Diversity and Inclusion | Sustainability

Mission

Ensure the happiness of our employees and their families
Improve JERA’s enterprise value

Vision

Provide everyone with opportunities and expectations for their own growth and contribution
Respect diversity and share vectors for creating value through flat communication

Message

Yukio
Kani

Global CEO and
Chair

Message

Our mission is to provide cutting-edge solutions to the world’s energy problems, and to achieve it, culture is key. We must transform from a hierarchal, patriarchal society driven by academic circles and departmental groups to a flat culture where diversity is respected. A culture where everyone, regardless of nationality, gender, age, or career background can openly exchange ideas, make quick decisions, and work as a team. And where even if we fail, we remain agile and keep trying again.
Once we have rooted ourselves in this flat culture, the realization of our mission will be within reach.

Yukio Kani

Global CEO and Chair
Hisahide
Okuda

President, Director, CEO and COO

Message

JERA’s mission is to create new infrastructure to enable the stable and economic provision of clean energy under any circumstances.
To achieve this, it is important for us to have both a strong sense of social responsibility and the capability to innovate freely. And to achieve that innovation capability, diversity is essential.
By engaging in discussion and performing our work with an unwavering respect for one another’s differences and capabilities, our diverse workforce generates value that goes beyond a mere extension of traditional ways of thinking and working. By sharing this awareness among all of our people, from new graduates to experienced workers and executives, we can create a company where innovation is truly all around us.
That’s the kind of company we aim to build.

Hisahide Okuda

President, Director, CEO and COO

D&I Section

JERA’s D&I Section is part of the Enterprise Value Creation Department, which is under the direct oversight of our CEO. Our main purpose is to create a flat and innovative culture, which includes formulating diversity and inclusion (D&I) policies and goals and spreading D&I values throughout our organization. We also define, cultivate, and communicate our corporate culture both internally and externally, and support the recruitment of people with disabilities.

Our position within the company

Overview

Realizing our corporate mission and vision

Mission: To provide cutting edge solutions to the world’s energy issues

Vision: To scale up our clean energy platform of renewables and low greenhouse gas thermal power, sparking sustainable development in Asia and around the world

Realizing our
D&I mission
and vision

Realizing an environment where innovation organically occurs

Through our ongoing D&I activities, we aim to create an environment where each of our employees can thrive and fulfill their potential. We also strive to foster a culture of innovation by encouraging our people to learn from and be influenced by the skills and values that make others unique.

Fostering a flat and innovative culture

By encouraging open and direct communication among employees and between employees and management, we aim to foster a culture where each of our people take initiative in our D&I activities.

Global D&I Forum
Global D&I Forum

Each year, participants from JERA HQ and our major overseas subsidiaries meet at an in-person forum to promote global D&I initiatives and foster understanding among Group companies. By exchanging information and opinions across the borders of nationality, language, and role within the company, we create a sense of unity as “One JERA.”

Forum participants

A workshop session
Experts’ Salon
Experts’ Salon

We host conversational events aimed at creating new value in business by enabling our employees to interact with diverse perspectives. Through dialogues and mixers featuring experts and artists from various fields, we seek to drive innovation through unconventional connections.

Dialogue between an external expert and President Hisahide Okuda

Post-dialogue mixer

World Café
World Café

Using the “world café” methodology, we hold events where employees of diverse identities and backgrounds engage in small-group discussions about topics such as D&I, culture, and creating a healthy workplace. By encouraging discussion among employees who do not regularly interact with one another during their daily work, these events contribute to the generation of new solutions and new ideas.

Group discussion

A participant presents his group’s ideas
Family Day
Family Day

Through events such as power plant tours and kids’ activities, we give our employees and their families and partners an opportunity to communicate, learn, and become “JERA fans.”

Taking a commemorative photo

Exchanging business cards with the president

Visiting one of our power plants

Welcoming diversity

We strive to create an inclusive work environment where diverse talent can realize their full potential.

Women’s empowerment

As part of our efforts to promote diversity, we are working to increase the ratio of women in all roles and positions. We have set a target of filling 8.5% of supervisory roles with female employees by FY2025.

Our achievements in women’s empowerment
(for the past three fiscal years)

	July 2022	July 2023	July 2024
Percentage of female employees	8.3%	9.8%	11.9%
Percentage of female managers^*1	4.5%	5.1%	6.2%
Number of female officers^*2	2	4	4
Percentage of employees who took childcare leave^*3	10 male employees (13.9%) 9 female employees (69.2%)	52 male employees (40.3%) 13 female employees (108.3%)	85 male employees (79.4%) 11 female employees (100%)

*1 Calculated based on the number of managers at JERA (including secondees to subsidiaries)
*2 Number of female directors and executive officers (including outside directors)
*3 Calculated using the formula: (Number of people who used childcare leave that fiscal year) / (Number of employees who had children in that fiscal year)

Femtech initiatives
Femtech initiatives

By addressing women’s health issues through investment in Femtech^* technology and providing Femtech products and services to our employees and their families, we aim to achieve our D&I mission of ensuring their happiness.

