Triggered by the employee engagement survey, which was conducted in 2018, we have launched our INTEGRITY Core Values, as a means to listen deeply to our employees' stories, and instilled them in everyone's hearts as a set of values that unite us. From the summer of 2019, we offered interactive INTEGRITY workshops for all our employees. This training, which incorporates the theme of the core values into daily work and encourages changes in the corporate culture, lasted until the end of FY2020 while avoiding the spread of COVID-19. Build upon a firm springboard, there were positive effects on internal communication and also offered a place where leaders thrive, and ideas prosper. In FY2022, as in FY2021, as a next phase of our cultural evolution, we worked on cultivating "leaders" who will drive the organization, and human resource development with a focus on the growth of individual employees.
The Leading with INTEGRITY Program
In an era of high uncertainty and unpredictability, leaders must understand and make decisions about how to effectively demonstrate their skills and expertise in various circumstances. A new Advantest Leadership Model was created for our leaders worldwide to further develop skills and expertise in the four key areas - LEADER, MANAGER, COACH and EXPERT, and Leading with INTEGRITY workshops were held. Over 1,200 Advantest leaders have participated in this learning opportunity. In this training, leaders from various organizations, transcending national borders or organizations, participate in the same workshop, form a group of two ("learning buddies"), and spend about five months together discussing their progress toward their skill development goals and their concerns. These workshops not only play a role in mutually inspiring our colleagues but also provides insight on diversity.
Four areas of the new Advantest Leadership Model
- Leader :
- The core purpose is to set vision, mission, and direction, which requires visionary thinking and the ability to inspire others.
- Manager :
- The core purpose is to organize and direct teams to achieve business objectives and ensure compliance, which requires the ability to orchestrate work in teams and excellent people and project management skills.
- Coach :
- The core purpose is to enable others to perform at the highest level possible, which requires leaders to enable learning opportunities and encouraging others.
- Expert :
- The core purpose is to provide domain expertise, which requires the education, teaching and mentoring of others.
Activities for Succession
In order to pool human resources and retain the best talent in the industry who will be our future leaders of the company, we implemented a "talent management program" for nine months, including a curriculum in management, finance, and liberal arts, for members selected from among our managers from FY2021. In FY2022, we have expanded the scope of the program to include participants from group companies in each country and are implementing a "Global Talent Management Program" for 13 months starting in September 2022.
Through group work activities, in which participants were asked to consider Advantest's challenges and its countermeasures propose them to the management, the participants were able to form strong connections with the management and members outside of their own departments. These training activities also helps Advantest to become a "learning organization" - one of our long-term goals.
Visualization of Skills Expected for Employees and Support Systems
In order to improve corporate value over the long term, each employee must clearly understand the roles they play and improve their individual capabilities. In addition, we are required to combine these individual strengths and fully demonstrate them as an organizational strength in the global business playing field. With this in mind, Advantest has established the Advantest Development Framework which defines the foundational skills, advanced skills, manager skills, and senior management skills that Advantest seeks for in all levels of our employees, and shared it among all employees globally in January, 2022. In conjunction with the development framework introduction, we also introduced two new online learning platforms which are intended to provide all employee's and manager's access to training classes to further enhance the skills for their career advancement. Since some of these should be adapted to local customs and rules, the HR in each country decides the details of operation.
Advantest promises to actively support our employees who constantly strive to better themselves and seek to acquire advanced expertise and broad education.
Advantest Development Framework
Introduction of a Peer-to-Peer Program: The INTEGRITY Award
To further foster the corporate culture introduced during the 2019 reform, the INTEGRITY Award, a peer-to-peer program that offers Advantest employees worldwide a platform to recognize and express appreciation for colleagues who have exemplified excellence at work by adopting INTEGRITY as our company values, was introduced.
In FY2022, the award was received by a team of employees who worked together to carry out the "Newcomer Camp" at Advantest Taiwan Co., Ltd. In recent years, the company has hired an increasing number of new employees with diverse backgrounds. With these, the challenge was how to integrate them into Advantest's culture and to retain them. Through a variety of activities, the new employees were welcomed to the company, while the company has succeeded in attracting top talent by organizing training programs ensuring that the newcomers could be able to access the information and resources they need.
Education and Training System and Implementation Status
Advantest has prepared a training program that anyone can participate in, and where a wide range of topics can be learned, from basic knowledge up to the latest technology trends. In addition, we will continue to make improvements to adapt the training program to the changing environment, providing industry-leading superior human resource training, and attracting the best talent in the industry through this program, in cooperation with Advantest Academy, which specializes in employee education.
To adapt to the business environment that is drastically changing due to globalization, we are strengthening the human resources development training system in line with our mid/long-term management policy. To make this training even more effective, we are forging and implementing new programs, including the expansion of 1-on-1 communication trainings. New programs will also be delivered by specialists to make them more effective, and we will selectively use in-house or external lecturers depending on the program content.
At each Group company, we will also provide a wide range of education to increase the skills and expertise of individuals based on the needs in each country and region in addition to education through day-to-day operations.
For example, Advantest Europe GmbH (AEG) hosted the AEG Application Days, an event where over 100 participants, including all AEG application engineers, as well as employees from other areas such as sales were invited to join to learn about new solutions. The event not only allowed our employees to share application relevant information, exchange ideas, and learn about new market trends and new solutions, but also allowed them to grow and improve their daily work. We aim to develop and instill a system that boosts the level of the entire Advantest Group by sharing information on these efforts between Group companies.
