Our Approach

LIXIL strives to create an environment that inspires pride in the company and enables each employee to maximize their productivity and potential.

Based on our Kawaranaito LIXIL initiative aimed at revitalizing our business in Japan, our focus on workstyle reform drives the expansion of our systems to support employees with childcare or nursing care responsibilities and encourages employees to utilize their paid leave, all with the aim of creating a workplace where employees can work with peace of mind.

From FYE2023, we have been gradually revising our qualifications and job grade systems, personnel evaluation systems, compensation systems, and welfare systems, etc. with the aim of fostering a growth-oriented mindset and firmly established meritocracy, pursuing D&I, and promoting employee wellbeing so employees can continue to feel inspired and enthused by their work.

Our System

LIXIL is evolving rapidly. In order to further integrate employees and become One LIXIL, it is important for us to understand the circumstances of each internal organization and actively incorporate employees’ views when seeking to further improve working environments and building both top-down and bottom-up systems.

Promoting Flexible and Diverse Working Styles

In Japan, LIXIL is developing human resources policies and work environments to facilitate a range of effective working styles that suit individual circumstances.

System Reform to Increase Flexibility of Work Location and Hours

In FYE2021, we updated our remote working policy, which includes work-from-home practices popularized during the COVID-19 pandemic, to make it more flexible to use. We also replaced our former flextime system around core working hours with a new Superflex system that will make it even easier for employees to independently select their working hours.

LIXIL does not intend to return to conventional ways of working, but rather intends to continue to embrace flexible workstyles. In that vein, in FYE2022, we created clear definitions for “work-from-home employees,” who would be expected to work remotely, and “commuter employees,” who would be expected to commute to their site of business, depending on the type of job and work environment, and we have set up new allowances for remote working.

We also formally introduced a system that permits employees to work concurrently for other organizations to encourage diverse and flexible workstyles and boost employee autonomy.

Supporting Workstyles That Suit Individual Life Stages

We are making changes to enable working styles tailored to the different stages of an employee’s life, such as childcare or nursing care.

Supporting a Healthy Work-Life Balance >

Designating the Office as a Place of Communication

Alongside LIXIL’s efforts in workstyle reform, we relocated headquarters in November 2022 to streamline office space and leverage the workplace as a space for communication, collaboration, and connection between people that will fuel the creation of new ideas and greater operational efficiencies.

The opening of LIXIL’s new headquarters >

Encouraging Individual Employee Growth

In Japan, LIXIL is reforming our human resources systems with an emphasis on developing qualifications and job grade systems that drive people to challenge themselves, personnel evaluation systems that encourage personal and organizational growth, performance-linked compensation systems, and benefits that support wellbeing. Through these systems, we aim to create an environment that enables everyone to demonstrate their full abilities, regardless of age, gender, and other factors and supports the individual growth of all employees.

In FYE2023, we reviewed the grading and compensation systems for managers and updated those systems to a simple, and readily understandable alternative system that better reflects employees’ abilities and achievements. Regarding reforms to the systems for general employees, we set up a labor-management committee and reached an agreement after repeated discussions between the two sides. We plan to start gradually revising grading and compensation systems, systems relating to the location of people’s work and residence, and systems relating to retirement benefits and other types of asset formation from April 2023, and we held briefing sessions for employees in February on these upcoming revisions. Going forward, we will conduct training for managers and strive to deepen understanding of the new systems to ensure they work effectively.

To support the wellbeing of our employees, we introduced a points system (cafeteria plan) that can be used across a variety of benefit options such as travel, self-development, or comprehensive medical checkups. We also revised various systems to ensure even safer and more comfortable working environments. We have held roughly 90 online briefings for employees to raise awareness about the new systems, and the utilization rate of cafeteria plan increased from 9.8% at the end of June 2022 to 74.9% at the end of March 2023.

Employee Listening Systems

In FYE2022, LIXIL launched an Employee Experience initiative, focused on the value experienced throughout the employee life cycle to increase employee engagement. We are developing and continually improving our employee listening strategy to deepen our understanding of the touchpoints that impact an employee’s affinity toward the company and motivate them in their work.

In FYE2021, we updated an opinion survey of all employees that we have been conducting since 2015, and adopted the LIXIL Voice survey that leverages new digital tools. Furthermore, in FYE2022, we revised the survey to enhance the focus on employee experience and established new KPIs to measure engagement, inclusion, and wellbeing. In FYE2023, we conducted an in-depth survey of specific employees in addition to conducting the LIXIL Voice survey in Japan to ensure we take more effective action based on past survey results, and we are now working to further improve employee experience based on the survey results.

The survey conducted in June 2022 achieved the highest response rate of the past three surveys after the update at 87% and displayed an overall improvement in inclusion scores. On the engagement front, Japan achieved a similar result to the previous survey, while the score for LIXIL International improved.

