Human Resource Development / Personnel System

Sharp’s range of development programs is one way the company is boosting its comprehensive strength.

We have many kinds of development programs aimed at improving the quality and scope of employees’ capabilities. These train young employees, cultivate the next generation of leaders, and strengthen individual skills.

In job-level-specific training, special emphasis is placed on the development of young employees so that they can acquire the knowledge, skills, and mindset essential to each stage of their careers. Towards that end, young people receive training starting from when they are first selected to join Sharp, training upon joining the company, and training in their first few years at the company.

Candidates for promotion take manager candidate training as part of Sharp’s efforts to systematically strengthen its management capabilities.

For Sharp to achieve sustainable growth, it must foster the next generation of leaders who will carry the company into the future. We therefore select outstanding employees who can build our future and improve the necessary skills of these management personnel.

In programs for senior management candidates for the near and foreseeable future, we have courses that promote their systematic growth. In addition to sharpening skills that participants need to take charge, there are courses that will give outstanding young managers what it takes to be senior managers, in areas such as leadership, ESG*, new business, and business administration.

To improve employees’ foreign language abilities towards expanding Sharp’s global business, we provide foreign language study of two types: the basics, open to all employees; and intensive, for selected employees. In the basics, we meet individuals’ particular study needs with learning that can be done anytime and anywhere, in addition to counseling on language learning.

We also strive to foster globally minded individuals through things like overseas business trips and overseas job placement so that they can communicate and problem-solve with their worldwide counterparts.

As part of efforts to build a culture conducive to earnestly creating new business and innovating, we carry out new business proposal activities.

At our newly established new business proposal meetings, proposals are gathered from the all of Sharp and the best ones compete at a company-wide competition.

Teams that make it to the company-wide competition are given training in how to best present their proposals to the judges.

Sharp works to cultivate an environment in which employees can pursue independent learning whenever and wherever they are, in order to build up the basic business knowledge and expertise that they need as professionals.

Through specialized technical training, Sharp pursues a variety of initiatives aimed at helping employees improve and deepen their expertise (technical competency).

The courses we offer are a basic skills-building seminar (e-learning) in which primarily younger engineers learn the basics of technology; a device seminar, which introduces employees in product development to Sharp’s latest devices; and technical workshops, which incorporate a practical program that is directly linked to job skills in specific technical fields. There are also engineer exchange meetings. Sharp’s education and training initiatives are aimed at strengthening technical expertise company-wide, going beyond the limited framework of specific business and products to share technical know-how across internal functions and to develop younger employees by passing existing skills and techniques on to them.

In management skills improvement training, there are self-study courses for all employees to learn and acquire the basic knowledge and skills of business.

Because we believe employees' compensation should depend on their achievements, we use a bonus/pay raise system that is tied to company performance and employee evaluation in order to reward those employees who have produced good results.

To ensure fair evaluations, employees have an interview with their managers at the beginning, middle, and end of each evaluation term, at which time both sides confirm how well the employee is doing in terms of progress towards targets, contribution to the company, and job results. Evaluation results are given to employees every half year along with explanations of the evaluations with the aim of contributing to employees' growth.

Our in-house recruitment system allows current employees to apply for jobs such as the launch of a new business. Besides effectively leveraging existing human resources, the system also helps our employees advance their careers.

All employees submit a career development plan along with a self-assessment of their job aptitude. Sharp then stores this information—along with records of interviews with supervisors—in a personnel database. This provides an overview of how employees are progressing with respect to their career goals, and it allows Sharp to effectively develop human resources.

To support employee self-development, Sharp offers monetary rewards to employees who have acquired qualifications, with the amount depending on the difficulty of acquiring the qualification. This plan covers about 200 qualifications, including some for field-specific techniques and skills, some directly related to daily duties, and some for language skills.

Employee surveys cover employees at Sharp Group companies in Japan. The surveys have been conducted periodically since 2005 with the aim of invigorating and improving the workplace. In 2022 the survey took place in July and 18,123 people responded to the survey (95.0% response rate). The survey results, obtained from questions about the current situation regarding the respondent’s work, workplace, superiors, and so forth, are summarized for each workplace and shared with every employee. Workplace meetings are held based on the survey results to identify the issues to be addressed and carry out voluntary improvement activities.