Initiatives for Work-Life Balance

Advantest believes that the realization of a good work-life balance will ultimately contribute to the improvement of corporate value. We believe that a well-balanced workstyle is necessary to allow employees to maximize their capabilities while balancing their private life with work, and to maintain their motivation. Based on this philosophy, Advantest has continued to create good working environments that offer flexible working systems.

In Japan, Advantest has been promoting active use of existing systems, such as days to leave the workplace at the appointed time, use of annual paid leave, and flextime (for all employees). The ratio of employees using annual paid leave usage (23 days a year (22 days for employees with less than 10 years of continuous service)) has maintained a high standard at around 70% each year, marking 76.1% in fiscal 2022.
Moreover, a remote working system and a home office working system for all employees have been established, aiming to expand systems in which many employees will be able to conduct flexible and efficient work according to their tasks, workstyles, and lifestyles.

Remote Working System

The Advantest Group in Japan has introduced the remote working system since April 2020. We withdrew the restrictions on the maximum number of days that remote work is possible. We provide an environment in which most of the tasks can be done remotely in accordance with the basic information security policies.

The introduction of the remote working system has led to an expansion of new workstyles, helping employees, not only those who are raising children or caregiving family members, but also many others, to balance work and private lives.

Work-Life Balance Programs for Childcare and Caregiving

Advantest actively promotes support programs for balancing work and private life, providing flexible ways of working according to each individual's situation at various stages in employees' lives.

Examples of support programs in Japan

At Advantest, pregnant employees can receive 100% compensation during prenatal checkups and pregnancy complications leave, and are offered the choice to work shorter hours if instructed by a doctor. Advantest offers childcare leave and caregiving leave that exceeds legal standards. Childcare leave can be taken until the child reaches the age of two years and three months, and caregiving leave can be taken for a maximum of three years. Other leave programs are also widely used, such as the accumulated holiday program, which can be taken for a variety of reasons, by fathers as well as mothers, including a spouse's childbirth, childcare, fertility treatment, and other caregiving responsibilities.
Furthermore, Advantest offers shorter work hours for employees who are raising children or looking after ill relations. Shorter working hours for childcare can be used until the employee’s youngest child reaches the sixth grade, and is currently being used by many employees with children to balance work and childcare. There is no restriction on the period in which employees can work short hours in order to care for ill family members, so that employees can best balance their jobs with their home lives.

As there are cases in which employees resign their jobs during life transitions, such as marriage, childbirth, childcare, caregiving for the family, and spouse job relocation, Advantest has established a re-employment program for employees who meet a certain criterion.

We are also working on support for childcare participation for fathers, which includes the provision of personal consultations for male employees with children and their supervisors, guidance for childcare-related systems, and support for using childcare leave. In addition, starting in fiscal 2022,we have institutionalized a childcare leave subsidy of up to four weeks for employees who take childcare leave within eight weeks of the birth of their child.

It should be noted that re-employment of female employees following childcare leave as a result of these efforts, was 94% in fiscal 2022, and the ratio of male employees taking childcare leave in fiscal 2022 was 21%.

Advantest will continue to support fathers’ participation in childcare by offering individual consultations for fathers raising children.

Number of employees using childcare leave

Boundary of data: Advantest Corporation (non-consolidated)

Number of employees using shorter working hours for childcare

Boundary of data: Advantest Corporation (non-consolidated)

Number of employees using caregiving and nursing leave

Boundary of data: Advantest Corporation (non-consolidated)

Evaluation of Activities Supporting Work-Life Balance

In Japan, based on the Act on Advancement of Measures to Support Raising Next-Generation Children, efforts were made (measures and initiatives to increase the ratio of fathers taking childcare leave and creating environments that support work-life balance, and initiatives to reduce overtime and promote the use of annual paid leave) in accordance with the action plan period from April 2022 until March 2024. These activities so far were recognized, and Advantest received its second "Kurumin" certification in October 2022.
We will continue to focus on each employee’s work-life balance and promote various initiatives toward creating work environments in which diverse human resources can play active roles.

Promotion of Work-Life Balance Programs

In Japan, Advantest launched the "Work-Life Balance Support Guide" website on the company intranet, offering information on work-life balance programs that can be used according to one's lifestyle, and raising awareness of the various programs that Advantest provides and encouraging utilization of the same. In recent years, Advantest has actively announced the work-life balance program, posted experiences of our male employees taking childcare leave, and also developed an environment that allows easier consultation, such as establishing a consultation service, to promote an environment in which employees can use work-life balance programs with peace of mind.

Reducing Overtime Hours

Advantest strives to ensure employees work appropriate hours to protect their health and achieve a work-life balance.
The Advantest Corporation (non-consolidated) has set the goals specified below and focused on increasing operational efficiency, encouraging a change in employee mindsets, and making the most of available work arrangements such as flextime and shift work while striving to reduce the amount of overtime.

Our overtime reduction goals
Number of employees with a monthly overtime of 80 hours or more 0

From fiscal 2020 onwards, we will continue to adopt the reduction of overtime work into our action plan under the Act on Promotion of Women's Participation and Advancement in the Workplace. We will raise awareness via the company intranet and promote initiatives to achieve flexible workstyles in order to further reduce the number of overtime hours.

Despite these initiatives, we were unable to achieve our company plan of zero employees working 80 hours or more of overtime per month for FY2022.
We were unable to achieve these goals due to keeping up with increased production and delivery support as well as dealing with unexpected problems.
The overtime hours per employee for FY2022 were an average of 20.5 hours as of March 2023. We saw an increase in our overtime hours due to the impact of COVID-19 as with last year, as well as due to increased demand and efforts to meet short delivery deadlines.

Average overtime hours worked per person

* Boundary of data: Advantest Group (Japan, China, Korea)

* Overtime hours are included for management positions with no subordinates (For Korea only).

Annual Paid Leave and Other Leave Systems

We encourage employees to take annual paid leave (up to 23 days per year) according to the job schedule of each person, work-life balance, and other work conditions to realize work-life balance at Advantest (non-consolidated). In addition to planned paid leave (6 to 12 days each year), we have also introduced multipurpose consecutive leave (3 days a year) and refresh leave (3, 5, and 8 days of leave given to employees after working continuously for 10, 20, and 30 years, respectively). Furthermore, annual paid leave that will be lost can be carried over as cumulative paid leave for 5 days a year up to a maximum of 30 days to use for reasons that include injury to the employees themselves or the need to take care of a child or family member as well as volunteering, self-development, infertility treatments, or to help with donor activities, and due to disasters.

Graph of paid leave taken

Boundary of data: Advantest Corporation (non-consolidated)

Number of employees taking accumulated holiday

Boundary of data: Advantest Corporation (non-consolidated)