Human Rights & Diversity

The Yamato Group established the "Yamato Group Human Rights Policy" in 2021 based on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, with the aim of realizing a enriched society as stated in the Group's Management Philosophy. This commitment indicates the Yamato Group's intention and direction to respect human rights through a resolution of the Board of Directors. Based on this policy, we will strengthen our efforts to respect human rights.

We have established a Basic Policy on Diversity with the aim of creating a workplace environment that respects the diversity of employees, fosters diverse human resources, and enables them to engage in active roles. Based on the Yamato Group's "DNA" and core value of management by full participation (we all represent the company), we promote diversity throughout the Group by creating a workplace environment where diverse human resources can play an active role and fostering diverse human resources.

The Yamato Group distributes mini-booklets explaining its Group Corporate Philosophy to all employees, to enlighten them about the Group's stance on human rights and the importance of respecting human rights.
We also distribute a group-wide harassment handbook, and conduct training to prevent harassment at each Group company. In particular, we educate management personnel, using videos, to enable them to respond appropriately when they receive a report or consultation on human rights issues, including bullying or harassment.

The Yamato Group engages with outside experts on human rights risks and considerations in its business activities. At a stakeholder dialogue held in November 2019, Ryusuke Tanaka, Program Officer of the International Labour Organization (ILO) office in Japan, gave opinions on human rights issues across a wide range of topics, such as labor and supply chain. Going forward, we will continue to incorporate valuable opinions from third-party perspectives into the identification of material issues and consideration of strategies, and make use of them in future initiatives.

It is said that many sexual minorities work in the transportation industry because the differences in the appearance of uniforms worn by male and female employees are minor in comparison with other industries. In FY2019 (the fiscal year ended March 31, 2019) we conducted executive training, with members of LGBT minorities taking to the stage to speak to executives, in order to help create a workplace environment where sexual minorities can engage in active roles in the future.
To solve concerns that LGBTQ people have and create work environments where employees can work energetically, we have established an external LGBTQ consultation desk. At the consultation desk, external counselors who have knowledge and understanding of LGBTQ (LGBTQ people and professional counselors) provide consulting services so that privacy will be taken into consideration and the desk will be user-friendly.

In the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024, we conducted interviews on career development for participants in the development program for women aiming to become Sales Office managers, which was launched in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2023.
We also worked to increase the number of women being promoted to management roles by continuing to send employees to cross-industry training for women leaders, introduce systems for supporting diverse work styles through the Company intranet, and publish messages from women role models through internal newsletters.
Going forward, we will take medium- to long-term initiatives to support women’s career advancement and enhance their work environment with a view to including a more diverse range of women in even more management roles.

The Yamato Group continues to create employment opportunities for persons with disabilities based on our Corporate Stance, which states that we will actively support the independence of persons with disabilities and other socially vulnerable people. Yamato Transport has assigned personnel in charge of promoting the employment of persons with disabilities nationwide, holding regular meetings   on a regional basis to share issues and examples of good initiatives for promoting employment, engage in recruitment activities, and provide support to help employees stay in their jobs.
As of March 2024, the number of employees with disabilities was 2,873, and the employment rate was 3.14%. To promote employment, we will continue recruitment activities in cooperation with Hello Work, schools, employment transition support facilities, and others. At the same time, we will provide opportunities for promoters, such as training sessions with invited outside specialists, fostering a deeper understanding of working alongside people with disabilities and strengthening our employment promotion system.

The Yamato Group has established universal design guidelines to design facilities that customers and employees can use more at ease and more comfortably.

The Yamato Group employs approximately 8,000 non-Japanese employees. We provide multilingual documents and notices about employment and safety and work manuals for non-Japanese employees in English, Chinese, Nepali, and Vietnamese. We also provide multilingual support in our employee awareness survey, investigate opinions on job satisfaction and ease of working for non-Japanese employees, and reflect our findings in efforts to improve the workplace environment.
To develop a working environment that enables non-Japanese employees to demonstrate their skills with peace of mind and ensure they are not isolated and left behind, we set up a multilingual consultation center (available in English, Nepali, and Vietnamese) from October 2023.

We organize the Yamato Life Plan Seminar, which provides employees approaching retirement about pension plans, how to work after retirement, and financial planning after retirement. Employees can participate in the seminar with their spouses, and receive assistance for them and their families to transition smoothly to their second life after retirement.