Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Basic Approach to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

It is The CITIZEN Group’s duty as a company to respect each employee, respect diversity, and create an environment in which employees and their diversity can be fully leveraged. We are also committed to practicing diversity management. In the belief that each one of our employees, who are diverse in terms of gender and other aspects, is the source of our organization’s competitiveness, we aim to create an organization where they can work for a long time while demonstrating their fullest potential, thereby enhancing our corporate value.

The CITIZEN Group’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Structure

The CITIZEN Group’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiatives are overseen by the CITIZEN WATCH Human Resources Department, which serves as the secretariat for these initiatives in the entire Group. The human resources departments of each Group company in Japan are responsible for implementing decisions made by the Group Human Resources Committee and for respecting human rights and handling risks during business activities.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Roadmap

The CITIZEN Group aims to ensure that its diverse human resources can demonstrate their talents fully and believes that, among those diverse human resources, helping women to do so should be our priority theme. Therefore, under the leadership of CITIZEN WATCH, we have set a target of increasing the percentage of female management staff in the Group to 20% or more by 2030. We are thus making Group-wide efforts to ensure that diverse human resources can achieve their potential and to develop and appoint female management staff.

Empowerment of Female Employees

Initiatives for Women’s Advancement at CITIZEN WATCH

Structure for Empowerment of Female Employees

At CITIZEN WATCH, the president himself is committed to creating a proactive environment that promotes diversity. A diversity promotion study team has been formed to monitor the current situation by listening to the opinions of employees and to devise necessary measures to allow each one of our diverse employees to demonstrate their talent more fully. In FY2024, the director in charge signed the Tokyo Forum for Women and the Future Joint Declaration, reaffirming that as a management strategy, top management will take the initiative in reforming organizational culture and developing female managers with the aim of creating a comfortable workplace for everyone.
CITIZEN WATCH has so far invited outside experts to give diversity lectures to inspire management staff to change their mindsets and provided training for male and female employees who are raising children, as well as their superiors. To ensure that these employees can continue to work effectively despite some restrictions, the company has therefore provided them with the opportunity in various forms to learn how to interact with their families, colleagues, and superiors, thereby encouraging them to change their mindsets.
In FY2024, the company provided the superiors of female managers with the opportunity to receive a re-explanation about the background to DEI promotion and learn how to raise future female managers’ awareness and what specific career support to provide to them in order to assist them in their career development. The company also required the superiors of female managers to interview those women in person for their career development.

Initiatives to Support the Skills Development and Careers of Female Employees

CITIZEN WATCH not only provides rank-specific training but also encourages all employees to participate in voluntary and optional learning programs in order to create an environment where everyone, regardless of gender, can continue to learn. Since FY2023, in consideration of the limited number of senior female employees who can act as role models for female managers, the company has held workshops for female managers to help them expand their networks and gain awareness of diverse career paths, encouraging them all to exercise leadership and build their careers in their own way. In FY2024 as well, we continued to hold follow-up sessions with outside lecturers three times with the aim of creating the opportunity for female managers to network with each other and learn regularly. Additionally, to further support the career development of women, the company also participated in "cross-mentoring" beyond the boundaries of companies to encourage female department managers and senior managers to strive for even greater success. In recent years, the company has constantly been sending female department managers and senior managers to external seminars and training sessions to help them broaden their perspectives and further develop their careers.

In FY2022 and FY2023, the company expanded its efforts to tackle the issue of relationships between women’s careers and health by inviting industrial physicians as instructors to hold seminars on the importance of career planning in consideration of issues such as infertility treatment and timing of childbirth. The company also shared videos of the seminars with the other Group companies and implemented other measures to facilitate understanding among the superiors and colleagues of female workers, as well as others around them.
In FY2024, six CITIZEN Group companies in Japan conducted awareness surveys of female employees. We will strive to monitor the situation at each company and develop female managers through Group-wide collaboration in the future.

