Corporate culture transformation

Mizuho has published the "Human Capital Report" to comprehensively explain how we will create value together with our customers, the economy and society through "Enhancing Human Capital" and "Transforming Corporate Culture". For details on our various human capital initiatives.
Further information
Human Capital Report (PDF/11,948KB)

We are transforming our corporate culture with the aim of creating a workplace where employees can reach their full potential and where all executive officers and employees see the Corporate Identity as their own, think and act toward its realization, and work as one to provide value to our customers, the economy, and society.
If employees are motivated to contribute of their own accord and take on challenges in their own careers, they will be able to find fulfillment and a sense of purpose in working for Mizuho. This will then allow them to enjoy connecting with others and demonstrating their strengths and individuality. The success of these employees is a source of increased corporate value. Business growth creates a virtuous cycle in which employees attain greater job satisfaction, while a positive corporate culture leads to sound organizational management and reduced risk. As part of realizing these, we conduct regular employee surveys to identify employees’ attitudes and situations, and respond to them swiftly.

Signs of change observed in the results of the Staff Survey

In fiscal 2023, all of our KPIs improved as a result of steady implementation of measures to firmly establish our Corporate Identity among employees and improve communication. Overall, however, there is still some way to go, especially toward achieving two of our human capital KPIs (for the engagement and inclusion scores).
In addition, about 20% of employees felt that their overall experience working at Mizuho did not meet their expectations, indicating that some do not fully understand how their work is connected to Mizuho’s strategies and organizational goals.
When asked if they intended to continue working for Mizuho, only about 10% of employees responded “No”, indicating that few have strong intentions to leave the company. However, some expressed concerns about the future, such as whether their job will continue to exist.
Well-being is high, exceeding the level generally considered acceptable, but some employees who are otherwise positive about their work do not have high expectations for the experience they will gain.

Positive response rate to KPIs

Identifying issues and measures committed by management

Our annual Staff Survey returned a particularly low rate of positive responses to questions related to management and Head Office understanding of the front lines, achievability of career goals, and operational efficiency, including the development of supporting resources and infrastructure. We extracted the following four issues for the group to address as a whole by looking at the absolute values of scores, including analyzing comments, and the degree of deviation from the average level among Japanese companies.

Issues identified and examples of initiatives derived from the results of the Staff Survey

Strategy communication

In fiscal 2023, we held town hall meetings and other events and sent out messages from executive management to instill in our employees a sense of ownership over our redefined Corporate Identity, but it still has not yet fully resonated with some employees. We believe that this is due to the fact that employees perceive messages differently depending on their duties and situation. We will continue to collect direct comments from employees to thoroughly understand the circumstances of each team and employee and take prompt measures so that every employee will be able to feel the changes that are occurring.

Improving communication

We have taken steps to foster a corporate culture that encourages self-driven endeavors and a sense of unity through mutual recognition of diverse personalities, and employees now feel better about the quality of communication. On the other hand, there are still challenges in inter-organizational cooperation and mutual understanding between Head Office and the frontlines. Although all employees are equal in providing value to customers, the economy, and society, some employees feel there is a hierarchy between positions and sections, which is a sentiment we are working to eliminate.

Achievement of career goals

Aiming to help our employees achieve their career goals, our new HR framework in Japan encourages employees to grow through their own endeavors and rewards their contributions. However, the reality is that employees have responded to this system with a mixture of expectation and concern. Also, it is clear that employees are not fully satisfied with their own evaluations and transfers due to a lack of dialogue with their managers. We believe that this is due to middle management lacking the skills and abilities to support employee growth, as well as lacking time to devote to management tasks. As such, we are focusing on enhancing middle management’s capabilities. (Please refer to p. 51, “Upskilling for
middle management, the channel of communication between the company and employees”)

Productivity and resource sufficiency

In addition to the aforementioned efforts to enhance middle management’s capabilities, we have taken steps to improve operational infrastructure throughout the group, and we are seeing improvements in the chronic shortage of personnel and long working hours. These efforts will continue in line with the actual situation of each part of the organization.

Organizational development

Mizuho is strengthening “organizational development” with the aim of building organizations which continue producing results in addition to human resource development supporting growth of individual employee. We established a dedicated team in April 2022 and promoting organizational development throughout the group companies.
With the “operational development” initiatives, we aim to improve employee engagement and performance by encouraging “better relations among people” and enhancing teamwork via dialogues. We are trying to make the initiatives sustainable ones by encouraging the “activities which make our own workplace better” led mainly by the department members to exploit organizational potential.
Sixty-one departments (approx. 6,300 employees) have participated in the “Individual Support Program” which offers full-support by external professionals and operational development team until the end of FY2023. Operational development with a focus on dialogues leads to mutual understanding of the members, improved psychological safety and sense of belonging within the department. In addition, compared to non-participating departments, more improvement has been seen in the scores of employee engagement and inclusion in employee survey.
In the second half of FY2023, we launched “Startup Program” for managers to learn the know-how for conducting operational development for their own department, and thirty-three departments/branches (approx. 160 managers) have participated until the end of the fiscal year. Operational development is a management skill the future managers are expected to have. We effectively encourage operational development originated by mangers who have considerable influence by supporting learning through practice.
We are also making efforts to build infrastructures for each department to autonomously practice organizational development as well as the program with support mentioned above. Specifically, we are improving knowledge sharing/dissemination by giving basic knowledge, list of tools/know-how and best practices of different departments via “Organizational Development Support Portal” on internet. Furthermore, we are providing the places for casual exchange of information and connecting with colleagues engaging in operational development, making effective use of intranet portal.
Through these initiatives, we aim for inclusive organizations with higher levels of employee engagement in which our diverse employees make use of their individualities while continuing to produce results by gathering their abilities and cooperating with others.

Approaches in organizational development

Organizational development structure

Further information

Human Capital Report: List of data (Corporate culture transformation) (PDF/11,948KB)