forward, we will continue these kinds of human resource initiatives as we work to enhance DENSO’s corporate value.