Net One President Takeshita "Listening to All Employees' Voices for Corporate Culture Reform"
――With the goal of restoring the trust that has been lost due to the revelation of repeated scandals, we renewed our management structure in April. How have you been working on this for the past six months? Takeshita: My major mission is to understand where the company's functions and culture fell short, and how to build new functions and culture. When I arrived at the company, I announced my commitment to achieving both continuous growth and governance. In order to get this done no matter how many years it takes, we will lay the foundation for it in the first year. The first thing to do is restore credit. In addition to reporting to the market and customers on the status of improvements and the progress of measures to prevent recurrence, we convey the message that we will not stop growing. We have and continue to talk with quite a few of our customers, either in person or remotely, about the company situation, how to prevent a recurrence, how to strengthen governance, and so on. Recognize your contribution to the team – how is it received by your employees? Takeshita: For most of the employees, the series of scandals came as a surprise to them, and they are all employees who have worked diligently. I have caused a great deal of concern, including to the employees' families, so I have to show how I will create the future. Therefore, while working to reorganize and strengthen the functions of the company, we set up a Respect Communication Team to engage in dialogue with all 2,600 employees. We are now implementing initiatives to listen to the voices of the frontline, sincerely reflect on the situation, and change our behavior and awareness together with our employees. ――In the report of the external investigative committee, it was pointed out that there are also problems with the corporate culture. Takeshita There was a strong culture of praising so-called "cool" work, where a certain amount of mistakes are tolerated in aggressive work that focuses on innovative proposal activities. On the other hand, defensive work, where mistakes are unacceptable, was weak. It is true that there was a tendency not to give an honest evaluation, saying, "That's an okuri bunt, isn't it?" The fact that we weren't really listening to the voices of our employees was apparent in such places. ――As one of the measures to prevent recurrence, we have decided to abolish the individual incentive compensation system and shift to a team incentive system. So you're also going to evaluate the okuri bunt that contributes to the team in the future? Takeshita Governance, in other words, internal control, will be firmly strengthened, and we will always turn the PDCA cycle and make it open to the outside world. From the point of view of the site, this is an additional task that has not been done before, and it is difficult for employees to imagine that the term internal control is their own matter. For this reason, we use the term “inner control” to describe it internally. What we do in practice is to avoid, reduce, transfer and retain the risks that each employee may incur in their work.