Human Resources Development Human Resources Development

Our approach to employee development

To enhance corporate value, we need to ensure that employees clearly understand their role and take the effort to develop their capabilities. We expect our employees to show initiative toward refining their skills, and at the same time encourage them to effectively leverage their respective strengths in the global business arena as part of our team.

Moreover, exceptional management ability to harness combined group capabilities plays a crucial role in our turning innovative ideas into products and delivering them to the market.

Our human resources development efforts are based on the three policies outlined in the illustration below in line with the Advantest Human Resource Development Policy established in April 2003.

Focusing on the three policies of developing an adventurous spirit among our workers, providing our workers with a cosmopolitan outlook, and improving the quality of management, we conduct human resources development to produce a professional workforce capable of navigating the global business environment. Through this policy, Advantest actively supports employees who work consistently to refine their skills, acquire greater expertise, and broaden their knowledge.

Status and implementation of education and training system

The Advantest makes training programs available to all employees, covering everything from the basics of specific jobs to the latest technological trends. We persistently look for ways to further improve these programs to ensure that they are better geared toward shifts in the business environment.

Furthermore, during fiscal 2011 we identified the qualities required of employees to meet the needs of our business strategy in response to the rapidly changing business environment and our own globalization, and have created a training system that will help develop such qualities. To make this training even more effective, we are forging and implementing new programs, including the expansion of our global training program. New programs will be delivered by specialists to make them more effective, and we will selectively use in-house or external lecturers depending on the program content.

We plan to restructure our education system by factoring in opinions from overseas as well as those from Japan, thus giving it a more global perspective.

Status and implementation of education and training system

Program	Objective	For	No. of times implemented	No. of trainees
Subordinate Development Training	Enhance management skills	Managers	1	24
Career Development Program	Enhance management skills	General employees	1	14
Evaluator Training	Enhance management skills	Managers	1	24
Problem-Solving Training	Enhance marketing skills	Managers	1	24
TM Method, Problem-Solving Training (Introductory)	Enhance marketing skills	General employees	2	49
Technology & Marketing Training	Enhance marketing skills	Managers	1	25
Global Mindset Training	Enhance communication skills	Managers	2	43
Cross-Cultural Understanding Training	Enhance communication skills	General employees	3	124
Third-Year Training	Enhance communication skills	Third-year employees	1	31
Approaches to Learning English	Enhance language skills	General employees	1	107
Idea Hacks! Creative Thinking Workshop	Develop ability to generate ideas	General employees	1	19
New Employee Training	Develop basic skills	New employees	1	59
Senior Life Plan Design and Pension System Seminar	Acquire knowledge	General employees	2	23
Technology Seminar	Acquire knowledge about the latest technologies	Engineers	61	1,317

Development of engineers

We place particular emphasis on educating engineers with the aim of ensuring that our products continue to underpin leading-edge technologies.
We have created a training program accessible to every employee of the Group and covering a wide range of subjects, from basic knowledge to the latest technologies.
In fiscal 2013, about 60 technology seminars were provided, with approximately 1,300 engineers participating. The program now includes seminars hosted by Advantest's senior engineers. Meanwhile, one of the seminars features a lecture on design quality by an employee in charge of design, thereby shedding light on the basic technologies required to maintain and improve product quality based on the speaker's first-hand experiences. The program acts as a means of imparting not only technical knowledge but also Advantest's DNA to successive generations.

New employee education and training

Advantest's training program for new employees starts with a month-long, combined-group segment covering the basics of working life. After that, the new recruits are put into one of two occupation-specific training regimes, depending on whether they have been hired for engineering or administrative job assignments.
The new crop of engineers start off learning design basics, followed by conduct device measurement training using actual testers, hardware training that involves hands-on hardware development, software training during which they learn about programming, and training in production methods constituting the foundation of manufacturing industries. In this way, they learn the skills required of Advantest engineers. New administrative employees do training in the three fields of sales, production, and management to get an overview of the Group's business and how the divisions are interrelated.
By having new employees experience various areas of company operations in this way, we are able to ensure that they will clearly understand their own roles, and value teamwork with other divisions. Our training period for new recruits acts as a key formative phase in their professional development as Advantest employees.