This time, so we will start the web conference on diversity and inclusion strategy of Hitachi Limited. Thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to attend the briefing. The material we will use today is posted on our news release site. The presenters' English can be listened on the Japanese channel by using the language selection function. Please choose the language you prefer using the interpretation button on the bottom of your Zoom screen.
The location of the display may differ depending on your device. But on the PC, interpretation button is at the bottom of your Zoom screen. Let me introduce the participants. Senior Vice President and Executive Officer and CHRO of Hitachi Limited, Hidenobu Nakahata, Vice President and Executive Officer and CDIO, Lorena de la Givana. The 2 will be the participants.
So first, Nakahata would like to say a few words.
Please wait for a while while we are changing the screen. Mr. Nakahata, please. Thank you. And Nakahata, CHRO, Hitachi.
Thank you very much for sparing your time despite your busy schedule. Today, we have a news release, as you can see on the screen. Hitachi diversity and inclusion strategy will be presented. As you can see here, in terms of diversity and inclusion, Hitachi has set a new target by 2,030 to achieve 30% of female and non Japanese executives and corporate officers. We see Hitachi diversity and inclusion is positioned, as we've explained by Lorena later, that is to promote the social innovation business globally, the direction of the business.
According to that, we believe that talent is necessary, not only female, but also regardless of nationality, diversity must be promoted globally. From year 2000, diversity and inclusion has been promoted in Hitachi. In particular, from 2012, relationship with the business was taken into consideration. To accelerate this process, last year in 2020 April, as you can see, Lorena was appointed as the Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, including Japan. On a global basis, diversity inclusion is promoted under her leadership.
And in April this year, she became a Vice President and Executive Officer of Hitachi Limited. In the 111 years of history of Hitachi, for the first time, Well, we had female directors, but as executive officers, it was the first female executive officer and she is now working here in Japan. Now I'd like to ask Lorena to introduce her presentation.
Thank you very much, Nakata san. So next, Lorena will explain our diversity and inclusion strategy. Please wait for a moment until we switch the screen.
Lorena, please.
My name is Lorena della Giovanna, and I'm very delighted to be here today to talk with you about the diversity and inclusion strategy of Hitachi. Before going into the core of today's event, let me briefly introduce myself. I am Italia from Milano, and I spent almost my professional career within Hitachi, initially growing in a vertical function from a national to an international responsibility within the finance organization in a multibusiness environment. And then I added the chance to changing other different roles, including the country responsibility at the time when Italy was becoming of strategic importance for the global expansion of the group. Working for Hitachi, it has been for me like working for many different industries.
We have many businesses and many and all these businesses are quite diverse. I spent 5 years in U. K. At the European Regional Headquarter of Hitachi Ltd, and I really enjoyed that experience because it brought a massive benefit to me as an individual and as a professional. I have been pushed out by my comfort zone and naturally interacted with a different culture, pushed me to have a more open minded mindset, to think in a different way, to enhance my analytical and problem solving skills as well as to nurture a more international leadership.
I am a quite curious and passionate person in whatever I do privately and professionally and probably that brought me here today. So I moved to Tokyo last year to cover this important role to change Hitachi for the better. It's a very exciting as well as a very challenging role because one of my mission is to create an environment where people can express their unique perspectives and at the same time knowing that their contribution are valued. From this year, as Nakat Hassan mentioned, I have the honor to be Vice President and Executive Officer, and I have been assigned additional responsibility around the sustainability as Deputy Chief Environmental Officer. Next slide, please.
So what does it mean diversity and inclusion for Hitachi? First of all, we talk the talk. We are publicly committed on DNI as part of our business strategy and as a key element of sustainability. For Hitachi, diversity and inclusion means, 1st of all, acknowledging that our over 300,000 employees are unique and diverse. And each of us carry a huge asset of skills, capabilities, idea, experience and values.
So the it's very important that within Hitachi, we have the ability to leverage this diversity by implementing a process for behavior change, by creating an environment where people can be themselves because that represents a huge opportunity for Hitachi to bring innovation, to tackle new market, to better serve our customer, to attract new talents and to enhance our reputation. It's not a matter of why and what. Hitachi wants to be a global leader. DNI is crucial for that. We wanted to expand the social innovation business.
We wanted to provide digital solution. We wanted to contribute to the society. And in fact, we are strongly committed to ESG, and DNI is one key element of that. There is a stronger correlation between success on DNI in terms of financial results, in terms of growth and innovation, in terms of improved performance in the market, in terms of higher engagement scores of the employees. And the major investors, not only the institutional one, are now using DNI as a driver in their as major driver in their choices in the same way they have done for the environmental one, which now became mandatory.
