Social

Human Rights

Through provision of our consulting services, our consultants are supporting many of the leading companies in various industries across Japan to overcome their business challenges, resulting in Baycurrent having influence in numerous countries and regions around the world. We therefore regard human rights conforming to international standards, such as the “International Bill of Human Rights” and the “ILO Core Labour Standards,” as forming the foundation of our sustainability-oriented management.
Accordingly, we make efforts not to violate freedom of expression and other human rights through our business activities and trade relations.
Additionally, where there is a discrepancy between the laws of the country or region in which we operate and internationally recognized human rights, we will pursue ways to respect human rights while also complying with applicable laws.

Labor Standards

Baycurrent has established the following policies on labor standards.

  1. Compliance with Laws and Regulations
    We will comply with labor-related laws and regulations concerning occupational health and safety in all countries and regions where we conduct business.
  2. Compliance with Minimum Wage
    We will uphold the regional minimum wage and pay appropriate living wages to maintain a certain standard of living for our employees.
  3. Respect for Workers’ Rights to Organize
    We will respect workers’ fundamental rights, including the right to organize, collectively bargain, and engage in collective action.
  4. Prohibition of Forced Labor, Child Labor, and Human Trafficking
    We do not tolerate any form of forced labor, child labor, or human trafficking.

Opposition to discrimination and respect for diversity

We will not engage in any form of discrimination based on nationality, race, religion, creed, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, social status, age, disability, or other attributes.
We have also established a personnel system, under which our employees are given equal opportunities related to training, job assignments, and work, and are able to pursue career development by experiencing a diverse range of work. Promotion and pay raises are meanwhile considered based on their capabilities, regardless of the above backgrounds.

We have established a training system aimed at enabling non-Japanese employees to acquire knowledge for executing business smoothly in Japan. We employ many non-Japanese employees.

Harassment Prevention

With regard to harassment, we require all employees to undergo mandatory training, and in addition, for management-level staff we provide training and share guidance on how to report and respond to cases of bullying, mistreatment, and harassment.
We also conduct questionnaires concerning work environments and have established multiple hotlines, including labor consultation services where employees can seek advice beyond their direct supervisors. Furthermore, we have established the “Compliance Promotion Committee Secretariat” as an internal reporting service that allows anonymous reporting and also are building a system to enable early detection and correction of various compliance issues that arise in the workplace, including human rights issues such as misconduct, corrupt acts, and harassment.
Cases escalated through the internal reporting service are investigated and addressed by the relevant parties in charge.
Cases escalated through the internal reporting system are investigated and handled by the appropriate staff.

Provision of compliance training

We provide all employees with harassment prevention training and comprehension tests twice each year.

Introduction of harassment consultation services

We have introduced harassment consultation services, which are available at our internal office and from an external lawyer. We have thus built an environment that encourages employees to seek help if harassment should occur.

Human rights due diligence

In line with the UN “Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights”, our Group has established a human rights due diligence framework and implements it on an ongoing basis. Through this process, we identify adverse impacts on human rights arising from our business activities that affect all stakeholders, including employees, suppliers, and local communities, and work to prevent and mitigate them. In addition, to ensure access to remedy, we are strengthening the effectiveness of reporting channels available to each stakeholder and placing importance on dialogue with stakeholders, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of our respect for human rights.

General Human Rights Issues and Identification of Human Rights Risks in Our Group’s Business Activities

The identification of the above human rights risks is reviewed once a year, taking into account the business activities of our group.

The risks identified by our Group are as follows.

Work environment / Working conditions

As corrective measures for risks related to long working hours and overwork, occupational health and safety, harassment, and proper management of wages and working hours, we are taking the following company-wide actions.

We prohibit all forms of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, nationality, place of origin, social status, gender, religion, or beliefs, and we do not tolerate any form of harassment. Additionally, we do not permit any form of forced labor or child labor. Regarding harassment, we require all employees to undergo mandatory training, and in addition, for management-level staff we provide training and share guidance on how to report and respond to cases of bullying, mistreatment, and harassment.
We also conduct workplace environment surveys and have established multiple hotlines, including labor consultation services where employees can seek advice beyond their direct supervisors.
Furthermore, we have established the “Compliance Promotion Committee Secretariat” as an internal reporting service that allows anonymous reporting. This is a system to enable early detection and correction of various compliance issues that arise in the workplace, including human rights issues such as misconduct, corrupt acts, and harassment. Cases escalated through the internal reporting service are investigated and addressed by the relevant parties in charge.
In our employment regulations, we clearly define “sexual harassment,” “power harassment,” and “maternity harassment, etc.” as prohibited conduct, and we respond strictly, including by imposing disciplinary action, when a violation is confirmed.