Training in Japan
In FY2022, we continued to offer events that integrated both virtual and in-person as a flexible hybrid program due to restrictions by COVID-19 issue. We incorporated web conferencing systems to provide opportunities to learn despite the pandemic, offering environments for training that did not require coming in to work. By increasing online group work activities, which proved to be effective in boosting employee motivation, we were able to promote mutual awareness building across departments and expand connections regardless of work location.
In terms of language education, we focused on strengthening in-house marketing by introducing courses to employees and holding pre-learning sessions to solicit a wide range of participants. While spending most of the time at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we introduced micro-learning, allowing employees to effectively use their spare time, making it easier for learners to secure time to study. A total of 961 employees, 5% more than last year, participated to improve their language skills.
As part of our leadership development initiatives, we introduced a liberal arts educational program to cultivate a sense of culture and have newly appointed managers obtain the "power to think" by themselves. As we enter a new post-pandemic era, this initiative develops the big picture of what is necessary for leaders from wide perspectives that include religion and philosophy. Through the three training sessions, group members deepened their awareness of issues and exchanged opinions, while also revitalizing exchanges in preparation for the presentation of their results.
As a demonstration of "Inclusion and Diversity," one of Advantest's core values, we have made it possible for working mothers who have returned from childcare leave and are working shorter hours to participate in outside seminars, mainly career education, from FY2021. Advantest is a tech company, and naturally, the number of female employees is not as large as that of male employees. The program is designed to offer participants an opportunity to think about balancing childcare and work, in other words, their own careers, while sharing opinions with other working mothers outside the company who are in the same situation, and to learn how to communicate effectively with their supervisors and coworkers.
Training Time
At the Advantest Corporation (non-consolidated) in FY2022, a total of 5,229 employees received training of some kind, and the average number of training hours per employee was 8 hours for 42,007 hours of total lesson time. A total of 59,031 people took part in e-learning globally, including Japan, and the average number of training hours per employee was approximately an hour for 51,351 hours of total lesson time. In total, the average training hours per employee was approximately 9 hours.
* Data range for tabulation: Advantest Corporation (non-consolidated) data
| Training category |
Target |
Number of trainees |
Lesson time (hours) |
| Business Training (human resource management, etc.) |
Managers, General |
831 |
6,384 |
| Technical Training (technology) |
Managers, General |
501 |
1,192 |
| e-learning (human resource management, etc.) |
Managers, General |
2,770 |
1,137 |
| New Employee Training (by job level) |
General |
47 |
17,603 |
| Language/TOEIC (global) |
Managers, General |
961 |
14,262 |
| Outside seminars (e.g., on business skills, etc.) |
Managers, General |
119 |
1,430 |
| Total |
|
5,229 |
42,007 |
Development of Engineers (Japan)
We place particular emphasis on educating engineers, with the aim of ensuring that our products continue to underpin leading-edge technologies.
We have created a training program accessible to every employee of the Group and covering a wide range of subjects, from basic knowledge to the latest technologies.
In FY2022, 501 engineers participated in the various technology seminars and technical training that were provided.
Some of the programs include courses in which Advantest's senior engineers appear as internal trainers. For example, one of the seminars featured a lecture on design quality by an employee in charge of design, thereby shedding light on the basic technologies required to maintain and improve product quality based on the speaker's first-hand experiences. Courses are held by inviting instructors from outside the company based on themes requested by engineers or management-level personnel, so as to support them in adapting to a rapidly changing business environment.
The program acts as a means of imparting not only technical knowledge but also Advantest's corporate DNA to future generations.
Software-Related Education
We have been conducting software engineering forums six times a year for the past 30 years. In these forums, cutting-edge information on topics such as agile, continuous integration (CI), Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), as well as security-related information and current affairs in the world are shared by internal and external instructors, from domestic and overseas. In October 2019, Advantest Engineering Friday was established as a place where employees can share their findings with each other on a continuous basis. Multiple subcommittees have been started from here, and they regularly meet up on Friday afternoons as a separate community from the organization where they can learn from each other. In FY2022, presentations were offered from a wide range of internal departments, including IT, operations, and production divisions. The "Software Engineering Forum" has acted as a bridge for employees "wanting to know and spread" their knowledge, information, and initiatives held within the company, and as an opportunity for internal technical exchange.
New Employee Education and Training (Japan)
Advantest's training program for new employees starts with one month of basic business training covering the basics of working life. After that, the new recruits are put into one of two occupation-specific training regimes, depending on whether they have been hired for engineering or administrative job assignments.
Engineering employees first learn the basics of design, and then go on to learn the necessary skills as Advantest engineers through basic technology training to obtain the basic knowledge required, hardware training, software training, and device test training. New administrative employees receive basic training for administrative operations to learn the basics of administration and brush up on their administrative skills, while learning the contents of the Group's business and how the divisions are interrelated.
We review the training programs each year to ensure that they reflect the characteristics of new employees and the policies of the company as a way to cultivate the basic skills of junior employees. Since new employees in FY2022 joined the company while adjusting to the new normal in the era of the pandemic, we conducted face-to-face team-building training immediately after they joined the company so that they could bond together in a better manner.
Prior to their assignment, they take a "talent assessment" together with their OJT leaders, of which data is used as reference information for mutual understanding.
By having new employees experience diverse types of training in this manner, we are able to ensure that they will clearly understand their own roles, and will recognize the importance of teamwork with other divisions. Our training period for new recruits acts as a key formative phase in their professional development as Advantest employees.
