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Sustainability Management

DENSO’s Sustainability Management

DENSO’s sustainability management involves incorporating the perspective of social sustainability within the Company’s management strategies in order to improve corporate value. In other words, sustainability management means that we contribute to the resolution of social issues through our businesses.

The spirit of our sustainability management is encapsulated in the phrase “Provide quality products and services,” an essential part of the DENSO Creed, and this approach represents the core of our management that we have inherited since our founding and provides us with the driving force for growth.

History of Our Sustainability Management

Automobiles have always had positive and negative aspects. On the one hand, they provide a safe and comfortable means of transportation. On the other hand, they adversely impact society in such ways as exhaust gas and traffic accidents. Since its inception, DENSO has always tackled social issues head on using an approach that involves maximizing the positive aspects of automobiles and minimizing the negative ones. By doing so, DENSO has realized growth by striving to make cars more eco-friendly, safer, and more comfortable and convenient.

The creation of the electric car “DENSO-GO” at the time of the Company’s founding, when our management faced various hardships, was an undertaking that embodies our ambition to make cars better. From the 1970s on, we have created employment opportunities and contributed to the development of local communities by promoting Monozukuri and Hitozukuri at our manufacturing bases around the world.

In addition, we have extended the technologies that we have cultivated for the automotive industry to the fields of factory automation (FA) and agriculture, thereby working to address new social issues such as labor and food shortages.

In these ways, we have been constantly implementing sustainability management that balances business growth with the resolution of social issues. We therefore consider sustainability to be a part of our DNA itself.

Sustainability Policy

We formulated the DENSO Group Sustainability Policy to ensure that all Group employees engage in actions that adhere to the DENSO Creed and our basic Philosophy, and that are befitting of a global company, amid their interactions with society and our stakeholders. This policy reflects our commitment to taking action and is endorsed by the president & CEO of DENSO CORPORATION and the presidents of all Group companies in Japan and overseas.

Materiality

We determined focus fields when we formulated the DENSO Group Declaration of Corporate Behavior (the predecessor to the DENSO Group Sustainability Policy) in fiscal 2007. Since then, we have been making periodic revisions to our material issues, taking into account social trends and stakeholder expectations.
Our current material issues were formulated in fiscal 2019 from among the various issues society faces. These material issues were selected in consideration of the level of importance of such social issues to society and to the Company as well as to their relationship with the three areas of “green,” “peace of mind,” and “inspiring” declared under DENSO’s Long-term Policy for 2030.

Process for Determining Materiality

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We have determined KPIs for each of our selected materiality. These KPIs are monitored and deliberated as Companywide targets by the Management Deliberation Meeting and the Board of Directors. Also, we incorporated the achievement of some of these KPIs as an item for calculating director remuneration, and we began the operation of this remuneration system in fiscal 2023.

Management as Companywide Risks

Among our identified material issues, we have designated the environment (especially climate change), information security, and workplace safety as major risk areas in which the Risk Management Meeting should invest its resources and promote initiatives, based on their frequency of occurrence and level of impact. In this way, we are strengthening our Groupwide response to risks from the perspective of Companywide risk management.

Promotion Structure

DENSO’s formal committees (Management Deliberation Meeting, etc.) hold discussions and make reports on such matters as the direction of the Company’s sustainability management and the status of the Company’s overall sustainability activities.

In addition, the Corporate Strategy Center, which serves as the organization for promoting sustainability management on a Companywide basis, provides support to and tracks the activities of each department and promotes the communication of sustainability-related information both inside and outside the Company. The divisions responsible for each individual sustainability theme receive instruction from our various committees on the kinds of issues they should address and the activities they should pursue. These dedicated divisions then promote such activities in collaboration with other relevant divisions.

To lead the way in promoting sustainability, we select one sustainability leader in each department at DENSO (and one for each Group company) to spread and firmly entrench sustainability awareness and also to disseminate sustainability-related information.

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*1 Strategies deliberated on by the Management Strategy Meeting and the Management Deliberation Meeting
*2 With committees in charge of these themes, such as the Quality Assurance Meeting and the Companywide Safety, Health, and Environment Committee serving as the secretariat, initiatives to address these themes are deliberated on by the Company’s formal committees.

