Report on the Fourth Meeting of the Group DEI Promotion Council

Yuki Kusumi, CEO of Panasonic Holdings Corporation, kicked off the session with a message to the participants in which he explained the significance of the Panasonic Group’s DEI promotion and his thoughts on the Fourth Meeting of the Group DEI Promotion Council.

“There are two sides to our DEI activities. One is a management strategy to leverage diverse opinions and insights into our marketing and product strategies. The other is to create an environment where people of all backgrounds can work comfortably and perform at their best. In other words, it is a barrier-free environment that removes physical and mental barriers.

“What is especially necessary for the first objective, our management strategy, is to utilize genius without fear of misinterpretation. Those who are called ‘geniuses’ have a great ability to innovate, but they are also often controversial. When you meet these so-called geniuses or people who are different from you, you tend to focus on their shortcomings. However, focusing on their strengths, understanding and respecting each other can be a catalyst to create new ability. Our founder, Konosuke Matsushita, also spoke of the importance of ‘noticing people’s strengths six times out of ten and their weaknesses the remaining four.’

“I believe that we should understand and support different talents on the basis of eight times out of ten for strengths and two for weaknesses. The Group does not promote DEI simply because it is a trend. We are actively promoting DEI with a strong determination, regarding it as one of our management strategies. We hope you will take this opportunity to think about how to make the most of DEI in your business management, while gleaning hints from the action examples that will be shared during today’s session.”

In this workshop, attendees from Panasonic Industry Co., Ltd., Panasonic Information Systems Co., Ltd., and Panasonic Holdings Corporation introduced their unique approaches to DEI.

Since 2021, Panasonic Industry has been promoting DEI under the statement “Differences Are Wonderful,” and in the fiscal year ending in 2023 we undertook the Barrier-Free Project as a measure to thoroughly understand and respond to the needs of individuals and expand options.

With the goal of making 27 of our major manufacturing bases in Japan barrier-free by the fiscal year ending in 2025, we conducted a survey and created guidelines in collaboration with Mirairo Inc., a company with knowledge and experience in diversity management and barrier-free operations. Barrier-free evacuation routes and outdoor passageways are already in place at some of the locations, which is a priority.

We are taking on the challenge of promoting DEI not only from the perspective of people with disabilities, but also by utilizing the knowledge of outside professional organizations to steadily identify areas for improvement, etc.

Starting in 2022, Panasonic Information Systems is conducting a variety of DEI promotion activities in four categories: “expressing your personality,” “getting to know each other,” “learning about DEI,” and “driving DEI in the organization.” As part of the driving DEI in the organization category, we held DEI Caravan for executives and managers.

DEI Caravan is an initiative undertaken through DEI workplace revitalization workshops in which participants discuss their visions for the ideal workplace using karuta cards. On this occasion, executives posted their own ideal workplace karuta cards on internal social networking services, and managers participated in real and online workshops and dialogues. In a post-workshop questionnaire, 95% of the participants responded that they were “glad or somewhat glad” to have participated, and comments such as “I was able to make DEI something which relates to me personally” and “My understanding of DEI deepened” contributed to promoting greater understanding among managers.

In the Accessibility Map Project initiated by Panasonic Holdings, introduced at the Third Meeting of the Group DEI Promotion Council, a UX (user experience) visualization list was subsequently introduced in response to a proposal from volunteer members.

The visualization list is a part of the design thinking process, which consists of “Create,” “Communicate,” “Notice,” and “Think,” with an emphasis on “Notice” and “Think.” Based on the members’ written observations, pictograms were to be created to convey feelings. The process of “communicating” was also emphasized, with the aim of creating a highly convenient website, such as by establishing an accessibility map site on the company’s internal website.

The process of creating results also reflects DEI’s philosophy of working collaboratively to create something good.

In the second half of the session, the participants were divided into three teams and engaged in in-depth discussions on the following two topics regarding future issues in DEI promotion.

The teams shared the following observations.

After sharing the content of each team’s discussion, participants created feedback sheets. A rich variety of keywords emerged from these feedback sheets. For instance, some touched on the importance of strong resolve and clear messages from top management, some gave hints for promoting DEI in every corner of the workplace so that they become self-sustaining, some got to the core of why DEI is necessary, and some expressed positive opinions based on the evolution of the company through 2022.