As Nakata san mentioned, diversity and inclusion is not new within Hitachi. In the past 2 decades, we have run a number of activities and initiatives mainly focused on the gender and in Japan. We are now in the phase where we are expanding the scope of diversity globally to all the dimension of diversity, and we are integrating diversity and inclusion into the business strategy. Next, please. So why it is so important today, so critical today?
Let's say that the surrounding environment has changed. In the past, in the '80s, the Japanese economy was booming. The GDP of Japan was the 2nd highest in the world. So a monoculture homogeneous approach was successful to meet the customer requirements. We were working very hard for long hours to produce as much products as possible in order to satisfy our customers.
However, today, we are facing erratic change in the market. Social challenges are increasing. We see globalization. We have emerging countries. We have the evolution of the technology.
So all the sectors from finance to tech to retail are really realizing that the future growth and the sustainable business depend on the creation of a vibrant workplace environment, where everyone can express freely their values, their ideas to contribute to the business. So what we need is a much more agile approach. We need a much more diverse workforce, which represents the world around us in terms of gender, nationality, religious belief, background, sexual orientation. And this is going to bring us even more close to our customers and to the society because we can understand each other much better and we can communicate much better. Next slide, please.
So in our journey to become a global leader, already 10 years ago, Hitachi thought that the relationship between the CEO and the more diverse Board of Directors would have brought and would have made a huge difference. So diversities in terms of degrees, in terms of experience, in terms of ideas because that will bring a stronger governance mechanism as well as will pursue a more breakthrough solution and products and business improvements. In fact, today, 10 out of our 13 directors are independent, 6 out of 10 are non Japanese and 2 out of 6 are female. Next slide, please. These are a couple of examples on the positive impact of diversity and inclusion into the business.
And this is also how to prove that diversity and inclusion is not just how to engage with our employees, but how we manage our business. So on the left side, this is a story of Japanese and Italian engineering capabilities integrated to develop the new double decker train. By that, Hitachi has been able to win 1 of the very important tender in Europe with 1 of the major European railway operator in a very much competitive market. And this didn't just bring financial benefit because Hitachi was able to increase the business and the revenues. But also we have been good for the society because this train, thanks to this integration of diverse capability, has been designed to think how to improve the passenger experience and how to be more sustainable for the environment.
On the right side, when we talk about artificial intelligence, we all know that we are going to touch ethical issues. So the really the ability of Hitachi to leverage the number of employees that we have across the globe to create innovation, which can have global value but as well as applicable in the region is very example. Next slide, please. So in terms of execution, what's happened during 2020? First of all, we have achieved the target set, 10% in both female and non Japanese for corporate officer and above and 800 female managers in Hitachi City in Japan.
In parallel, we have focused our efforts to accelerate diversity and inclusion at the global level by developing the global strategy, by putting the business as the leader of this program, by running a number of activities to foster inclusive culture as well as to empower female employees and to make our voice more heard. In this slide, you can see the transition across all these years to achieve today targets, not just for the corporate officer and above, but also for the female managers.
Next.
A couple of more details about the FY 2020 activities. First of all, as you can see on the right side, I have been appointed. However, the diversity and inclusion organization is very strong. There is a strong commitment from the top, and also one of our external director is involved in this promotion. During FY 'twenty, we have looked to design the global plan.
And we have done based on the internal assessment of our data, and we have compared our position with our peers as well as we have defined the mid- and longer term goals. And we have worked very closely with the business. So we really try to understand the business strategy, the challenges, the concern, and then we have reflected those in while designing the plan. Finally, in 24 talent committee session. We had a very productive discussion where we had the chance to review the future talents and discuss with the business what was the best for them in terms of competencies.
Next slide, please. We talk about diversity and now we move to inclusion. I always say that diversity is the strategy and inclusion is the goal because to appoint a diverse talent doesn't bring any benefit if the environment is hostile. So we have a look on how to have a more inclusive culture. And for example, we have joined the Valuable 500 in February.
And this is an association an private organization that have been founded in 2019 at the Global Economic Forum in Davos. And by that, Hitachi is confirming the strong commitment on diversity across all the dimension. I have personally been involved in empowering female employees by mentoring program, by one to one meeting with the talent candidates, by running a roundtable. And I do believe that Hitachi has very good female talent. Next slide, please.
