ーFueling Growth to Maximize Performance

The LY Corporation Group (the “Group”) considers it one of the top priorities to promote and support the growth of its employees in order for them to maximize their performance and contribute to the growth of the entire organization. The Group will enhance opportunities for employees to maximize their individual capabilities and to take on more autonomous and proactive activities and growth, which will lead to the sustainable growth of both employees and products.

Overview of LY Corporation Group's Human Capital Strategy (Check here for more information)

Human Capital Development Policy

The growth of each and every employee of LY Corporation (the "Company"), who plays a key role in creating products, is the foundation for realizing the Company's mission, "Create an amazing life platform that brings WOW! to our users."
The Company enhances opportunities for each employee to maximize his or her abilities, and to play an active role and grow more autonomously and proactively. These opportunities will lead to the sustainable growth of both employees and products.

Providing Growth Opportunities

LY Corporation believes that the experience of creating WOW! products is the source of the employees' growth. The Company aims for the sustainable growth of both employees and products by creating diverse opportunities that contribute to employee growth, while employees enjoy changes and challenges and continue to explore opportunities for their own growth through the creation of products. LY Corporation works to create opportunities and an environment for this purpose.

Internal /Inter-Group Open Recruitment

As one of the opportunities for further growth and career development for each employee, LY Corporation has a year-round internal and inter-group open recruitment system "LY Corporation Job Challenge," that allows employees to voluntarily apply for positions. The available positions in this program are those for which the Company is seeking candidates for strategic business reasons in order to achieve both product and employee growth. Applicants are selected based on their past work performance and the degree to which they have demonstrated performance, and if successful, are transferred within the Company or to a Group company.

SoftBank Innoventure

LY Corporation also participates in the in-house entrepreneurship program, "SoftBank Innoventure," in which employees of the SoftBank Group companies can apply. At each call for applications, many employees take on the challenge of commercializing their own business ideas.

Related Links

Providing Opportunities for Challenge through Internal Award Programs

LY Corporation holds the “Data Award” program with the aim of discovering data utilization initiatives from across the company to promote new utilization, and "LY Corporation ChatAI CHALLENGE" to promote internal development of generative AI use cases, among others.
As both award programs are not limited to any specific fields, employees can submit their own initiatives and ideas regardless of their area of work, and the awards are used as an opportunity for employees to take on challenges in an autonomous manner.

Providing Feedback Opportunities

LY Corporation believes that performance is not just about results in terms of outcomes, but that performance also includes day-to-day work behavior and conduct. The Company provides multidimensional feedback on the behavioral aspects, which leads to the demonstration of employee performance and supports the growth of individuals, products, and the organization.

Role Evaluation (Multifaceted)

In order to provide employees with opportunities to obtain advice from others for their growth, the Company conducts a multifaceted role evaluation twice a year. This system provides multidimensional feedback from supervisors, peers, and direct reports on the extent to which employees demonstrate values and fulfill expected roles.

1 on 1 Meetings

1 on 1 meeting is held once a week (around 30 minutes) between the employee and his/her supervisor. The meeting is held for supervisors to help solve the challenges that the employees are facing and to support the fulfilment of the employees' goals. It facilitates the employees to self-reflect and efficiently rotates the cycle of experiential learning.
In a remote work environment, it is essential to understand and confirm the physical condition of each employee, and 1on1 meetings also play an important role in this regard.

Supporting Managers

At LY Corporation, the role of the managers leading the frontline organizations is to produce results through organizational excellence. To fulfill this role, the managers are provided with the information and training they need to lead their organizations and develop their members. The Company also conducts training for managerial staff on workplace safety obligations, which includes reporting and responding to bullying and harassment. This aims to promote understanding and ensure thorough methods for creating a harassment-free work environment.

COMPASS

COMPASS is a series of programs that provide learning opportunities for managers and a forum for mutual dialogue. To support the improvement of management skills necessary to enhance organizational performance, programs such as "Coaching Workshop for 1 on 1 Meetings," "Continuous Reflection," and "Delegation of Authority: Workshop to Learn Tips on How to Request and Delegate Work" are offered. Managers can select and participate in these programs based on the organization's challenges and their individual areas of weakness.

Training for Newly Appointed Managers

The Company offers a start-up program for newly appointed managers and senior managers. The curriculum is designed to develop and improve leadership skills for organizational success through dialogue and introspection and includes workshops to discuss with managers from other organizations at the same level to understand the expected behaviors and mindsets required for each in the role and to provide an opportunity for horizontal networking.

