What is the JERA’s D&I Initiatives Filled with Originality?

We Value Deep Diversity and Aim to Create a Company Culture Leads to Innovation

──It is unique of JERA that D&I promotion is led by an organization directly under the president’s control rather than the human resources department. D&I promotion tends to focus on women’s empowerment, but how JERA promotes this initiative?

Ms.Minako Fujiie (hereinafter “Fujiie”): Since July 2023, at JERA the Enterprise Value Creation department directly under the direct control of the president has been in charge of promoting D&I. In the “Integrated Report 2023”, as the top management executives mentions the importance of diversity in the message, D&I initiatives are positioned as essential to realize the whole company’s mission and vision.

When it comes to D&I in Japan, we tend to focus on superficial numbers such as the ratio of women in leadership role and also the percentage of employment rate of individuals with disabilities. However, with the emphasis on deep diversity, we have shifted direction to “cultivate a D&I culture that includes not only minorities but also the majority”.

In other words, we will not only “to create a system where everyone can be active regardless of gender, nationality and religion, etc.”, but also take our step further, we think it’s important to commit “to create a new innovation by colliding each other’s values and individualities”, and lead to create new culture.

Minako Fujiie

Actually I am from a generation that was provoked by the emphasis on promoting women’s empowerment, and sometimes I was told like ”today the atmosphere is different because there are women in the meeting”, and “As a women, what is your opinions?”. I can express my own opinion, but I cannot as a female representative. Not only increasing diversity by raising the number of minorities such as women, but also taking advantages of each individual’s originality, values and experiences is important. A signature of JERA’s D&I promotion is the perspective of giving an importance to a penetration of flat company culture that all employees increase their productivity as a leading role.

On the other hand, it is also true that we, as a power generation company, have valued homogeneity that “everyone can operate stable generation and the quality can be maintained no matter who performs maintenance.”

For JERA, currently expanding globally with the goal of “realising zero-emission thermal power” which defy conventional wisdom, this homogeneity alone is not enough to move forward. Transformation to the next generation such as introducing digital transformation and generative AI is also progressed rapidly at power plants. Even a highly homogeneous group, there will always be differences in values and personality each person has, hence now is the time to bring out those differences and aim to foster a culture where innovation occurs naturally.

“Integrated Report 2023” in which top management executives talk about the importance of diversity at JERA
（https://www.jera.co.jp/en/sustainability/ccb2023）

JERA’s approach to D&I. We aim to foster D&I culture to accomplish the company-wide mission and vision

Through Investment in Femtech, Achieving “Family Well-Being” Set as a Mission

──JERA Ventures, JERA's corporate venture capital, invests in the field of "Femtech", which also gains attention in the field of D&I. What is the significance of this investment in using technology to solve health issues peculiar to women?

Fujiie: I wanted to encourage understanding that “D&I is necessary for business” within my company and around the world for some time. Under these circumstances, when I heard about Asia's first Femtech-specific "NEXTBLUE FUND Ⅱ”, I felt that D&I was an opportunity to become an investment target.

On the NEXTBLUE side, they seemed to think that changing D&I in Japan, it’s essential to involve large and serious energy industries not only industries where women were already active such as cosmetics and distribution. So it was exactly perfect timing of mutual love to join hands together.

Also the creation of a corporate venture capital framework called JERA Ventures has enabled us to make challenging investments to the new field of Femtech. Because the leader is a man, the movement to change the image tends easily to be as “Femtech = promoting women’s empowerment” is also the wind at our back for fostering D&I culture.

In July 2023, JERA Venture was established with the key concept of “becoming a sandbox for people who are serious about changing the world”. As a corporate venture capital that makes strategic investments totaling 300 million USD, in September 2023, it invested in Asia’s first venture fund “NEXTBLUE FUND Ⅱ”, which is specializing in Femtech.

The first mission of JERA’s D&I is to “help employees and their families feel well-being”, and the second is to “increase JERA’s corporate value”. While we have received voices from employees support our stance of prioritizing the happiness of employees and their families over corporate value, we have also received questions how the company can realize family well-being. This is a reasonable point and we would like to bring more direct benefits to our employee’s families by providing Femtech products and services.

