SUSTAINABILITY Employee Relations

Personnel System

Lawson's Human Capital Concept

Developing human resources who think and act on their own to lead the growth of the company

Figure for Sustainable Company growth

In practicing ESG-based management, the Lawson Group positions employees, who are the most important capital resource for realizing happiness in communities and high store productivity, as human capital and aims to realize the Group Philosophy and Vision by enhancing human capital.
To maximize human capital, we promote the human resource strategy and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) as part of our management strategies.
At Lawson, we have a well-systematized Group Philosophy and Vision, as well as an accompanying code of conduct in the form of the Lawson’s Way (Action Guideline), and we invest effort into developing core human resources who will be responsible for putting this into practice.
To realize the Group Philosophy, we operate a development-oriented personnel system with the aim of fostering autonomous human resources who are capable of thinking and acting on their own initiative.
To create a culture of acting on one’s own, the personnel system clarifies the scope of responsibilities and the roles to be performed for each job and introduces a system to evaluate the behavior of individual employees.
We evaluate the actions (processes) that lead to outputs, combine them with performance evaluation as the result of the actions, and determine treatment based on the two evaluations, thereby leading to the development of human resources.
In addition, we use a Career Development Sheet to help each employee clearly plan their future career path and have them look back on their past career and current position to clearly declare what they wish to become in the future. We also conduct interviews to support their individual growth.
In addition, to develop and produce the next generation of management personnel, we discuss development plans for general managers and their successor candidates at the Next Generation Development Committee meeting, while the management takes responsibility for leading HR development.
We will also continue to develop and hire human resources for tech and for digital transformation (DX) to pursue the concept of “Real x Tech Convenience” as one of our medium- to long-term management strategies.
To maximize the abilities of each employee and enhance our corporate value, we aim to become a company that offers job satisfaction and use this as the basis for formulating various human resource measures.

Overview of HR strategy and key initiatives

Overview of HR strategy and key initiatives

Strengthening points, initiatives, and key indicators for human capital initiatives

Strengthening points, initiatives, and key indicators for human capital initiatives

Role-based System

We operate a compensation system in which role grades and salaries are determined according to the scope of responsibilities and the roles to be fulfilled.
The system is based on individual merit, regardless of gender, length of service, nationality, etc.

Career Development Interviews

We employ a Career Development Sheet to ensure employees' ability to determine their own career paths, and individual employees are also asked to specify their goals for the future in light of their personal histories and current positions. Interviews are conducted to support their growth as individuals (4,001 employees were interviewed in fiscal 2023).

Flexible Employee System

In fiscal 2018, we introduced a flexible full-time employee system, which allows employees with reasons such as childcare, nursing care, or cancer treatment to limit their work location and work hours if they need to limit their work beyond the statutory or existing systems.

Active Senior Employee System

In March 2021, we raised the mandatory retirement age to 65 and introduced the active senior full-time employee system for employees aged 60 and above. This system allows employees to choose from multiple job courses. At the same time, we are conducting career design training for employees who have reached the age of 53.

FA (Free Agent) System

This system is intended to encourage employees to take on ambitious goals.
Employees who meet certain conditions acquire FA rights and can be transferred to the desired job type and place of work.
Starting in fiscal 2024, we have enhanced the eligibility criteria for acquiring FA rights to increase opportunities for challenging new careers.

Career Challenge System

In fiscal 2024, we introduced the Career Challenge System, which enables employees to file applications with the aim of helping them continuously learn toward achieving their desired career and providing the desired careers to employees who are highly motivated to take on challenges, thereby pursuing employee growth and job satisfaction.
Successful candidates are able to further improve their knowledge and skills during the learning period designated by their department and become able to work in a new department.

Varied Work Shifts

We have a system in place detailing the job contents of 21 different work shifts. Each employee can choose 4 shifts according to their work, enabling them to work according to a variety of flexible schedules.

Employee Award Program

Encouraging employee efforts to take up new challenges proactively beyond departmental boundaries

In order to create new customer value, it is necessary for each and every employee to take on challenges on their own initiative. At Lawson, we have set up cross-departmental projects in which employees from different positions share their opinions from various perspectives to create better products and services.

We are working to foster a culture of praise through the Lawson Challenge Award, the President's Award, the Good Job Award (commended by department), and the Thank you Card.

  • Employee Award Program

LAWSON Challenge Award

The “LAWSON Challenge Award” (L-Challenge for short) is our internal award system for gathering one-year initiatives that implemented originality and ingenuity for work on the front lines, operation improvement, or a new idea, having presentations, and recognizing them.
The program began in 2018, and in fiscal 2023, 151 applications were received from all over Japan.
Ten teams were selected from among them, who gave presentations to the president and officers at the final screening. As a result, the grand prize was awarded to one team, second prizes to two teams, the special award for promoting the SDGs to one team, the awards for business reform to three teams, and the human resource development prizes to two teams.

  • LAWSON Challenge Award

President’s Award

The department manager nominates people who took on a challenge with an innovative idea or teams that achieved extraordinary results and the President selects the winner and awards them at the corporate morning assembly.
In fiscal 2023, 72 President’s Awards were given out in total.

  • President’s Award

Division Good Job Award

This award system is the division manager version of the President’s Award. Division managers select and award individuals and teams within the headquarters and company every half-year.
In fiscal 2023, 304 Division Good Job Awards were given out in total.

  • Division Good Job Award

Developing the Next Generation of Leaders

Next Generation Development Committee Meeting

Since fiscal 2016, the “Next Generation Development Committee Meeting” has been held on a regular basis to discuss plans for the development of the next generation of management leaders and department manager candidates. Employees at the management level serve as training leaders, creating training plans for department managers, the target personnel, and nurturing them through consultations and other means.
Since fiscal 2021, the committee meeting has been used to find female department managers and management leaders by appointing at least one female department manager candidate out of three.

Lawson Management School

To further develop the Group, in January 2023, we opened the Lawson Management School, where the president directly served as a lecturer with the aim of promoting awareness as a business manager and demonstrating further leadership among section managers (mainly branch directors nationwide).
The School was also opened from September to October 2023 for follow-up purposes and has been well received by participants in each session.

Policy on Executive Compensation

Our basic policy as a company is to design a compensation system for directors that is linked to shareholders’ profits through incentives to increase corporate value, sustainable growth and performance improvement, and to provide sufficient and appropriate compensation for the duties performed by each director.
In addition to fixed compensation, the basic compensation for directors also includes variable remuneration, which is linked to their performance evaluation. Variable remuneration is determined based on the percentage of budget achievement for EPS (earnings per share) and SDGs targets (CO2 reduction rate per store, etc.). The purpose of EPS is to share more value with shareholders and to link it to the company’s performance. The purpose of the SDGs targets is to set targets in order to achieve the environmental vision set out in “Lawson Blue Challenge 2050!” The variable remuneration amount is determined by adding qualitative (10%) evaluation via appointments and interviews with the Compensation Committee to the amount above. We reviewed part of our KPIs from March 2023 and decided to add the percentage of budget achievement for business profit (index equivalent to consolidated operating profit by the Japanese standard, calculated by subtracting the cost of goods sold as well as selling, general, and administrative expenses from the operating profit). Laying out the same targets as for employees will lead to improvement of the company’s competitiveness.




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