Diversity & Inclusion Initiatives
The Company believes that it is important to respect diverse values in order to achieve sustainable growth and enhance corporate value, and by building a diverse organization that is not limited by gender, age, nationality, race, or other attributes, and by fostering a corporate culture in which all employees can play an active role, the Company will create new innovations and continue to enhance its own value as a growing company.
- For more details, please see the other page "Diversity & Inclusion"
Diversity & Inclusion
Gender Diversity Initiatives
Atsushi Maruo
Senior Managing Member of
the Board of Directors,
Representative Director
The Company is committed to gender diversity (women's advancement) as a step toward strongly promoting diversity that respects diverse values.
The ESG Committee has identified 11 material issues (the most important issues) and has established and disclosed a company-wide action plan with indicators and targets. Among these, under the material issue "Employee Engagement," we aim to create value through "promotion of active roles for diverse human resources" as one of our KPIs, and as a central measure, we are strongly promoting women's activities. Furthermore, one of the strategies in the Medium-Term Management Plan is "Development of human resources to realize growth strategies," and one of our targets is "Creating an environment in which a diverse range of human resources, including women, professionals, and seniors, can play an active role."
In order to further increase our recognition as a company that stands by women, we are strongly promoting women's advancement in key positions in our organization and will focus on developing female managers by providing a comfortable work environment, fostering career orientation, and enhancing our education and training system to expand their capabilities.
Gender Diversity Promotion Structure
The Company is committed to implementing measures throughout the Group to encourage the growth of highly motivated women. This system is headed by the Representative Director and Senior Managing Director, with the Group Business Management Division playing a central role, in cooperation with the entire Group and its various divisions, and promotes the creation of an organization that enables women to play an active role without being restricted by gender differences.
As a company that supports women's health at every stage of their lives, we consider the promotion of women's advancement in our company to be an urgent issue, and we consider it an important social mission of our company to drive the advancement of women in society as a whole by promoting this issue, as well as an important indicator that leads to the enhancement of corporate value.
Voluntary Action Plan for Female Officers
Maiko Mori
Member of the Board of Directors, Executive Corporate Officer - ASKA Pharmaceutical Holdings Co., Ltd.
Member of the board of Directors, Executive Corporate Officer
Division Director, Quality & Safety Assurance Division - ASKA Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.
Based on the judgment that the presence of multiple female officers is essential to reflect diverse perspectives and values among the officers responsible for making important corporate policy decisions, we have also set an indicator for the percentage of female officers and have aimed to nurture female officers within the Company.
As a result of our efforts, we had our first female Board member in June 2022.
Interview with Maiko Mori
As a leading company protecting women's health in all fields, we promote an organization where women can play an active and vibrant role
Against the backdrop of increasingly fierce global competition, accelerating changes in the industrial structure, and an aging society with a declining birthrate, businesses, including our own, are now required to address human capital issues such as realizing work-style reforms and addressing labor shortages in the market. Among these, the reform of human resource strategies is essential, and diversity management, including women's advancement, is required as one of the pillars of such reforms.
Among the many pharmaceutical companies, we specialize in the field of obstetrics and gynecology, and we are aiming to raise our awareness as a company that is close to women. Moreover, I expect that in the future there will be a growing demand from women in general toward companies that are close to women, from the viewpoint of customers. In light of this, we have decided to specifically address gender diversity (women's advancement) as a step toward strongly promoting diversity in our company.
What are the needs and challenges in further promoting gender diversity in our group?
The challenge is to what extent the company can support the individual values that each employee believes in. Life events such as childcare and nursing care are directly related to each individual's work style, and all are critical issues when promoting the success of women. Even if a system is in place, I would like to see an environment where people can build personal relationships, discuss minor problems in the workplace, and help each other out. Creating an even more open workplace than now may be the driver to accelerate the promotion of women's activities.
In the future, we will enhance support for women's life events and for balancing work and childcare by making comparisons with other companies' precedents, and we will also communicate through training programs how the management level should be, for example, correcting stereotypes about working styles.
Ms. Mori, please give us a message, as our first female Board member, to female employees who wish to advance their careers.
I do not believe by any means that I have walked alone to my current position as a Board member. I have received support from many colleagues, supervisors, subordinates, family members, and friends. If you are ever approached by a company for a management position, I would like you to try first. I feel that it would be a shame to underestimate yourself and put the brakes on an excellent person saying, "I can't do it," even if the opportunity comes your way. The Company does not expect female managers to have the same work style as before. The Company aims to create an organization in which women can thrive in all fields through innovation and by bringing together your various values, personalities, and strengths to express your own identity. Let's move forward together.
Promoting Advancement of Women - General Employer Action Plan
The Company strongly promotes women's advancement in important posts in the organization and focuses on the development of female managers by providing a comfortable work environment, cultivating career orientation, and enhancing the education and training system to expand their capabilities.
ASKA Pharmaceutical, a core subsidiary of ASKA Pharmaceutical Holdings Co., Ltd., has formulated a general employer action plan since 2016, based on the Act on the Promotion of Women's Active Engagement in Professional Life (Act on Promotion of Female Participation) to promote women's advancement because the number of its regular employees are 101 or more.
As a company that provides total support for women's health at each stage of life throughout their lives, we began by creating a workplace environment that enhances work-life balance, and after raising awareness of work styles among men and women, in 2022 we formulated an action plan to further promote the advancement of women. Since then, we have been striving to increase the ratio of female managers, as well as to promote health support and flexible work styles.
Since FY2025, we have been promoting a new action plan (Phase 4) based on the past efforts, with three pillars: gradual development of women for management positions, promotion of flexible use of work systems, and strengthening of support that contributes to the maintenance and promotion of physical and mental health.
| Plan period: April 1, 2025 to March 31, 2030 |
| Target 1 |
Target ratio of women in management positions: 20%
Countermeasures
- Establish a target for the ratio of women in management positions and implement a step-by-step promotion of female personnel.
- Actively promote women to managerial positions at a younger age, with a target of 30% of female section chief.
- Implement selective training for female candidates for management positions.
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| Target 2 |
Raise awareness of the use of work systems that enable diverse and flexible work styles
Countermeasures
- Promote awareness of the use of various work systems, such as the full-flex-time system, telecommuting system, and remote/regional work system
- Promoting the use of annual paid leave system (including the use of annual leave in units of time)
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| Target 3 |
Strengthening physical and mental health through health management
Countermeasures
- Testing for early detection and prevention of disease (breast cancer, cervical cancer, thyroid function tests, etc.)
- Improvement of health literacy, focusing on lifestyle improvement (introduction of health apps) and stress management
- Establish “Women's Health Consultation Day” and enhance consultation and guidance by female nurses for female employees.
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Examples of Initiatives
Systems and Evaluation
Opinion Exchange Meeting for Women's Advancement
- Introduction of Role Grading and Single Rate Compensation System
- 360-degree evaluation
- Internal job posting career challenge system
- Career self-reporting system
Education and Training
Women's Career Design Training
- Opinion exchange meeting for women's advancement by management
- Selective training for female manager candidates
- Level-specific for managers at all levels
- Elective training programs for the development of next-generation management leaders
- Introduction of a self-learning system for building career ownership
- Workshops on women's health
Support for balancing both work and private life to enhance work-life balance
- Annual paid leave utilization rate Target: 75% or more
- Male employees taking childcare leave Target: 100% or more
- Full-flexible work system with no minimum working hours: three or more days off per week possible
- Annual paid leave in increments of one hour
- Telecommuting, remote work, and work location limited system
- Shorter working hours and staggered working hours
- Paid childcare leave: five consecutive days after taking leave
- Refreshment leave, leave for morning sickness and for menstrual periods, bone marrow donor leave, volunteer leave
- Consultation services by occupational health staff and introduction of external EAP (Employee Assistance Program) services
- Initiatives for early detection of medically unexplained symptoms
(thyroid function test, ferritin level measurement, uterine ovarian cancer tumor marker test)
In-house Workshops by Health Lab Mint+ for Women’s health
We held a workshop on women's health for all employees, both male and female, with the aim of creating a more comfortable work environment where all employees have proper knowledge about women's health and understand each other's problems that are specific to women. The attendance rate for this workshop was approximately 96%, and the results of a post-workshop questionnaire showed that both the level of understanding and satisfaction exceeded 90%, indicating a high level of interest in the subject.
We will continue to hold such workshops.
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The agenda slide of the workshop on women's health for all employees
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The slide of the workshop on women's health for all employees
Health Lab Mint+ for Women’s health (Japanese version only)
Collection of Related Data on Women's Advancement
Please refer to the ESG Chart and ESG Data Book for the latest information.
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