Specific activities – Activities to permeate Sustainability

Implementing sustainability management means that all divisions and employees consider how they can contribute to the resolution of social issues in their day-to-day work and take action to do so. Accordingly, we believe that sustainability management is the first step toward resolving social issues.

In light of this belief, we consider and promote a broad range of initiatives, such as activities to effectively raise awareness of sustainability among employees and communicate information, to ensure that each employee can speak about sustainability management in his or her own way and engage in appropriate actions. These initiatives are promoted in consideration of cultures in each area of operation and the corporate cultures of each Group company.

Also, to make sure that we convey how our efforts relate to society in an easy-to-understand manner for all of our stakeholders, including our employees, we are actively disseminating information and engaging in communication leveraging the SDGs, which have become a globally shared language.

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    Educational tours (the EU)

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    In-house newsletters (Kyosan Denki Co., Ltd.)

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    e-learning (Asia)

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    Workshops (China)

[Topics] “SDGs and Me” Essay Contest (China)

  • Essay Contest
  • An essay contest was held in China in which essays on the theme of “SDGs and Me” were collected from across the country as part of an effort to encourage employees to think about how their work is connected to the SDGs. Applications started in January 2020, and around 500 essays were received in total. From among these essays, 20 grand prize winners and 30 runner-up winners were selected. These essays were made available for viewing throughout the DENSO Group, including outside of China, via the Company intranet so that employees can reference them when thinking about how their own work is related to the SDGs.

Initiatives of DENSO CORPORATION

Employee awareness

To approach sustainability from a multifaceted perspective and to understand how our work relates to social issues and pursue efforts accordingly, we held meetings provided by outside lecturers (investors, officers in charge of sustainability at corporations, and members of international organizations) and workshops that helped deepen the understanding of sustainability among our employees.

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    Meeting with outside lecturer

Incorporating Sustainability into Fiscal Year Plans

When formulating annual plans, divisions are asked to utilize the SDGs along with a perspective of addressing social issues to formulate individual employee performance goals based on the role of their organization and their priority initiative themes for the given fiscal year. This approach is taken to deepen the understanding of sustainability among all divisions and all employees.

[Topics] Indication of Relevant SDGs on Employee IDs (DENSO CORPORATION, Group companies in South Korea, and other Asian Countries)

  • When setting personal annual performance goals, employees are asked to think about the SDG goals to which their work will contribute and to indicate those goals on their employee IDs and business cards. This measure allows employees to reflect on their own SDG goals and to share these goals with their colleagues and thereby create more frequent opportunities to talk about how to contribute to the accomplishment of the SDGs.

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Communicating Information

We disclose information via integrated reports, our corporate website, news releases, and other media while also encouraging all employees to proactively discuss sustainability themes with customers, their families, and other stakeholders with the aim of communicating our initiatives to external stakeholders.

To achieve this aim, it is important that all employees understand our sustainability business strategies.

Accordingly, videos and other materials featuring introductions of our strategies toward the “green” and “peace of mind” by management are posted on the in-house intranet in an effort to deepen employee understanding.

Understanding the Level of Sustainability Awareness among Employees

We conduct an awareness survey to ascertain and check the level of understanding and implementation of sustainability by employees.

【Case Study】Sustainability Survey
DENSO Corporation has held the "Sustainability Survey" annually since 2006 to assess and check the degree of understanding and implementation of sustainability among employees.

    Results of fiscal 2023 survey (approx. 1,500 correspondents)

Question 1: Do you understand how your work contributes to the accomplishment of the SDGs?

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Question 2: Choose the option that best matches your thoughts regarding sustainability and the SDGs.

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Every year, we work to enhance the understanding of our employees on how their work relates to the SDGs (survey question 1). For example, when formulating individual performance targets for the year, employees hold dialogues with their supervisors pertaining to the connection between their individual targets and the SDGs. Additionally, over 80% of employees have a favorable view on how their work and the Company’s businesses contribute to the realization of the SDGs (survey question 2).

Dialogue with Society