We conduct compliance training for all employees twice a year to prevent harassment and administer comprehension tests in conjunction with the training.
We have also introduced harassment consultation services, which are available at our internal office and from an external lawyer. We have thus built an environment that encourages employees to seek help if harassment should occur.

Services

As corrective measures for risks of privacy violations arising from the unauthorized use or leakage of personal information, we are undertaking the following initiatives.

We have established an information security management system that conforms to ISO/IEC27001, an international standard for information security management systems (ISMS).
We take risk-based safety measures for information systems that we manage. In particular, for information systems used to handle confidential information (including company information, client information, and personal information), we regularly make a vulnerability assessment to identify their inherent risks and take action including system repair, in order to maintain robust systems.
For PCs that we use for business, we restrict the use of external storage media, prohibit access to websites not needed for work, and take other steps to prevent leaks of confidential information and other incidents.

In each project team that provides consulting services to our clients, we assign an information security manager, who guides and supervises all members to ensure compliance with relevant laws, regulations, and rules related to information security.
All employees receive information security training upon joining the company and at least twice a year thereafter, ensuring thorough awareness and understanding of the regulations and policies they are expected to comply with as company employees.
We issue a security report every month and deliver it to each employee to raise their awareness of information security and provide them with relevant knowledge.

Human Resource Management

Recruiting activities

We have a basic policy of fair recruitment activities and provide job application opportunities regardless of race, nationality, gender, age, and other attributes.
In addition, we do not ask job candidates to provide information unrelated to their capabilities or aptitudes, such as domicile of origin and religion, in the resumes or CVs they submit and in job interviews.

Training and self-development

We have introduced a structured training program to promote medium- to long-term human resource development to ensure that our consultants can provide services to our clients as professionals.
We provide training and self-development programs designed to help employees acquire the skills and knowledge needed for project work through both theoretical and practical learning.
In fiscal year 2025, training hours per employee totaled 80.4 hours, and investment in talent development per employee amounted to 246 thousand yen.

Training

  • Entry Training
  • Industry/Theme based training

Study support

  • Organizing groupwork on advaced cases
  • Support for qualification acquisition
  • External training cost subsidy

Thorough dissemination of internal rules

  • e-learning training and comprehension test
    • Information Security/ Protection of personal information
    • Harassment
    • Related regulations such as insider trading and labor law

Career support

We help our employees improve both their capabilities and personal qualities as true professionals, enabling them to become successful leaders.
At the same time, we understand the life plans and workstyles desired by individual employees and provide career counseling regularly to help them achieve ideal career development.
In addition, based on the idea that the projects consultants are in charge of are themselves important for their career development, we provide support for career development by setting up a team that helps them participate in projects that are consistent with their interests, aptitudes, and future visions, and by interviewing them at the end of each project and when they leave their positions.

Personnel assessment

Goal Management

Each employee of the company sets performance targets in line with plans that have been approved by management.

Evaluation Policy

We evaluate our consultants from a comprehensive perspective, attaching importance to how they worked in the process of implementing each project, and at the same time, considering the initiatives they take outside each project.

Evaluation Timing

In addition to regular evaluations conducted twice a year, we also carry out evaluations when employees roll off a project.

Multifaceted performance evaluation

In evaluating performance, we ensure fairness by evaluating across projects. Evaluations consider not only current results but also contributions to future talent development and organizational building. Additionally, when assessing supervisors, we conduct multi-faceted evaluations that include feedback from subordinates and workplace environment surveys.

Team-based performance evaluation

For project evaluation, performance is evaluated on a team basis.

Agile-style conversations

Personnel evaluations are always made by multiple members so as to avoid biased results that may be caused by arbitrariness or the mistaken impressions of an evaluator, and are finalized based on two-way dialogue with those being evaluated. Providing feedback on evaluation results to those being evaluated is conducted, with importance attached to convincing them of the results and helping them achieve medium- to long-term personal and career development.

Employment and Work Style Reform

Support for the active participation of women and the participation of men in childcare

We are enhancing our maternity leave, childcare leave, and nursing care leave programs to permit all employees to utilize these programs proactively.

Female employees maternity leave / Childcare leave utilization rate (Fiscal year ending February 2025)

100％（2025年2月期）

All employees taking leave have returned to work.

Male employees: Childcare leave acquisition rate
(Fiscal year ending February 2025)

93.5％ （2025年2月期）

We will continue to encourage male employees to take active childcare leave.

In addition to the above, we take the following initiatives to enable the active participation of women as well as the participation of men in childcare.