So what next? As I mentioned before, when we develop the global strategy, we look also at the target. And today, I'm happy to announce that we aim to achieve 30% of non Japanese and 30% of female in corporate officer position and above by 2,030. How? We have defined the plan.
This plan has been done based on the business strategy, based on our goal to expand the social innovation business, based on the internal baseline of Hitachi and based on the comparison of Itachi position with our competitors. We have designed the plan based on 5 dimension. The leadership commitment mainly aim to create value for internal and external stakeholders. The culture, we all know we all are aware that the culture is difficult to measure, but it's very easy to recognize. So it's very important, as I said before, in order to retain people, in order to create an environment where everyone can be themselves to work a lot on the culture transformation.
In terms of recruiting, the it's very challenging, especially in these days where we are all facing the so called talent war. It's very difficult to recruit talent. So it's very important to put in place some initiatives in order to accelerate it. Retention. Retention is one of the pillars very important and because this is really measuring the inclusiveness of the environment of Hitachi.
And finally, in terms of advancement, the advancement is the most challenging across all these pillars because the development of a leader takes time and the program around more details, So first of all, we are going to set KPI for the first time and those KPI will be tracked and then we will be able to disclose those year by year. We are going to build the global team with the regional head in order to ensure that all the initiatives will take into consideration the local society requirements, the local customer requirements and the local businesses as well as in order to ensure that all the activities across the Hitachi businesses will be coordinated. We are going to strengthen the communication. Communication is very important to engage internally our employees as well as our stakeholders. We are going to run a number of initiatives around the culture from a specific survey, from specific trainings, for example, on the bias and working on how to accelerate the talent exchange because the best way to get to know about the culture is actually living in a different country as I'm facing now being Japan.
In terms of recruiting, we as I said before, we are facing a talent war. So it's very important that we have access to a bigger number of recruiting serves as well as we have to be sure that recruiters are trained properly and DNI is an element considering there. In terms of retention, we are going to look at our global benefit policies because this is really going to create the sense of belonging as well as to support ERG Group. This group of affiliation are very important to avoid attrition cost and hiring cost. And finally, in terms of advancement, as I said, the development of a leader takes time.
So we are going to really look at all the development program we have already in place to accelerate the development of those leaders and be able to achieve the targets that we have just mentioned. And by that, I would like to thank all of you for the attention and happy to take any question you would like to raise.
Thank you very much, Lorena. Now we would like to receive your questions. From those who have raised their hands, we will call the name. Please unmute yourself, mention your name and affiliation, and please mention your question. We will call you by the name that is displayed on the screen.
Please push the raise hand button. And if you're listening to the English, please ask questions in Japanese by shifting the channel to the Japanese channel. Yes. Hiraoka san, please unmute yourself and ask your question in Japanese. Thank you.
My name is Hiraoka from Newspix. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. My first question is to Mr. Nakahata.
Diversity and inclusion in being promoted, in your company, we have been implementing the job type employment, which I think is related. So the job type employment, diversity and inclusion, how are they related? Could you explain that? And in your case, I wanted to hear about being employed for employment. Not entrance ceremony, but I think you call it Hitachi carrier a kickoff session.
What is the background for introducing such kickoff session? And how did the awareness change by introducing this new method? Yes. Thank you for your question. As for first question, relationship with the job type, There's a very strong meaning, a strong relationship.
As you know, Hitachi in the world has 350,000 employees and 190,000 overseas. And so 55% are employed overseas, and overseas is basically job type. And over 60,000 are employed in Japan, which is the issue. Position is decided and the skills, experience necessary to the position is determined in the job type employment. And people who can do that by visualizing people, people capable of doing that are assigned.
Job description is made very clear. So who is going to be selected? We have a very important measure. If it is not a job type, but rather if it is a membership type, this is not clear. And you must choose from there.
In particular, their superiors will be choosing the people. Then seniority or unconscious bias will influence. So by shifting to the job title, it is very good to make clear what is necessary to a certain position. So who should be promoted because very clear, so gender does not matter and nationality will not matter also. So I think there is a very strong relationship.
And Hitachi's career kickoff session, we couldn't hold that session last year, we did this year. And what is the purpose of this is to change the awareness, the employees and also for the newly employed not to join Hitachi, not enter Hitachi, but they have to be aware of developing their own careers in Hitachi to build an awareness of building their own career by themselves. We are calling it career kickoff, not entrance ceremony. It is only the 2nd year since we started. So I don't know if there are major changes as a result, but at least through the career kickoff session, Mr.