Management Portal

The Company provides a one-stop website on the intranet that provides all the information necessary for managers to lead frontline organizations. In addition to information necessary for management tasks such as business management, labor management, and risk management, the website also provides and updates management tips and training information, aiming to reduce the workload of managers and improve operational efficiency.

Training

LY Corporation offers a wide range of training opportunities that support work experiences.

<Reskilling>

An Environment for Employees to Learn Anytime, Anywhere

In order to support autonomous and proactive challenges, LY Corporation does not have a fixed curriculum, but always provides an environment where employees can choose a program according to their own sense of challenges and growth goals, and learn at their own pace anytime, anywhere.
In addition to “GLOBIS Unlimited,” a set of video learning contents that enable employees to acquire systematic business knowledge that can be immediately applied to their work, the data education portal “DATA ViLLAGE” offers a variety of contents to learn about the essentials of data utilization, analysis methods, AI and machine learning fundamentals, as well as practical examples of such knowledge.
A number of voluntary study groups and lightning talk events organized by employee volunteers and divisions are also planned and held within LY Corporation, providing information and content for learning, along with the opportunity to gain colleagues to learn with.

Providing Learning Opportunities for Diverse Groups

LY Corporation offers a variety of programs, including a select class for top leaders, a women's leadership class, AI Application Academia, and Sustainability Academia.

Promoting the Use of AI

LY Corporation provides the “AI Application Academia” as a place where AI professionals gather and learn, thereby promoting knowledge sharing and AI-based business collaboration within the Company. It focuses on developing AI talent in both the humanities and sciences, including not only among researchers and engineers, but also across diverse roles such as designers, sales staff, and planners who will make use of AI. The Company also offers a wide range of training programs related to AI. In addition to a mandatory e-learning program for all employees, it regularly holds seminars on the use of AI (excluding video content). In fiscal 2024, approximately 4,080 employees participated in these programs.

Sustainability Academia

Since 2022, the LY Corporation Group has continued to offer the Sustainability Academia, inviting lecturers from inside and outside the Company and holding seminars and field work for Group employees. In order to increase the corporate value of the LY Corporation Group over the long term and for the Group to grow by incorporating sustainability into its businesses, the Sustainability Academia creates various forums for the employees to learn about sustainability. Through the Academia, the Group aims to balance solving social issues with business growth.

Working Professional Doctorate Support Program

We offer an opportunity to pursue a doctoral degree, primarily in the fields of data platforms and science, while working, for employees who have been with our company for two years or more. Employees who receive support certification can receive a scholarship (with a certain limit) to cover the costs of enrolling in a doctoral program in science and engineering and are generally eligible for one day of special paid leave per week. This system aims to enhance the significance of working at LINE Yahoo and create synergies between research and product development.

Collaboration with Educational Institutions

We are promoting IT education and human resource development in collaboration with educational institutions such as universities. We have implemented initiatives where our employees serve as lecturers at universities, which also contribute to their personal growth.

Related Links

<Supporting Engineers' Skill Development>

For engineers, designers, and others, the Company offers programs to improve their professional skills, as well as training programs to learn technologies (e.g., PaaS, CI/CD) designed with company-wide strategies in mind and proprietary technologies that form the foundation for providing services. Additionally, the Company implements various initiatives to improve professional skills, such as sharing the latest trends in the internet industry, attendance reports on domestic and international technology conferences and academic meetings, and cutting-edge technology trends (e.g., artificial intelligence, big data).

<Onboarding Support>

Onboarding Programs for New Employees

LY Corporation offers an onboarding program for new graduates and mid-career hires. The program includes an orientation immediately after the new employee joins the Company, an e-learning program to efficiently acquire the knowledge necessary to perform their work within the Company, a collection of internal information, and a follow-up questionnaire after a certain period of employment to help them achieve performance as quickly as possible. In addition, the Company believes that knowledge, mindset, and training on the part of the divisions receiving new hires are also important in onboarding, so it has focused on providing training for staff in charge of on-the-job training (OJT staff) to divisions receiving new graduates and distributing an onboarding guide for mentors to divisions receiving mid-career hires.

Shuffle Lunch Initiative

This initiative provides subsidies for the cost of food and drinks at lunch gatherings held between new graduate employees and early-career senior employees. While the employees responsible for OJT support new graduates in acquiring the necessary knowledge and skills for their roles and monitor their work progress, early-career senior employees act like 'older brothers' or 'older sisters' from other departments, with whom the new graduates can discuss matters more freely. This initiative serves as an opportunity to build new relationships within the company, which cannot be achieved during new graduate training or the OJT period.