About 90% of JERA employees are men. However, there may be women in their family who need Femtech such as mothers, sisters, wives and daughters. Although programs to provide specific Femtech products and services is still in a preparation phase, by delivering the latest Femtech to them, we hope we can concretely contribute to the family well-being and create a larger D&I culture.

In addition, during the process of creating Femtech products, we think forward that JERA employees and their families test the prototypes and give feedback to startup companies. While letting employees and their families try Femtech products and encouraging co-creation and collaboration between flexible and passionate entrepreneurs and JERA employees, we also envision to create a collaborative place which leads to foster a culture where innovation naturally created.

During “D&I Month”, Which is Now In Its 3rd Year, Holding a Company Event Involves Executives

──During “D&I Month” in November 2023, various company events were held under the theme of “Well-being: For everyone to work with enthusiasm”. What were the aims of events and the results of these efforts?

Fujiie: Since 2020, we have designated D&I Month every year and hold company events to provide employees opportunities to come into contact with the idea of D&I, put themselves in their shoes and connect to take action. We wanted to make it clear that D&I promotion approaches to all employees including majority and “everyone” is the target.

This year’s theme of “Well-being” is our ultimate goal. Although it is not something we can achieve easily, we are planning to set individual issues which we can see through our initiatives as future themes. This time, we focused on events such as “Menstrual Pain Experience Project”, “NEXTBLUE × JERA Ventures Interview”, “World Cafe”.

“Menstrual Pain Experience Project”
The idea is to allow men to experience the pain peculiar to women by using a system that simulates menstrual pain. Male employees who volunteered and also top management executives along with management executive meeting experienced this.

“NEXTBLUE × JERA Ventures Interview”
We invited Ms.Kanako Inoue, the representative of NEXTBLUE and asked her to explain the world’s Femtech situation using specific numbers and examples as well as a discussion with Mr. Ohyama, the leader of JERA Ventures and a Q&A session with employees.

“World Cafe”
We held it as a forum for discussion among employees. In groups of 6 employees, they discussed about “good culture” and “culture to be changed” and rotate members among groups. Although it was the first attempt, 36 employees participated. From the introduction of meeting each other, the venue was filled with excitement and employees seemed to enjoy deepening communication between them.

We also held a family day for employees’ families to experience JERA, and we conducted company tour and power plant tour. We received good reputations from families with children, so we are currently considering contents how families without children can enjoy events.

In promoting D&I, it is important to know the difference between “equality” and “equity”. For example, suppose there are 4 people with different physiques, and physical characteristics. It is “equality” to give these 4 people bicycles of same size, and it is “equity” to give them bicycles suit their physiques and physical characteristics. This sense of equity is not easy because people tends to think about things in a self-centered way even if there is no malicious intent, and also it’s difficult to understand things they haven’t experienced. That’s why I feel it’s very meaningful that executives took an initiative to experience menstrual pain and took the first step to “know there are differences”.

In our D&I philosophy, Femtech is for equity and not just about promoting women’s empowerment. If men are having trouble, we can support them from an equity perspective. I believe it is important to take measures as the company considering equity so that all employees can keep their performance on their work.

The Future Challenge for D&I Promotion is How to Expand Globally.

──Lastly, please give us a summary of your initiatives so far and future prospects.

Fujiie: JERA’s female employee ratio has finally exceeded 10%. The ratio of women in leadership role is still not the situation we can be proud of. However, as I mentioned at the beginning, we pursue deep diversity than superficial diversity.

When we meet a women who says “I don’t want to be a manager”, we tend to think “It’s a waste even she has so much ability”, but not everyone wants to work hard. I think it’s important to respect each person’s own ideas by presenting various options including Femtech rather than proceeding homogeneously in one direction. Also, it’s starting to see the situation that not everyone can actively express their opinion, I would like to create an atmosphere where people can speak more casually and “people who don’t want to say, don’t need to say it”.

For male employees, the rate of taking childcare leave reached to 40%. It has been rising year by year but compared in the world, there is still room to aim higher number. However, employees who fill out their schedule of drop-off and pick-up at kinder garden on the company scheduler have been increasing and I feel new wave that would never have imagined a decade ago, so I hope this trend will expand successfully.

The future challenge is how to spread D&I promotion to overseas bases. In March, we will celebrate “International Women’s Day” which was established by the United Nations, and use this opportunity to advance global activities gradually. We would like to continue flat and innovative D&I promotion while valuing equity.