Hayashihara and myself talked about it, and we want to expand this to the whole group. I have another question for Lorena. In other countries outside Japan, in Japan, we hire everyone. New grads are hired and also it is seniority and lifetime employment system, which is a Japanese style, which might look strange from your perspective. So what do you think of the strengths and the challenges of a Japanese HR system?
Thank you so much for the question. Yes, the system is different than in the other countries. I grew up in Europe, where the system is based on the performance, based on the job description, based on clarity. We do also recruiting from the university, but not in the way it is done here. So let's say that there is not good or bad.
Is how we can leverage all the difference we have in every country because Hitachi is operating everywhere and combine those in the most standard way in order to have a transparent process and fair opportunities for all the employees. So what and this is what we are really doing in not just in HR, but in all the function we operate is really to look at all the difference in each country and see what is the best practice for Hitachi to expand the social innovation business. When we look at Japan, because all the other countries are based on job description, was good to create the same system here in Japan. This is going on also to accelerate the empowerment of the minorities because everyone will know that whatever position they are going to take and whatever promotion they are going to take is based on the competencies, is based on their performance and not because of the diversity. And this is really going to bring a strong value to the business, to the society overall.
It will take times because it involves a mindset and culture transformation, but I do think it's the right path Hitachi is taking.
Thank you very much.
So Mr. Hiroi, please unmute yourself and ask your question in Japanese. This is Hiroi from Nippon Keizai newspaper. So my first question is a simple one. So this 30%, what is the basis or rationale of the 30% and the timeline of 2,030?
So please give me the reason. And then comparing Japan with overseas, where what is Hitachi's positioning? Where is Hitachi positioned compared to other countries? Now I think 30% in 2,030 is very ambitious, 3x bigger. How do you plan to achieve that?
So three questions. Thank you very much.
So first of all, the 30% has been defined based on the business strategy, based on the current candidates we have we are assessing. So it's based on really our development program as well as they have been fixed based on the expansion of the social innovation business. So the targets, we do believe that we can achieve because, again, it has been done based on the internal data. And we have not fixed targets that are just ambition and impossible to achieve. What is absolutely important for us is the journey to arrive there to achieve to reach that target because we have to put in place action that are going to accelerate this achievement.
And those actions, as I mentioned before, are going to tackle 5 different pillars because from one side, we have, yes, to develop employees, but from the other side is also the way we create an inclusive environment. In terms of position of Hitachi, let's say that we have compared Hitachi with 3 different peers: companies who share the same culture traits, Japanese company large industrial companies that compete with Hitachi like Siemens G and solution provider companies like Hitachi M2B. And let's say that they have been scored across the five dimension I explained before. And I'm not going to disclose in detail the scoring, but I would like to say that based on that, we have assessed that we needed to accelerate on those trend. In some regions, we are advanced.
In other regions, we are less advanced. But this is based not just on the Hitachi situation, it's really based on the country and the system and the society. Also, we have not to forget that if we talk about the gender, Hitachi is an engineering industrial company, and this is where we have much more challenges to promote the gender.
Thank you.
How to develop? The diversity of the female? Yes. In order to make it a certain amount to develop. Okay, okay.
In terms of development, we have already in place since 2012 the Global Leadership Development Program. And this program is based on really assigned candidates and create a development path for them in terms of training, job assigning, mentoring. So in addition to that, we have activities to empower female because the gender issues is, let's say, quite common across all the regions because, again, is because of the industry of Hitachi. And we have activities to support female in order to balance the private life and the work. We have activities to empower female to create more confidence in female.
We have also activities to create an inclusive culture like exchanging talents. This is, as I said, very important because the best way to accelerate the development of the people is to let them working in different realities.
May I add some more information? I will give you some more details. First of all, this 30% by 2,030, the reason for that is Shikachi joins the 30% club and the President Higashihara is also a member. 30%, as you know, is in theory, scholars theory. If there are 30% different people in a group, then it will have different stronger influence and that's why 30% is set.
And Hitachi achieved 10%. So the next target we thought in Kei Donren Japan Business Federation and 30% by 2,030, this executive officer, corporate officer level, this is what JVF is saying. And so this is a challenging goal, but of course, we have the candidate list and we looked at our list and saw if we is this possible for us and we decided that it is possible for us. So that's why we said 30%. So that's one reason.
The main reason was just mentioned by Lorena san. So how we develop the talents? Of course, we promote them and position assign them as the post import post. It cannot it has to be fair. The person cannot be promoted because he is non Japanese or because she is female.