Support for Making Work More Comfortable for Women and Enabling Them to Succeed

In recent years, CITIZEN WATCH has seen a maternity leave rate of 100%, as well as 100% of employees returning to work after maternity leave. The company also allows eligible employees to work reduced and/or staggered working hours for childcare until their children graduate from elementary school and to take nursing care leave by reducing their working hours by up to two hours. We also offer paid annual leave in one-hour increments and accrued paid leave (pooled leave), which can be employed for childcare support until the child completes junior high school. Our dedication to fostering a flexible work environment is evident through the facilitation of diverse initiatives. We encourage the utilization of such arrangements not only for family caregiving but also for self-development and volunteering pursuits. This approach extends beyond life events, such as marriage, childbirth, and caregiving, ensuring sustained engagement and productivity. To encourage male employees to take parental leave, we have set a target of having them take parental leave at least five days by the time their children reach one year of age. We actively advocate male employees’ parental leave and involvement in childcare through measures such as encouraging their superiors to create a work environment in which anyone can take leave easily regardless of gender and to persuade eligible employees to take leave. We also post articles about the experiences of those who have taken parental leave on our in-house website.

In FY2021, one person returned to work through the Job Return Registration System, which provides reemployment opportunities to those who have retired due to the transfer of their spouse. In the future, we will expand the scope of eligible users of the system by allowing all applicants to use it irrespective of their reasons for leaving the company, in principle.

Acquisition of the Kurumin Certification Mark

Kurumin Certification is a system under which the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare certifies companies that have achieved their goals and met certain standards for their general business owner action plans, formulated in accordance with the Act on Advancement of Measures to Support Raising Next-Generation Children, as companies that support child-rearing.

In The CITIZEN Group, CITIZEN MACHINERY (certified in 2018 and 2021) and CITIZEN WATCH MANUFACTURING (certified in 2018 and 2022) have received Kurumin Certification from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare as companies that are working to support employees to balance work and childcare.

The companies were recognized for their efforts to introduce and promote the use of support systems that exceed the legal requirements to enable all employees, including those raising children, to develop long-term careers, as well as for their efforts to create a diverse and comfortable work environment based on the perspective of a work-life balance.

Acquisition of "L-boshi" Certification

"L-boshi" Certification is a system under which the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare certifies companies that meet certain standards and have excellent conditions for promoting women’s activities based on the law concerning the promotion of women’s activity in the workplace (the Act on Promotion of Women’s Participation and Advancement in the Workplace).
CITIZEN FINEDEVICE CO., LTD., which was certified in FY2023, was awarded three-star "L-boshi" Certification, the highest, in recognition of its various efforts to allow women to demonstrate their abilities, including equal competitive rates for men and women in recruitment, efforts to reduce working hours, with the average total number of legal overtime and legal holiday working hours being less than 45 hours per month, and promotion of career advancement for women, including the transition from general to senior-level positions.

"L-boshi" Certification (Three-star)

Compatibility Support System (Summary)

CITIZEN WATCH has established a system to support the balancing of work with childcare, nursing care, specified illnesses, and infertility treatment in order to help diverse human resources play an active role in the company. We will continue to expand and enhance this program while listening to the opinions of those involved.

LGBTQ Initiatives

In FY2024, as part of human rights training for all CITIZEN Group employees, we provided an e-learning program focusing on LGBTQ people to broaden understanding of those people. As part of its LGBTQ initiatives, CITIZEN WATCH has so far made it optional for job applicants to specify their gender when submitting documents for employment. Making a further step, we have now set up an external consultation desk to enable employees to feel more comfortable asking for advice. We will continue to promote the creation of an environment in which employees can leverage their diverse values and experiences to demonstrate their capabilities.

Employment of Persons with Disabilities

The CITIZEN Group is actively working to employ people with disabilities, in line with our basic policy of "working together." For example, CITIZEN WATCH has been accepting trainees from special-needs schools every year since FY2018, providing them with opportunities for work experience and stable work after employment. We have employed four people with disabilities to date.

For more than 40 years, we have also been providing employment support through subcontracted work such as counting and packaging watch parts and after-sales service parts and dismantling watches at Social Welfare Corporation Murayama-en (Higashimurayama City, Tokyo). We will continue to make efforts to further expand employment and job opportunities.