Employee opinion surveys:
Response rate

Employee opinion surveys: Engagement (percentage of affirmative responses)

The survey results by individual base revealed improved scores in FYE2023 for plants that had marked a relatively low score on engagement in the FYE2022 survey. We urged factories to take various improvement measures based on the FYE2022 survey results. Specifically, those measures included on-site visits from our CEO to get a clear idea of current circumstances, providing educational opportunities and training for managers and supervisors, and improving working environments at each site.

At the departmental level, we distributed dashboards to departmental managers to communicate the teams’ survey results, and conducted training for individual managers across the company. We are seeking to implement highly effective action at the departmental level through these efforts. For example, at the Faucet Division of LIXIL Water Technology (LWT) Japan, managers took various actions, including spending time explaining the objective of LIXIL Voice to each individual employee to deepen their understanding, analyzing original survey results and then conducting an in-depth survey to help improve the situation, hosting roundtable discussions on opinions expressed in the surveys, conducting one-on-one meetings, and utilizing tools to encourage staff to convey their feelings of gratitude to other colleagues for their day-to-day efforts. These kinds of activities helped boost employee motivation and engagement, and the overall Faucet Division maintained a high score in the June 2022 survey. Elsewhere, our North America team, which witnessed a significant increase in scores for communication and collaboration, has been holding focus groups twice a month centered around the theme of open and direct communication to give managers and staff the opportunity to talk directly with each other. We share videos of these positive cases on our internal social media to help disseminate best practices more effectively and ultimately improve employee experience.

To Embed the LIXIL Behaviors

LIXIL’s Purpose is the north star that guides LIXIL’s employees in performing their daily work with enthusiasm and pride, and inspires us to become more agile and entrepreneurial for sustainable growth. We have established the LIXIL Behaviors that guide how each employee should think and act in their daily work, irrespective of the nature of their work or its location, and incorporated them into our personnel evaluation items. We encourage employees around the world to act based on these common guiding principles so that they can cooperate more closely together.

In order to promote the LIXIL Behaviors, we display posters and stickers in our offices and factories, and actively incorporate discussion of the LIXIL Behaviors at meetings and on other occasions to encourage greater awareness on a daily basis.

In addition, we offer workshops for employees at each base and as part of our new employee training program. These activities give employees the opportunity to share their own ideas about LIXIL Behaviors along with specific anecdotes, and to learn how to best incorporate those behaviors into their own actions.

Purpose and Behaviors >

LIXIL's Purpose and Behaviors

Preventing Overwork

LIXIL emphasizes working styles that help employees achieve high output efficiently. To that aim, in Japan, top managers are proactively seeking to improve employee productivity by eradicating long working hours and ensuring a healthy work-life balance.

LIXIL provides information on time management to all employees to help increase awareness of the need to work efficiently. Clarifying the definition of working hours is helping improve the quality of time management.

Employees who consistently work long hours are interviewed by an industrial physician to prevent any consequent issues with their mental or physical health, and the individual and his or her immediate supervisor are required to submit an improvement plan. We also encourage employees to take five consecutive days of annual leave at a time, and to take leave to celebrate special personal anniversaries. For a few years through to FYE2022, the number of days of paid leave taken was lower than in the past due to the impact of pandemic stay-at-home restrictions, but in FYE2023 it went back to the past level. In addition, overtime work decreased dramatically from FYE2020 thanks to the advancement of work-from-home arrangements and IT infrastructure, which is helping to generate greater productivity and more flexibility in workstyles.

Measures to Maintain and Promote Health >

Paid Leave Days Taken per Employee

Average Monthly Overtime Hours per Employee

Labor-Management Relationship

LIXIL believes that efforts to build a relationship of trust between the union and the company and to seek to establish good working environments help create a fair and rewarding workplace and lead to improved business performance. In Japan, we have established a labor union which adopts a union shop system for permanent employees of the company and achieved a membership rate of 100% (as of March 31, 2023).

The fundamental labor-management agreement includes items relating to health and safety and working environments. Labor-management consultations are conducted in the form of regular discussions and information-sharing on business status, working conditions, health and safety issues, etc., and we work to resolve any issues.

The union and the company are working together on issues relating to the reform of human resources systems that LIXIL is promoting by setting up a dedicated committee consisting of select labor and management representatives and holding repeated discussions. When working conditions and/or other systems are newly introduced or revised as a result of labor-management consultations, the union and the company cooperate to ensure employees are aware of the changes. This is facilitated by posting the information on the company intranet, passing the information down through the Human Resources Department, and distributing copies of the Union Guide compiled by the union to all union members.

Creating Local Employment Opportunities

LIXIL supports the expansion of employment opportunities in regions in Japan where we operate by employing technical college and high-school graduates as local permanent employees at our plants. Over recent years, we have also been actively working to secure and nurture local human resources for sales and professional positions.

Local Employment at Plants

Scope and details of employee-related data >