*Femtech: A portmanteau of “female” and “technology”
A look at JERA’s highly original D&I initatives

Minako Fujiie, Managing Executive Officer,
Enterprise Value Creation

Our male executives try a menstrual pain simulator

One of JERA’s most notable D&I initiatives is our investment in Femtech. Femtech refers to technology used to address women’s health issues, such as menstruation and the menopause. In a society where women’s health issues often receive little attention, JERA’s investment in this field—despite having a workforce that is 90% male—demonstrates our genuine commitment to D&I. Our male executives have also taken steps to understand the different experiences our employees face through a menstrual pain simulation, which enabled them to experience a discomfort they will never face firsthand. This initiative significantly contributes toward fostering a flat and innovative culture.

In promoting D&I, understanding the difference between equality and equity is crucial. Equality assumes that everyone’s circumstances are the same, while equity acknowledges that each individual has their own unique situation. People tend to see things from their own perspective, making it difficult to understand what they haven’t personally experienced. That is why I feel this first step taken by our leadership team to understand differences is a highly meaningful one.
Disability inclusion
Disability inclusion

In April 2021, we established a special subsidiary, JERA Miraiful , as part of our efforts to bring about a society where people both with and without disabilities can thrive, find happiness, and fulfill their potential. Employees with various disabilities engage in work that is suited to their particular strengths, such as cultivating strawberries and operating the café at Yokohama Strawberry Park, growing flowers and maintaining the flowerbeds on some of our power plant premises, making sweets and novelty goods, and performing housekeeping work at our head office.

Staff at the Yokohama Strawberry Park Café

Strawberry cultivation

Flowerbed maintenance
LGBTQ+ inclusion
LGBTQ+ inclusion

We strive to be an organization where everyone can be themselves at work, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. To this end, we are advancing the following initiatives to support the LGBTQ+ people in our communities:

Establishing a dedicated external support hotline

Hosting Pride Month events to raise awareness and promote understanding

Hosting talks by external speakers with firsthand experience of LGBTQ+ issues

Creating and distributing an in-house LGBTQ+ handbook

Sponsoring Tokyo Rainbow Pride

Obtained the Pride index^* Gold award

*An index for evaluating LGBTQ+ initiatives in the workplace, certified by the voluntary organization “work with Pride”

A talk by an LGBTQ+ speaker

Our original handbook
Support for non-Japanese employees
Support for non-Japanese employees

As we develop our business globally, we are engaged in the following initiatives to ensure a welcoming work environment for our multinational talent:

Networking events for English speakers

Prayer rooms

Offering halal food as an option in emergency supplies (for disaster readiness)

Employees taste-testing emergency food supplies

Creating workplaces where everyone can shine

By identifying and addressing issues in the ways our people work, we strive to create an environment where all employees can thrive.

Employee Satisfaction Survey

Employee Satisfaction Survey

We conduct an annual employee satisfaction survey to quantitatively assess our employees’ satisfaction with the company, their work environment, development opportunities, and D&I initiatives. The ultimate goal is to enhance employee morale and contribute to improving JERA’s corporate value.
Based on the results of this survey, we implement specific measures for each workplace where improvements are needed. As a result, company-wide satisfaction is on the rise year-over-year.

Employee engagement rate
D&I Suggestion Box

D&I Suggestion Box

We have implemented a system where employees can freely submit requests, suggestions for improvement, comments on their own D&I initiatives, and more. Employees can make an anonymous submission to suggest improvements while maintaining their own privacy, or sign their name to receive a personal response. In this way, our suggestion box helps to facilitate the two-way exchange of ideas and sentiments between the company and our staff.

Company-wide initiatives to raise awareness of D&I

As part of our efforts to promote understanding of D&I, we hold month-long events twice a year. These events aim to provide employees with the opportunity to personally engage with D&I issues and take action.
We have implemented the following initiatives to date:
- D&I Month
- Pride Month

Awards and recognition

D&I Award

JERA was designated as a “Best Workplace,” the highest of the four tiers in JobRainbow’s D&I Awards 2023, which recognize companies for their D&I initiatives.
Pride Index

JERA was awarded the Silver award in FY2022 and the Gold award in FY2023 in the Pride Index, which measures engagement with LGBTQ+ issues.

Achievements

Male Leaders Coalition for Empowerment of Women

We are a member of the Male Leaders Coalition for Empowerment of Women, an initiative of the Gender Equality Bureau Cabinet Office.
G20 Empower

We are an advocate of G20 EMPOWER, a private-sector alliance of companies committed to accelerating women’s empowerment.

Interview with Managing Executive Officer Minako Fujiie
Keidanren Female Executives Mission to the United States

Female representatives of Keidanren (the Japan Business Federation) and several companies, including JERA, exchanged opinions on women’s empowerment and D&I with members of the US government, international organizations, and private enterprises.