  • Introduction of shorter working hours
  • Introduction of subsidies for those who use babysitting services
  • Effective use of remote work
  • Considerations related to the projects our consultants are in charge of, including considerations of their places of work

Employment of people with disabilities

We actively promote the employment of people with disabilities.
In addition, based on the belief that all employees should be able to utilize their individual abilities, we have created an environment in which people with physical, intellectual, or mental disabilities can thrive in their respective workplaces, as follows:

We have established a work-from-home system, under which employees with physical disabilities are actively involved in jobs such as data processing, organizing, and translation.

We employ people with intellectual or mental disabilities at multiple farms that we own. We donate the vegetables harvested there to local orphanages and food banks.

We support sports for the disabled. We provide athletes of blind judo and boccia with financial support for activities including road trips.

Reemployment

We have introduced a re-employment system for those who have continued to work for the company as regular employees until they reach the mandatory retirement age of 60. This system permits employees who meet certain criteria to remain employed as non-regular employees until they reach the age of 65 at maximum.

Promotion of non-regular employees to regular employees

Every year, we promote many dispatched employees and part-time employees to regular employees.

Health Management
and
Health Maintenance
/Promotion

We recognize that in order for a company to achieve sustainable growth, it is important that employees and their families be healthy both physically and mentally, and that employees act as professionals continuously providing services with high added value. Accordingly, we take steps to provide an environment in which employees can focus on work with peace of mind and where diverse human resources can choose healthy workstyles.
Moving forward, we will continue to arrange settings where employees and their families can thrive at work, as we consider maintaining and promoting good health an important matter in our business management.

Details of the Declaration of Health are available at the following page. (Page for the Declaration of Health) ​

Ensuring the quality of our consulting services while also preventing long working hours and having employees take paid leave

While providing high-quality services to our clients, we also believe that our employees need to maintain good physical and mental health. We believe it important to reduce their working hours through business efficiency improvement and fundamental reforms, and at the same time, to deepen our understanding that healthy workstyles of employees lead to high-quality services.

We have therefore built a framework under which our staff members alert each other about long working hours, identify projects that could cause long working hours at an early stage, and make improvements, with the leading role played by management and consultants at the project leader level.

In addition, multiple committees led by responsible departments and executives review the progress of projects based on employees' working hours and paid leave usage, etc., to ensure that high-quality consulting services are being provided within appropriate working hours.
As a result, our average monthly overtime hours will be 23 hours (fiscal year ending February 2025).

Health Support Initiatives

We provide regular health checkups and offer subsidies for receiving health checkups. Additionally, we work with an external institution specialized in conducting mental stress checks. With these programs we enable our employees to regularly monitor their own physical and mental conditions and take initiative in improving their condition. Furthermore, we implement a wide range of actions to promote our employees maintain good health.

Stress management

We conduct stress management questionnaires for all employees twice a year. Based on the questionnaire results, we arrange interviews as needed to hear from the concerned employees.

Health checkups and stress checks

  • Subsidies for employees receiving health checkups or comprehensive medical examinations
    • Regular health checkups (all employees)
    • Comprehensive medical examinations (employees aged 35 or older)
    • Brain MRI, lung CT scan, and large intestine endoscopy
    • Breast cancer screening (female employees) *Ultrasonography
    • New employee health checkup
    • Dental checkup
  • Health check by occupational physician based on regular health checkup results
  • Stress check (at least once a year)

Health counselling and advice

  • Establishment of telephone consultation service on physical conditions, mental health, and nursing care
  • Providing health advice in the monthly company newsletter (at least six times a year)
  • Consultation with occupational physician on demand
  • Specialized health checkups and specialized health guidance (employees aged 40 or over)

Prevention of infectious diseases

  • Influenza vaccination subsidy

Improvement of work environments

  • Conduct Health Committee meeting involving the occupational physician to discuss internal safety and health, among other agendas (once a month)
  • Implement survey of employees to improve their work environments
  • Improvement of the office environment (e.g., installation of air purifiers in meeting rooms)
  • Introduction of Work Interval System (ensuring set amount of rest time between work days)

Sick leave program

A paid sick leave program setup separately from the paid leave program

Introduction of Rework Program (a program to support employees returning to work after a leave of absence)

Operation of our internal health insurance union

Our internal health insurance union provides employees with ample insurance benefits that are equivalent to or greater than those provided by general health insurance unions. The union also offers health checkups, encourages employees to play sports, and implements various health-related initiatives.

Subsidies for health related goods and services, and leisure and retreat expenses (Cafeteria Plan)

Social Contribution Activities

Our approach to social contribution activities

Under our purpose of "Form the front line of change, moving further forward together", Baycurrent engages in social contribution and volunteer activities that leverage its consulting expertise, aiming to realize a sustainable society.