Second-Year Training for New Graduates

The second-year training for new graduates is offered to all employees who are in their second year of employment and provides an opportunity for them to look back on their first two years of work, deepen their self-understanding from multiple angles, and gain inspiration from the work of their peers to envision their third year and their future growth.

Related Links

Evaluation/Promotion & Salary Review

Goals & Evaluation System

The Company believes that each and every employee is responsible for realizing the Company's mission statement and supporting the creation and growth of products, and that the personnel system functions to promote the growth and maximize the abilities of the employees. The goals and evaluation system of LY Corporation aims to achieve the following:

• Through goal setting, support the processes for achieving those goals by facilitating communication between supervisors and direct reports
• Encourage the maximization of results by supporting growth through feedback
• Ensure that individuals are properly rewarded for their achievements through evaluations while also linking the evaluations to their next stage of growth

At the beginning of each term, employees set their own goals that correspond to the goals of the organization or product. During the term, they engage in ongoing dialogue with their supervisors on their progress and achievement levels, updating their goals as needed. At the end of each term, evaluations are conducted in three areas: “Individual Performance Evaluation,” which evaluates individual results; “Organizational Contribution Evaluation,” which evaluates contributions to the organization; and “Role Evaluation (supervisor),” which evaluates the degree to which expected roles are fulfilled from a medium- to long-term perspective. The results of these evaluations are reflected in compensation such as bonuses and salary adjustments. In addition, the Company conducts “Role Evaluation (multifaceted),” in which supervisors, colleagues, and direct reports evaluate the degree to which employees demonstrate the Company’s values for the current term, and this multifaceted evaluation is also used for feedback and compensation decisions. By conducting these evaluations twice a year, the Company ensures that results achieved by employees are evaluated and linked to compensation regardless of age, gender, nationality, or career history.

The Company believes that goals and evaluation systems are growth drivers for both the organization and products, as well as for employees, and that the systems need to be constantly improved in response to the changes in organizations and businesses. The Company will continue to drive further results and growth by constantly upgrading the systems.

Strengthening Human Resources Portfolio

Recruitment

To hire people who share the Company’s mission and values who are passionate about creating outstanding services, the Company actively conducts mid-career recruiting, new graduate recruiting, and internship programs. The Company believes that people are the foundation of product and business creation, and places importance on looking beyond initial hiring to anticipate medium-term success and contributions to the business through mutual understanding of skills, mindset, and positions.

Mid-Career Recruiting

The Company actively hires professionals who wish to leverage the expertise and passion they have developed throughout their careers to create new value. Currently, LY Corporation is accelerating business transformation and product evolution by incorporating cutting-edge technologies, including generative AI, into practical operations, while operating diverse services with significant social impact. In an environment where the Company possesses strong technological capabilities and a large user base, and where professionals with diverse expertise gather, employees can engage in creating products with both scale and speed, generating major impact on society and driving growth for both the organization and individuals. Regardless of seniority or career stage, motivated employees are entrusted with responsibility, and those who continually take on challenges are rewarded commensurate with their performance and abilities.

New Graduate Recruiting

The Company recruits for specific roles such as engineers, product planners, and business consultants. The Company places importance on enhancing the matching process for both applicants and the Company through having students select the positions they wish to apply for and through recruitment activities that take into account their expertise, preferences, and aptitudes. After joining the Company, employees can develop their expertise early through role-specific training programs and practical experience, and build on it for further growth. Regardless of age or whether they join the Company as new graduates or mid-career hires, employees who are eager to learn, embrace change, and demonstrate performance are provided with opportunities for growth, as well as an environment where they can take on further challenges for growth, such as position changes through the internal job posting system (LY Corporation Job Challenge).

Internship Programs

For students without experience working as a permanent employee, the Company offers opportunities to develop practical skills and perspectives, primarily through work-based programs that involve actual product development. A variety of courses are offered in roles linked to new graduate recruiting, allowing participants to deepen their expertise according to their interests and career aspirations. Participants receive careful feedback from mentors and support for growth and career development through collaboration with employees in real-world projects.

Related Links

Promoting the Success of Internal Talent

LY Corporation Job Challenge, a system of internal and inter-Group open recruitment, is implemented throughout the year, with the aim of providing opportunities for talented people to play an active role within the Company and the Group, and to contribute to the growth of products and businesses.