Human Resource Development

The manufacturing of the TOTO Group has been supported by high technology.“Specialist system” evaluates advanced researchers, engineers and skilled workers producing high technology as well as managers, and designates them as “Specialist”. In this way, this system aims for their career advancement as skilled workers and the development of the next generation.
Our goal is to strengthen the competitiveness of the TOTO Group throughout manufacturing by ensuring further development of technology and skill, and accumulation & transmission of the knowhow. Furthermore with the technology the “Specialist”s produced, we will expand the new possibility of the associated fields and will contribute to the development of society.

In 2017, when celebrating its 100th anniversary, TOTO appointed over 100 best specialists as fellows for the first time. In 2020, two specialists were additionally appointed.
“Fellow” is one of the world’s top-level researchers and engineers who is responsible for TOTO’s core technology.As “Fellows” contribute greatly to the improvement of corporate value, brand, performance and symbolize TOTO’s unique technology, we will continue to develop the world’s top class engineers and pass on the manufacturing spirit and the human resource development spirit to the next generation.

Particularly in the development of technical staff, TOTO bases its efforts on words left behind by our second president, Saburo Momoki: "You need to make good people before you can make good products." To that end, TOTO has created the Technology Map, a system for structuring the technical skills needed in manufacturing products, and has rolled out a wide range of measures based on that system. Under Technology Map, to provide concrete technical training and assess technical skills, technology as a whole is divided into five fields: overall structural (system design) technology; component technology; core component technology; basic commonly-required technology; and manufacturing process technology. Each of these is further segmented into technical items at various levels, and ways devised to make them easy to use as human resource development tools. Human resource development efforts currently underway are focused primarily on four areas: e-learning, online training, group training and OJT.

TOTO's e-learning system was put in place to provide a convenient way for employees to study, and provides approximately 109 units of 30 courses covering basic technical knowledge and methods (as of Apr. 2021). We renewed all the content by providing supervision of the technical skills to make the content easier to learn and to develop an easy-to-use environment for employees by making the lesson hours of each content shorter to allow learners to choose and learn specific content as needed.

Group training conducted in fiscal year 2020 covered 25 subjects with a total of 470 employees trained across a total of 285 hours. In quality improvement training, which received special focus, attention was shifted from classroom-based training to a more hands-on system in the belief that knowing something and actually being able to do it are two different things. A three-step process (pre-training assignments; in-class training at the session; follow-up assignments to solidify what was learnt) works to ensure that employees are able put into practice what they have learned in the course of their training.

Based on the belief that OJT is the key to human resource development, TOTO has deployed two approaches: in one approach, the person in charge of human resource development at each department is working to level-up engineers by developing and promoting human resource development plans that include OJT and by sharing and exchanging information about the progress of engineer training at each department through company-wide, cross-sectional effort for engineer development. In the other approach, we set up a system in which the selected key engineer with specialized skills at each department provides OJT to employees there.

Our sales divisions develop and encourage a talent training system by job types and job levels for the purpose of ensuring the improvement of the necessary skills based on our sales strategy and by keeping up with changes in our business environment.In fiscal 2020, we focused on the development of managerial-level people, primary- and mid-level workers and our sales-related Group Companies (distributors) with an aim of changing our organizational climate and human resources’ awareness and strengthening the changes, developing global human resources and improving our housing equipment business in Japan.In fiscal 2020, nearly 1,170 of about 4,200 persons (about 28%) to whom our talent training plan applied were provided with opportunities to participate in the training. Personal reports and organizational reports are created and utilized: the former visualizes personal skills to link assessment, training and OJT with one another while the latter summarizes the skill status of people within the department.
Adding to that, in fiscal year 2020, we introduced online training as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic for the input of knowledge and skills while securing the safety of participants and supplemented with detailed individual follow-up. Furthermore, in order to entrench the learnt knowledge and skills, we emphasize their use in OJT and actual practice especially in training sessions for team-leader level employees, where the relationships with supervisors is also strengthened.
Furthermore, we provide comprehensive educational programs for unfailingly learning basic knowledge on our products, finance, laws, national policies and many other subjects.

Our one-year program for training new office/section managers has run since fiscal 2001. In fiscal 2016, a three-year training program was introduced with a view to developing human resources that may become capable of serving effectively as department managers.Furthermore, we also focus on training our young colleagues who may assume the role of office/section manager so that they will be ready for managerial-level positions sooner.

In 2004, a training program supplemented by the knowledge and skills necessary for sales activities was introduced to a three-year program for developing primary-level workers, which is run by the TOTO Group as a whole. These programs continue and have evolved in accordance with the working environment, strategies and so on.
We will also provide training on the specialist’s role of showroom advisor. New employees learn service etiquette and product knowledge, and mid-level workers learn about building reforms. We develop human resources that may become showroom advisors to meet customers’ needs.
On top of that, we introduced online training in fiscal year 2020.

Each of our Group Companies ran training programs independently until fiscal 2012, when these programs were centralized with the aim of facilitating the TOTO Group’s efforts to consolidate our Japanese housing equipment business.Combining the training activities of our sales-related Group Companies (distributors) around the country is leading to great success. For example, it helps develop employees' sense of belonging to the TOTO Group, standardizes their image of desirable human resources and facilitates information exchange and mutual stimulation among the trainees.In fiscal 2020, nearly 250 colleagues from primary-level workers to department/branch managers underwent training.

In Japan, opportunities for working overseas have been concentrated on managerial-level people. With the aim of developing human resources who are capable of making decisions from a global perspective, we introduced a system to attract requests from our young staff members to work on secondment.
In the workplaces overseas, we delegate trainers from Japan to China and other Asian countries (Vietnam, Thailand, India, and Malaysia) and provide business skill training to provide general managers and managers at the overseas group companies, who are the key players in TOTO’s operations in each region, with opportunities to train and develop themselves.,