Strengthen management capabilities

Profitability has been declining at Wacoal Corp., our core operating company, due to sluggish sales and a cost structure with a high fixed cost ratio. We are reviewing the business strategies set forth in our medium-term management plan to return to top line growth and improve profitability. In order to enhance management effectiveness, it is an extremely important issue to strengthen management capabilities to make accurate and fast decision-making and contribute to organizational achievements. We will, once again, work to cultivate, develop and appoint management talents based on the succession plan. We also recognize that it is essential to foster a healthy feedback culture from the perspective of strengthening organizational capabilities. We will promote efforts to secure and develop management talents who can realize our vision, implement our strategies, and motivate members to link individuals’ strengths to organizational results.

＜Development of Management Talents＞

During the fiscal year ending March 31, 2025, we plan to continue to provide trainings for the senior management as part of measures to disseminate our group’s management philosophy, and for all managerial positions, to promote diversity as a source of innovation and to acquire basic knowledge of psychological safety, which is a foundation of organizational development, and unconscious bias.
We will also establish opportunities for information-sharing and dialogue with general managers on a periodic basis, to share talent development policies and support methods, etc. with respective operations divisions as needed to facilitate talent development by the departments / divisions and to increase the accuracy of the human capital strategy.

＜Review of Evaluation System＞

While increasing the diversity of talents, we are building a more productive organization with a small number of highly skilled employees. In addition, we are reviewing, as needed, our systems and operations to achieve “fair evaluation and treatment” which forms the basis for such efforts. By fostering a culture of feedback and enhancing the level of acceptance of evaluation results, we aim to strengthen our organizational capabilities. In the fiscal year ending March 31, 2025, we plan to change the evaluation structure and system entirely.
Particularly with regard to sales positions, as the number of staff managed per manager exceeded 100, it was an issue that sufficient opportunities for dialogue could not be provided. We have operated the “Evaluation Advisor System” at full scale since April 2021, and fostered a culture in which leaders (such as supervisors, store managers and assistant managers) provide feedback to each other by delegating responsibilities and authority for evaluation and talent development to them, and implementing 360-degree evaluation of the leaders, etc. We will newly create a post of “Area Managers” in April 2024 to further promote the delegation of authority, and push forward the establishment of a structure where talent management at the work-site level functions effectively.

＜Review of Treatment System＞

We have developed a treatment system linked to the role size (work value x job size) of each position of the management jobs, in response to the expanded scope of authorities and responsibilities as a result of streamlining of the organization. By varying role-based pay of managers, which was previously uniform, according to the role size, it aims to improve the level of satisfaction and engagement of employees and help with individual career development. We also created a link with the direction of management and business strategies, established the new roles of “Brand Manager,” who supervises a main brand, and “Growth Strategy Director,” who leads a growth segment, and realized treatment corresponding to the size of a role to be assumed, including “Area Manager” mentioned above. In addition, in order to realize balanced treatment based on results and performance, we initiated a review on personal allowances and benefits to re-distribute funds generated from revisions and abolishment to all employees.