So we have to find, identify the talents. Like as Lorena san said, 24, 25 times, we have the HR committee in each business unit and top myself and President, Higashihara, we are all involved in this discussion every year. And we try to discuss what kind of talents we have and Future 50, the late 30s, we select from those age groups. And of course, female and non Japanese are included there. And intentionally, deliberately, we develop such talents.
People cannot develop unless we do that. It does not matter if it's Japanese or foreigners or women or men. So that's how we try to develop our talents, especially the overseas experience or different experience or leadership experience. Those are the experience that we try to deliberately offer. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Now
Soma san, please unmute yourself and ask your question in Japanese. Thank you. Soma san from Nikkei ESG. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you.
I have three questions. The first two is to Lorena. Out of the 5 actions, you said promotion is the most difficult, advancement is the most difficult. So from your position as a CDIO, you mentioned you are going to take communication through with 1 on 1 communication. What do you think is important?
What are the major points that you believe is important in taking communication? And secondly, in diversity and inclusion, employment hiring reflecting diversity and inclusion, what actually is going to be done? In case other companies like Unilever, they have eliminated the practice of posting photographs for people who are applying. So what are the approaches that we're going to implement from the hiring or employment perspective? And Mr.
Nakahata, my question is when personnel becomes more diverse, growth, salary, development, training should be provided in a fair manner? Or I think people often now talk about equality When we check about the difference of salary between men and women, there is still a gap which must be corrected. So I would like to ask your views on that. How do you plan to implement equality?
Thank you for the question. So first of all, in terms of advancement and communication, I do think that when a company implements a program like this one, the culture is absolutely a key for making it successful. And in relation to culture, you have the communication, you have the bias, you have different way of thinking. So the communication is very important in order to be sure, first of all, that each employees understand that they have a value in the company. They can speak up.
They have the same fair opportunity, regardless what is written in the paper. And that we really care about what do they think and about their ambitions It's really a way to encourage more and more people to speak. And also from an executive level, it's good to know what our employees are expecting because every planning we put in place then has to meet also their expectation. I'm really enjoying this kind of one to one communication and also the roundtable because I'm learning, and I do think that helping people to learn is a very win to win. And more I take and more I can give back to the company.
About the other question, you mentioned about the recruiting. Yes, I know that Willever is using this way of recruiting in a with a blind CV. This might be one of the options. Some of a couple of employees actually propose it to me because this is going to really to remove the bias. In addition to that, we have to look at different way of recruiting people from different sources as well as we have to train a recruiter to avoid the bias.
And sometimes, for example, it's good to have in the recruiting process people that are not part of HR or are not part of that specific business because this is the way we can evaluate people in a very fair way. In any case, as we mentioned before, both myself and Nakata san, the development program we have in place is really going to focus on a very fair and transparent process, where people will be fairly evaluated, we will be properly developed, and they will know that whatever step in the career they will take is based on their performance. Thank you.
So this is Nagahata speaking. Thank you for your question. About equality, you asked a question. When we say equality, we talk more about fairness. We place more importance on fairness.
Equality may have different meanings, but if equality is an outcome, that's not what we're aiming for. What we want is to provide equal or fair opportunity to everybody. So in terms of diversity, Japanese and non Japanese, there's a difference of nationality. And to give fair opportunity to everybody. We first started in 2012 by applying the same HR policy globally.
This is now nearly complete like the grade system is globally a common system and also performance management is also the same globally. And employee survey and training, education opportunities is also the same all over the world. So this is what we have been providing in common to provide a fair opportunity. And in terms of male and female, in Japan, in particular, ratio of female is still very low. And to introduce the job type, which is still not prevailing in Japan, by introducing this method, it is possible to give fair opportunity to everybody.
I think it is necessary to implement such a system, the results. Thank you.
Can I add one?
If I can add a point also in terms of inequality. It's very important that when we implement diversity, we don't create any kind of discrimination in other dimension. I know that one of the major topic is the gender. Yes, we know it's an issue within not just in Japan, in many other countries. It is an issue in the in this kind of industry.
And we wanted to create discrimination on the other side. But as Makata san mentioned, the ratio is very low. So at a certain point, we needed to fix target, adjust to accelerate. But then people will naturally be developed based on their competencies. There will be not a point of Japanese, non Japanese female or men.
It's just based on that. And people will really embrace it in a very natural way. We are now in this transformation space, and it might be tough to digest and it might be challenging, but I'm pretty sure that we will get there. Thank you.
