Lasertec Group is a global operation and hires various talent in different countries and regions. We believe that human capital is the most important company resource and the driver of our growth. Based on this belief, we strive to provide a workplace that is both challenging and comfortable for diverse talent, and one that enables everyone to fully utilize their knowledge and skills.

The kind of talent we should seek for the sustainable growth of our Group are characterized as follows:
・One who has the audacity to take on the world’s first challenges;
・One who acts proactively to achieve one’s goals; and
・One who can accommodate diverse values and work with others.

The human rights policy we adhere to is provided below.

We believe that it is essential to have talent with different experiences and skills for flexibly responding to wide-ranging challenges and social changes. We also recognize that it is imperative to ensure the diversity of human resources for making our mission statements - "Be the front runner of the optical technology field and help customers overcome new challenges," and "Let's launch a product totally new to the world every year" - come true.

We actively hire and promote diverse talent and prepare various career paths to allow them to pursue their own specialty fields, thereby providing opportunities for them to reach their full potential.

We will ensure the diversity of core human resources through these actions and aim to keep the combined percentage of 1) mid-career workers, 2) female employees, 3) global talent, and 4) senior employees more than 50% of all employees.

In addition, we are aiming to have female employees account for 20% or higher of our new hires (as of April 2022).

We believe it is important, as part of our human resource development effort, to establish talent pipelines through which we can proactively connect with skilled talent, and fill our hiring needs effectively.

We are engaged in various activities, including those listed below, to gain access to a network of talent who are likely to share values with us:

We believe it is critically important for us to hire and nurture strong R&D talent in order to maintain and enhance our product development capability. Hiring and nurturing R&D talent is our top-priority HR strategy for strengthening our corporate infrastructure, one of the key objectives in Phase 3+ of our Mid-term Business Plan.

We use the following venues to provide various practical training in order to retain and nurture talent versed in multiple engineering fields who can exercise "rapid product development”.

Technology makes progress day by day. For us to keep developing cutting-edge products, it is imperative that we keep improving the knowledge and skills of our employees. While we provide education and training internally, we also have our employees actively participate in various types of training provided by external specialists and industry groups to enhance their abilities. We believe it is important for these education and training programs to provide necessary technical knowledge and business skills in a timely manner while giving due respect to the diversity and uniqueness of individual employees and also based on the company's expectations for them. We collect feedback from employees, keep their subjects and content up to date, and conduct them in a flexible manner. For example, we conduct technical skills training regularly for all types of technical workers, regardless of whether they are full-time regular employees or temporary workers, to ensure that the quality of our products is maintained and improved. For occupational safety and health, our employees attend the safety training provided by the Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan (SEAJ) to learn the safety standards of the industry. Because there are a growing number of products to be installed and maintained at overseas customer sites, we are increasing the number of field service engineers at our overseas subsidiaries. We are actively trying to enhance the skills of these overseas engineers by training them at the headquarters as well as at each subsidiary to share the skills and knowhow of HQ engineers with them.

We hold workshops and others regularly as part of our human resource development efforts to promote communication among employees to enable diverse talent, including those who join Lasertec in mid-career, to reach their full potential in each of our organizations.

Notably, design reviews, where the development of new functions and technologies is discussed, are also serving as a venue where engineers learn new skills. We encourage specialists from various departments to participate in design reviews so that they can brush up their skills and ideas through discussions with other specialists and learn to have multiple perspectives. In this manner, design reviews are serving as a hands-on training venue that helps enhance our product development capability.

We encourage newly appointed managers to participate in training programs provided by external specialists for learning management skills. We also provide the "Next-Generation Leader Training" program for next-generation leader candidates and proactively nurture next-generation management.

Structure of Education and Training Programs

We believe it is highly important to evaluate the skills and performance of each employee properly to provide a work environment that enables talent to reach their full potential.

We have an annual cycle of performance evaluations in place, setting appropriate goals for each employee at the beginning of each fiscal year, evaluating their performance at the year end, and giving feedback.

As part of our effort to increase the motivation of employees to drive the company’s growth, we provide the following incentives for them:

The health and safety of our employees is one of the top priority issues for us. We support our employees to detect early signs of illnesses and maintain good health. In addition to the general physical checkup provided annually for our employees at the headquarters, we pay for a re-examination for those who have found a medical risk at the checkup. We also pay for a more thorough medical checkup for employees at certain ages. For mental health, we conduct a stress check regularly to monitor the stress level of our employees to detect a sign of excessive stress. We offer the counselling of an occupational physician to those who have a request for it. At overseas subsidiaries, we provide employees with medical insurance and/or medical expense assistance and pay for their physical checkups, depending on the need of each subsidiary and their local practices. We are engaged in the efforts to prevent occupational accidents. Lasertec headquarters is certified ISO45001.

We believe that maintaining a good work-life balance is crucial for the achievement of best performance and job satisfaction by employees. In addition to the flextime system provided over the years, we have newly introduced a telecommute system since the spread of new coronavirus infections. We strictly comply with the laws and regulations concerning the use of paid vacations by employees and promote their usage to increase the utility rate. We keep the increase of overtime hours in check. We also make a necessary accommodation for employees who return to work after taking a leave of absence for childbirth, childcare, or nursing care.

Furthermore, from April 2022, we have set our target for the average rate of paid leave usage per employee at 60% or higher.
We believe that offering a wide range of welfare programs to employees is crucial for helping them work well and spend their time off well, and therefore for increasing job satisfaction.

The following are examples of welfare programs offered to HQ employees:

We have been conducting an employee satisfaction survey regularly since 2015 as a tool to learn the satisfaction level and to take necessary measures to increase satisfaction.

In this survey, we ask questions on 8 different themes, including management, HR system, and working environment to identify where high-priority issues exist.

In the most recent survey conducted in fiscal year 2020, many positive feedbacks were received in the following areas: the company’s visions and policies are clearly announced; many employees work passionately to achieve growth and innovation; employees are allowed to have a high degree of freedom; new ideas are welcome in the workplace; employees can propose solutions and improvements in the workplace; among others.

We will continue to conduct this survey in the future because we believe higher employee satisfaction will lead to the company’s better performance and sustainable growth.

Lasertec sets the goals of its action plan as follows: