People & Culture (Human Capital)

The Kirin Group’s Basic Philosophy, “Respect for Humanity,” is based on a belief in the endless possibilities of people. We provide an environment in which each and every employee can challenge themselves to create new value, work with energy, and continue to grow through their work. By viewing human capital as the source of value creation and our competitive edge, and investing in them, we aim to be “a company where human capital grows and wins through human capital.” While the Human Capital Strategy enhances the execution of the current strategy, the capabilities of our human capital are also an essential element for raising our future corporate value and increasing the potential of the Management Strategy. The keys to this will be expertise and diversity. As every employee grows their expertise, we will provide an environment for cultivating diverse experiences and perspectives with our diverse, strong portfolio, extending from Foods & Beverages (Alcoholic and Non-Alcoholic) to Health Science and Pharmaceuticals, and foster expert and diverse human capital.

Additionally, we will promote CSV management, realize the sustainable growth of our Group, and improve our corporate value by creating an organizational culture accepting of diverse values and engaging in co-creation across the organization and teams.

While issues and high-priority initiatives may differ between countries, regions, and businesses, they are similar in that they connect the Human Capital Strategy to value creation. In order to promote a Human Capital Strategy representative of the Kirin Group, we established a Group-wide P&C Story that connects human capital (diversity and inclusion, culture for innovation) to value creation based on the Group’s Value Creation Model. The P&C Story comprises four key factors: Well-Being, Growth, DE&I, and KABEGOE. Through the P&C Story, we will cultivate human capital and an organizational culture that balance expertise and diversity and engage in KABEGOE.

In order to realize Kirin Group Vision 2027 (KV2027) and sustainable growth of the Group beyond KV2027, we believe it is important to foster an organizational culture in which each and every employee understands how their job is related to CSV management and proactively practices creativity and value creation. Therefore, looking at the gap between the current situation and our outlook on future environmental changes and management strategies, we established a vision and identified key issues based on the P&C Story to improve strategy execution abilities (short-term perspective) and to continuously adjust our human capital strategy so as to not limit future management strategies (medium- to long-term perspective).

We set indicators for each key issue based on the P&C Story, which includes Well-Being, Growth, DE&I, and KABEGOE, and disclose them as unique items.

With internal and external environments rapidly changing, we added “Increased investments in fostering Group management human capital” to our unique items in 2024. It serves as an indicator for fostering Group management human capital that can play active roles overseas, based on new management issues such as accelerating the growth of the Health Science domain and leveraging strengths in business development across domains. In order to connect the Human Capital Strategy to value creation, we will continue to sustainably promote human capital management through dialogues with stakeholders.

To realize the vision of our Health Science Business Strategy—Be one of Asia-Pacific’s Largest health Science Companies—we hired 38 employees with experience with specialized functions in the Health Science Domain,^* including corporate planning, marketing, basic research, quality assurance, and intellectual property, and plan to hire 29 more before the end of 2025. In particular, we believe that our hiring of a general manager with extensive experience in global business will accelerate the future global expansion of our business. By assigning human capital across the Group, we are generating synergy between organizational capabilities through exchanges. Toward creating synergy with FANCL Corporation, we are increasing talent exchanges between the Kirin Group and FANCL to around 30 people, mainly in corporate planning, overseas business, marketing, sales, and quality assurance.

Additionally, in order to improve our compliance with laws and regulations in various countries and improve customer understanding, which will be necessary to expand our business globally, we will be collaborating with Blackmores’ experts to make the most of their knowledge.