Thank you very much. So next, Mr. Tsuda, please. Hello. This is Tsuda speaking.
I just have one question. So Hitachi, for a long time, has been addressing the gender issue for a very long time and raising the female ratio and non Japanese ratio. Now in the process, as Lorina san said, you talked about the real business, the collaboration between Italy and Japan, which proved to be successful. You gave me a good successful example. Female management, are there any example successful example in female management case.
Any case you could share with us? That's all. Thank you very much. Widini Tachi?
Is this question answered? Yes. Well, yes, let's say, yes, I mean, we don't have many female in leadership position. This is a fact, and this is the reason why we are accelerated. But the female in that position is because they have great competencies, and they can bring different results.
We have more female, for example, in in the in the finance organization or in the IT organization, the female we found out that are successful because of the soft skills, they have they are able to engage customer in a much better way. So the revenues of the business increased. What we are going to do, and you really touched a very important point because this is actually in the plan from FY 2021, is to have business pilot project for each group companies in order really to help people to understand what the diversity means, because they're very complex. Sometimes people can think that it's something up in the air, But actually, to bring it in a more practical and pragmatic way, we are asking to each of you to think about the pilot project where diverse people are working together or a specific project is run by people with diverse way of thinking and see the impact. So as I said before, we have some example in terms of products.
We have some example in terms of AI. On the DAI project, some female was part of this. So yes, the gender is bringing success, but I do think that is the integration of the 2 genders that are really making success. Men have some strengths and women has other strengths. Those the 2 should work in alliance because that will really bring innovation within the company.
There is no point of competition. 1 is not better than the other. We are simply diverse, and that's why we have to integrate. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
So those in the common guest accounts, those are raising their hand. Please, I will unmute you, so please raise your question. I have unmuted you. I see someone raising the hand, but is this an error? Yes.
So next, Takahashi san. Takahashi from Toyo Keizai. I have two questions. So to promote female activity is important. But on the other hand, in your case, you also need employees.
And the ratio of female researchers at universities is still very low. So I think you must also approach that area. Do you have any plans of doing so? Do you have any plans for that purpose? And another question, the ratio of female managers is going to be raised?
Yes, this is very important. But as of October 2020, I'm seeing a gradual increase. And in case of younger employees, I think there's increase of machine mill employees. But in case of natural increase leading to increase of female managers and also increase as a result of your efforts, How would that be related to each other? So those are my two questions.
For the first question in terms of female in stem studies, yes, you are totally right. This is one of the issue. There are some countries that are much more advanced like the Nordic, and there are countries like Japan, Italy, where the situation is as it is. As Hitachi, we have Hitachi Foundation, who is running a program for female at the high school in order to bring them closer to the science topics. As well as we are running a visit at our Itachi Research Laboratories, where those younger school girls can really touch and discuss with the people of the business involved on what science means, because this is the way we should really start mentoring female that those kind of studies are not just for men, but actually it's for them as well.
So this is one we are doing here in Japan, and we are doing also in other regions. This is something that we would like to accelerate. The collaboration with the institution, the school institution is absolutely important in order to influence the choices of those females since the beginning. As far as the second question, yes, the ratio of female managers is low. This is a fact.
There are several reasons. We have reasons that are linked to the culture, reasons linked to the system and reasons linked to the industry. In terms of system, the country, 1st of all, should support with a specific regulation the female to balance their work life. In Hitachi, we are doing. We have a number of programs to support child care, to support female to come back to the job.
But still, we see that despite of that, we are still facing a culture point. And that's why we have programs to empower female, to encourage female to take additional responsibility because this is not going to, let's say, to create additional pressure. It's just they should be more confident. They should have less fear to fail because of the tendency of the female is that if we don't know about a specific duty 100%, we are not going to run it because we think to fail. So what I'm facing and what I'm seeing is there are the female talents here are very modest.
So as a company, we have to put in place initiatives to support the work life balance from one side with the policy, program and so on. We have to put in place a training for those female to balance their life as well as for their managers because they have to be supported by their managers as well. And in parallel, we have to put in place a development training in order to create confidence. So the way to increase this female manager ratio is by this kind of program. Ideally, we would like to equalize the ratio of female managers with the ratio of female employees.
But we have to do based on the business strategy, based on the competencies because, as I said, Hitachi is not defining targets just for the sake of the targets, but is defining targets for a better environment and for a better business. Thank you.
Thank you. We would like to take more questions. We do not see any more questions. So we would now like to close the web conference on diversity and inclusion strategy. Thank you very much for your attendance.
Thank