Accepting Diversity Accepting Diversity

Diversity Management

Advantest accepts the diversity of its workforce and strives to create a workplace where every employee can achieve their potential and participate to the fullest. As stipulated in the Advantest Code of Conduct, we respect human rights and are determined to eliminate discrimination on the basis of race, creed, gender, nationality, religion, or physical disabilities.

Status of employment

The Advantest Group pledges in its basic policy to respect the human rights of every employee and eliminate all forms of discrimination on the grounds of race, creed, gender, nationality, religion, physical disability, etc. Moreover, we are eliminating discrimination from recruitment and employee compensation practices, and striving to hire, cultivate, and promote personnel who will shine on the global stage.

The number of employees is shown below.
The integration of Verigy into Advantest operations in July 2011 greatly increased the number of foreign employees.

Status of employment

* As of March 31, 2015

* Scope: Japan and overseas - all employees

Recruitment and use of global human resources

Advantest's business has become more global in recent years, and we aim to secure personnel who understand other cultures, have high-level communication skills, and can see business through on the global stage. As the business environment becomes more borderless, it is increasingly necessary to use personnel exchanges with overseas affiliates to promote globalism in our human resources development and corporate structure.

We are putting more effort into hiring foreign students both overseas and in Japan in order to secure employees who can fulfill missions on the global stage. We continue to conduct personnel exchanges with overseas affiliates as a way of giving employees business experience in a global environment. Through everyday business and training in both organizations, technology and know-how are shared, allowing each employee to learn more advanced technology plus adaptive skills for a diverse business environment.

The human resources exchanges with overseas affiliates are implemented frequently at each division regardless of type of job. Under this program, which is specifically designed to promote interaction among personnel in Japan and abroad, employees participate in the exchange either on a short-term or long-term basis.

These activities enabled us to recruit students in overseas countries and foreign students studying in Japan. We now plan to extend the global reach of our recruitment activities going forward through further participation in similar job fairs, both overseas and in Japan. Although new employee training is generally geared toward new graduates who join the company in April, we are modifying this to allow all new graduates to take part in the training irrespective of when they start work.

As of March 2015, Advantest Corporation counted employees from 10 countries in its workforce, and seven of the Company's 22 executive officers were non-Japanese. We will continue to provide equal opportunities to all promising individuals regardless of nationality while underscoring the need to develop global personnel and global organizations through borderless promotion and personnel exchange.

Promotion and utilization of female employees

We believe in always accepting diverse values and that there is a need to continue to promote the corporate culture to encourage active participation regardless of gender, age and nationality. However, as of March 2015 only 13.4% of overall employees and 1.9% of management are women and so it is one of our challenges to expand the employment of women.

At Advantest we hire mainly engineering students where there is a high ratio of men to women, and women were not motivated to take the entrance exam through our conventional recruitment activities. Given this situation we focused on demonstrating the benefits of our company to female engineers and strengthening our appeal to women. We made particular use of young female employees during laboratory visits and business facility tours, reducing the distance between us and the female applicants, and emphasized the activities of female employees in our website and hiring brochure. In addition, at employment events we explained our systems and career plans for women and introduced the way that Advantest female employees play an active role in the company.

As a result of these efforts, for fiscal 2015 new employees the proportion of women was 23%. The Company will continue to focus our efforts to increase the female ratio in the future.

Number of new graduates hired

* Scope: Advantest only

Active use of older employees

Since April 2006, when the age at which national pensions are awarded was raised, it has been mandatory to take steps toward employing older workers up to the age of 65. Accompanying this change, Advantest has revised its re-employment system for older individuals and is responding flexibly to such people desiring employment. Our re-employment activities entail deciding on employment packages and job postings most suitable for actively taking advantage of the skills and know-how possessed by older adults.

Users of the re-employment system

* Scope: Advantest only

Employment of people with disabilities

Advantest Green Corporation (AGC) was established in September 2004 as a special subsidiary of Advantest for the purpose of promoting the employment of people with disabilities. Since then, AGC has been striving to offer job opportunities for, and continuous employment of, people with disabilities under the slogan, "Support employee independence and achieve social growth in partnership with the local community."
We provide AGC employees with a pleasant working environment in operations such as landscaping, cleaning, reception duties, selling bread, deliveries, and the management of dormitories. Advantest also actively takes part in various activities in partnership with local communities and relevant organizations to create workplaces where all employees, regardless of their disability status, can work comfortably.

To expand employment opportunities for the disabled, we are taking steps to make the workplace environment more conducive to their needs by, for example, standardizing work procedures, introducing equipment replenishment systems, and taking other initiatives to streamline tasks. We are also considering moves into new job categories, bringing vocational trainees on board, holding on-site workshops, and otherwise pursuing initiatives that will carry over to new employment.

Employment rate of people with disabilities

* Scope: Advantest Group (Japan)