Tokio Marine Group's actions to enable us to be a "Good Company"
Action
2020/6/25 up
Vol.4
Towards the Realization of a Strong, Flexible Company
Tokio Marine Group's Efforts to Promote Women's Success
- The Founding of Tokio Marine Group Women’s Career College (TWCC)
- Tokio Marine Group promotes diversity and inclusion so that employees with varied values can exhibit their skills to the fullest regardless of their gender, age, nationality, or whether they have a disability and so that we can continue to be chosen by customers and continuously grow. Among our initiatives, we’ve made efforts for some time to proactively create a good environment and cultivate human resources to promote women’s success in light of changes in women’s working environments. And so we founded Tokio Marine Group Women's Career College (TWCC), our internal career college for female employees, as a new initiative in September 2019. Its aim is for female employees to build their careers willingly and participate in their jobs even more actively, and its concept is to provide a place for learning and experience so that they can take initiative to work on self-development. The program invites lecturers from outside the company and meets six times over half a year for participants to study topics such as leadership theory, design thinking, and digital transformation.
- To Discover Their Own Answers While Searching for a Work Style and Career To Strive Towards
- The officer of Tokio Marine Holdings’ Human Resources Department, which runs TWCC, described their thoughts on this program as follows: “With work styles and options for female employees increasing and individual perspectives expanding, we would like to provide a place for female employees who have worries or concerns about actively building their careers to learn together while applying themselves with their colleagues. And we want them to build a network to grow together while motivating each other and respecting the values of other female employees with diverse backgrounds, experience, and approaches who participate from within our domestic group companies. We founded this cross-group career-building program for female employees with that in mind. ”
In 2019, 72 female employees from 19 companies within our domestic groups took lectures as members of TWCC’s inaugural class. TWCC was held on Saturdays because, unlike training, it falls outside of regular duties, and the fees to join were at participants’ own expense. Still, more than twice the fixed number of people applied from all over Japan, and participants were selected by lottery. People with a wide range of ages and diverse backgrounds have participated.
Reasons for participating also varied. Participants assembled with their own ideas, such as: “I’d like to grow,” “I’d like to change something,” “I’d like to reexamine my own career,” “I’d like to learn various approaches and expand my perspective,” “I’d like to clarify my own values and goals,” and “I’d like to make friends with other working women.”
- Class Members Motivate Each Other and Gain Awareness While Exchanging Opinions
- In each class in the program, participants first take the lecture, then they further develop their understanding by splitting into groups of six and digging deep to discuss a topic related to the lecture. For example, in the class about leadership theory, each participant deliberately confronted herself with questions like: “What values do I hold dear?” and “What leadership is characteristics of me?” Enthusiastic discussion unfolded, with statements such as: “I’d like to build relationships to learn from each other while placing importance on our respective values,” and “I’d like to demonstrate leadership that makes use of my environment so that everyone can act independently.”
Groups changed for each lecture, and classes were devised so participants could have exchanges and brainstorm with fellow members with whom they would not normally come into contact. Participants shared opinions such as: “I was able to learn with highly ambitious female employees in my group, and it led to improving my own motivation,” and “In the discussions, I was able to get lots of hints that I could put to use in my day-to-day work, like specific ways to deal with and approach things.” Fellow female employees from different companies and types of occupations and of different ages motivated one another while exchanging opinions and deepened their interactions with each subsequent session.
Finally, they expanded their perspective throughout the entire program by deepening their learning and thinking from various points of view, like by knowing their own values and strengths and how to express them appropriately, to acquire new knowledge.
- Realizing Fresh Possibilities and Encouraging Voluntary Changes in Ways of Thinking
- Participants had the following opinions upon completing all six classes in the program:
“I was feeling that the times I sensed from the situation that nothing would change even if I said something or that I was holding back had increased. However, after taking the classes, I was able to return to feeling like communicating with enthusiasm again. I’d like to have the self-awareness that I, too, am an employee who can change and develop the company and to face my everyday work proactively. ”
“Through thinking deeply about the pleasures and rewards of working, I became able to be conscious of an unshifting focal point, and a positive attitude to proceed in a way that’s right for me sprang up.”
“I became aware of acting and communicating from a broader, more elevated point of view of things like company policy and operational management, and my vague goal of aiming for a managerial position changed to a clear decision.”
“By recognizing that I myself am a part of diversity, my awareness of how I interact with those around me has changed. I became able to have the awareness to look towards not only my own opinions but what kinds of thoughts and ideas there are in the opinions of others. ”
Taking classes at TWCC seems to have been an opportunity for each participant to realize her own fresh possibilities and take positive steps forward.
- Self-Initiative Will Lead to Invigoration of Our Whole Group
- In the future, diverse female employees will continue joining together at TWCC on their own initiative and learning the skills to think and act independently to aim to be the people they want to become while students motivate one another. We believe that the initiative and enthusiasm of students who personally say “I want to learn” and participate in TWCC will surely lead to invigoration of our whole group’s organization. Students will hereafter generate a “chain of initiative” by transmitting what they learned at TWCC within the group, and by connecting it to the further growth of each employee, the whole group will strive to be a “Good Company” that continues to grow.