Appointed as lecturer for the industrial affairs course "Tectonic shifts in the consulting industry" at the University of Tokyo

The University of Tokyo has established an "Industrial Affairs Course" with the aim of learning about market trends and challenges in each industry.
The "consulting" industry will be the target for 2024 and 2025, and at the request of the University of Tokyo, Baycurrent consultants will teach classes as lecturers.
By helping students, who will lead the future, deepen their understanding of the consulting industry, we will contribute to the development of the entire consulting industry.

Pro bono

“Pro bono” refers to volunteer activity in which we make use of our professional skills and expertise.
As one of the largest consulting firms in Japan, we contribute to solving social issues and building a sustainable society by offering our accumulated expertise and specialized skills free of charge.

Japan Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster（JVOAD）

【NPO Overview】

JVOAD is a national organization that serves as an intermediary disaster support group, collaborating with local government agencies, social welfare councils, NPOs, etc. to coordinate support efforts to eliminate "gaps and inconsistencies" in the event of a disaster. During non-disaster periods, JVOAD focuses on disaster preparedness by creating mechanisms for coordination of victim support and establishing diverse disaster support networks at the prefectural level.

Official website

【How We Supported】

We developed new collaboration strategies that link key challenges in Japan's disaster relief efforts with the capabilities of corporations. Our focus was on fostering sustainable frameworks to attract corporate sponsors. We supported the formulation and execution of fundraising strategies to achieve these goals.

Nonprofit Organization Fellow Job Station

【NPO Overview】

Fellow Job Station is an organization that operates businesses utilizing knowledge and technology in the field of ICT to empower individuals with disabilities become mentally and economically independent, allowing them to participate in society and find fulfillment through work. In recent years, the organization has expanded their business not only in the field of ICT, but also in agriculture, restaurants, and the arts; providing diverse opportunities for individuals to thrive and contribute.

Official website

【How We Supported】

We defined the skills needed and the level of skills required for the 10 businesses operated by Fellow Job Station. We also developed a roadmap to facilitate the employment of individuals with disabilities. Additionally, we assisted in the development and implementation of a plan to expand sales channels for clothing and accessories produced and sold by people with disabilities.

Delivery of Information
as
a Social Contribution Activity

At present, amid the global trend toward the achievement of a sustainable society, each company faces greater expectations than ever to fulfill its responsibilities from the viewpoint of sustainability, in addition to achieving its own development.
In response to these circumstances, we aim to contribute to business expansion while addressing social issues premised on sustainability by delivering to the world the knowledge that we have accumulated as one of the largest consulting firms in Japan. Reflecting this desire, we deliver information via various media, including books about digital transformation (DX) that has been our strength. Examples include the following.

Sharpening the Issues

The art of questioning assumptions and getting to the heart of the matter（Nikkei BP）

The key to a breakthrough in a stalled project lies in the “issue setting" of problem solving. Although it is possible to set up some kind of “issue“, the initial point of contention may not always capture the essence of the problem. That is why it is important to keep reviewing and "sharpening" the issues. In this book, we will thoroughly explain the highly difficult process of "sharpening the issues" to find the issues that really need to be solved, along the five steps to do so.

SX　Sustainability Management Practice

(Nikkei BP)

Sustainability management is rapidly increasing in importance, and if a company lags behind in SX (Sustainability Transformation), there is a high possibility that the survival of the company itself will be in jeopardy. So how do companies actually proceed? Baycurrent, which has supported SX in many Japanese companies, thoroughly explains specific theory for practicing sustainability management with corporate case studies.

Impressive CX

"10 new strategies" and "7 signposts" for Japanese companies (Toyo Keizai Inc.)

The core of CX (Customer Experience) is to continue to exceed customer expectations, and all companies should aim for CX that impresses their customers. We looked at CX from various angles, such as consumer changes occurring in the modern digital society and discussions that cut from cutting-edge academic research. In addition, it organizes "10 new strategies" and "7 signposts" for Japanese companies to realize Impressive CX, and is a must-read book for all business people

View all

Dialogue with Stakeholders

Because we support diverse businesses and the global business activities of our clients, we understand that our business has a significant impact on society and that we have a wide range of stakeholders. We recognize the importance of maintaining a dialogue with all of those stakeholders.

We therefore disclose timely, accurate and fair information to increase trust, while striving to instill a correct understanding and proper evaluation of our initiatives to improve our corporate value.

Further, through continuous dialogue between management and stakeholders, we will understand how the capital market evaluates us and what we are expected to be like, adapt to changes in the market environment, and contribute to building a sustainable society.

Back to Sustainability