Management Approach

Materiality Rationale

Since its establishment, Sony has sought to remain at the forefront of technological development, building continuously on its achievements to deliver new value for people everywhere. In these efforts, Sony recognizes the people who work at Sony to be its most important asset. Employees are important stakeholders in Sony's diversified, global business and are the key to its efforts to achieve sustainable growth and generate social value. Sony is committed to increasing employee engagement by making the most of the individual strength, skills, abilities, and creativity of its diverse people. Sony seeks to sustainably elevate its talent and organizational capabilities in order to raise its overall business performance.

Basic Approach

Since its founding, Sony has viewed employees not as a group, but as individuals. Sony respects the independence of each individual and their enthusiasm for taking on challenges and cherishes a corporate culture that places the company and employees on equal terms, based on the partnership of choice between Sony and each individual employee, where each party is accountable for being responsive to the needs of the other. With the recent launch of Sony's new organizational structure, Sony's People Philosophy — unchanged since the beginning — is now described with the phrase, "Special You, Diverse Sony." Accordingly, Sony's HR strategy framework is organized around the themes of "Attract talented individuals," "Develop talented individuals," and "Engage talented individuals." Sony seeks to maximize the value that each of its diversely talented employees can create, thereby driving the Sony Group's sustainable value creation.

Main Achievements in Fiscal 2020

Here are the main results of fiscal 2020 initiatives:

• Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
  • - Selected from among the 500 signatories to The Valuable 500, an international initiative to promote participation by individuals with disabilities so that they can demonstrate their latent potential to bring value to business, society, and the economy, as one of 13 Iconic Leaders that are a driving force in their respective countries, regions, and industries
• Talent Development
  • - Shifted many PORT activities online. As a venue for developing talent, PORT offers opportunities for growth and connection transcending geographical location. A total of over 15,000 employees of the Sony group in different countries and regions took part in these selforganized continuing education activities.
  • - Established PORT Minato Mirai to provide a content production environment that supports self-organized employee efforts in continuing education.
• Employee Engagement
  • - Promoted the Symphony Plan, a work-life balance support system designed to create an environment in which employees can balance life events and work, continuing to demonstrate and leverage all their abilities, at each stage of their careers
• Occupational Health and Safety
  • - Enhanced global governance by setting globally shared Medium-Term Occupational Health and Safety Targets for fiscal 2019 to fiscal 2021, including acquiring external ISO45001 certification and reducing employees' health risks, etc.
  • - Continued to conduct audits and risk assessments related to OHS

Milestones

• 1966:
  Internal job posting program started
• 1973:
  Sony Technology Exchange Fair started
• 1978:
  Sony Taiyo Corporation founded
• 1988:
  Flex-time system introduced
  Basic Policy and Management System established
• 1990:
  Parenting leave and flex holiday programs introduced
• 2000:
  Sony University program started
• 2008:
  Flexible work (formerly called telework) policy introduced
• 2011:
  Diversity Committee established
• 2015:
  Flexible career leave and free agent programs introduced
• 2017:
  Workstyle reform project started at Sony Group companies in the electronics business in Japan
• 2018:
  PORT, a venue for developing new talent, established at the head office

Looking to the Future

With a focus on diversity, equity & inclusion, talent development, and engagement, Sony Group will continue to offer working conditions that contribute to the health and safety of employees — all part of its efforts to achieve sustainable growth and generate social value. Sony will provide opportunities for employees to improve and make the most of their individual strength, skills, abilities, and creativity.

Activity Reports

• Sustainability Report 2021 [PDF:11.50MB]
  Employees