Education and Development

Respecting and supporting individuals to foster both corporate and personal growth is one of our most important values. We offer a variety of educational programs to help all employees grow and flourish at work.

Employee Education Policy

Fast Retailing emphasizes the personal growth and self-actualization of each employee. Guided by two of our fundamental concepts - Global One and ZEN-IN KEIEI - each employee cultivates the mindset of an executive and learns to implement global best practices through their work. We foster a problem-solving workforce that focuses on our customers first. We develop employees that can form and respond to a clear and accurate understanding of the marketplace: conditions, products, preferences.

The Fast Retailing Management and Innovation Center (FR-MIC) is the group's internal training facility. The center hosts various programs such as training programs for new employees, store managers and executive management candidates from all over the world.

Education Program

FR-MIC conducts education programs to meet four priority objectives:

1. Discover, develop and retain our business leaders
Establishes a sustainable talent development scheme to continue discovering our next generation of business leaders, while providing growth and education opportunities through challenging assignments.
2. Communicate Fast Retailing's philosophy, values and principles
Provides education to help employees understand and execute the company's corporate philosophy and fundamental principles of business, management, and work, for tangible results.
3. Promote results-oriented on the job-training
Transform existing education programs that focus on operational skills and procedures into those that focus on results-oriented, on-the-job training, leading to the growth of our employees and improvement of their motivation.
4. Establish a foundation of globally-accessible education tools
To establish this foundation, we are creating a strong curriculum and educating trainers to provide equal opportunity and high-quality education standards to all employees globally.

By developing our personnel through these policies, we are motivating our people around the world, while also retaining the best talent. We are optimizing company performance, promoting employee engagement and maximizing each employee's potential to become a business leader.

[Major Training Programs]

Overview of Fast Retailing Education Programs (128KB)

Fast Retailing's Unique Educational Opportunities

• Sharing Our Corporate Vision and Policies
To grow, we must promote understanding of the Fast Retailing corporate philosophy and vision among all employees. We hold the Fast Retailing Convention on a semi-annual basis, inviting nearly 8,000 store managers and head office staff from around the world, including via online, to participate. We also hold local conventions across the globe as another means to foster a sense of unity within our businesses.

• Learning Corporate Culture and Principles Directly from Management
We have an opportunity to learn directly from members of Fast Retailing management who exemplify our vision, values and principles of business, management, and work, so that each employee can acquire and implement Fast Retailing's ways of problem-solving and working to achieve results. In this way, all our employees understand and demonstrate Fast Retailing values and behaviors.

• Direct communication to solve on-site issues and accelerate development opportunities
In addition to daily communication, we hold "Direct Meetings" four times a year, bringing together top management, headquarters staff, and store employees. Here, store staff and store managers gather and discuss on-site issues with senior management and directors to achieve solutions.

Improved Sustainability Education

As Fast Retailing global business grows, the more important it becomes for our employees to understand our sustainability values, policies and actions. We want all employees to discuss sustainability with each other and to consider their day-to-day work through the lens of sustainability. We seek to constantly improve our sustainability education program to achieve this goal.

• Strengthening internal communication
We issue regular communications, such as the Fast Retailing Sustainability Report and UNIQLO's sustainability booklet, The Power of Clothing, to foster employee knowledge and understanding. In addition, we share the latest news and information about Fast Retailing's sustainability initiatives through our global intranet system, and are distributing sustainability news for employees at retail stores.

• Sustainability Week
Since 2018, we have organized our Sustainability Week to share Fast Retailing's sustainability activities. In March 2018, we celebrated our first-ever Sustainability Week, held at our Roppongi and Ariake head offices, as well as at our businesses in the United Kingdom, France, China, Korea and the US. During these events, we hosted discussions on our corporate sustainability activities, exchanging opinions about the issues facing our company and offering suggestions to address them. For example, our merchandising and purchasing divisions acknowledged the need to reduce product packaging and then came together to devise solutions. In addition, Sustainability Week has provided opportunities to launch projects aiming for more sustainable store development and store design. We have also invited external experts to lead workshops on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) topics to deepen employee understanding of sustainability issues. We continue to create ongoing educational opportunities, such as holding exhibitions on sustainability and quiz rallies whenever we host the Fast Retailing Convention.

• Efforts to promote diversity
The Diversity Promotion Team plays a central role in conducting global initiatives such as raising awareness of diversity and conducting training.

Facilitating Career Advancement

Career Advancement Program

To support the self-actualization of each employee, we employ an Individual Development Plan (IDP) scheme in which each employee sets his or her own career goals, before making their own skill development plan, and executing this plan with support from a supervisor. In addition, Fast Retailing offers a voluntary Career Challenge Program for employees to facilitate career advancement across departments. The program provides store managers with the opportunity to experience working in merchandising or marketing departments. We also offer a self-reporting system for employees to approach human resources about career options. Our Human Resources Development Council, which consists of managers and division heads, encourages career advancement for women and identifies management candidates.

As a mechanism to promote personal growth through business evaluation, our employees meet with superiors twice annually to set goals, and superiors provide performance evaluation and feedback to employees every six months. In addition to evaluation based on the degree of achievement of goals, we have introduced a system that evaluates the diverse abilities of individuals from multiple perspectives, with colleagues in their own and other departments participating in an employee's performance evaluation. This leads to the growth of each individual as it encourages employees to learn about their own way of working.