SOMPO’s Purpose Management
SOMPO Awards
The Sompo Group introduced the new group-wide award program of “SOMPO Awards” in 2022 to advance from a phase in which our employees understand and empathize with My Purpose and I&D (inclusion and diversity) into a phase in which they transform their understanding into power and actually take action.
By awarding the efforts arising from the My Purpose of each and every employee toward realizing SOMPO’s Purpose, this award program is to transform our corporate culture into one that embraces challenges and is driven by employees’ My Purpose.
SOMPO AWARD OF THE YEAR
One Grand Prize out of all entries
The Gutto Award
A special award for the one which resonated the most with employees. This is selected from among the category award winners through employee voting.
Best Category Award
One Grand Prize per category
Messages from the award winners
Kazuhisa Hoshino
Sompo Care
West Japan First Promotion Division Regional Business Promotion Department
We promoted this project hoping that it would make users happy and that children in the community would think of the nursing care profession as a worthy career to aspire to. We believe that this project was only achievable because of the support and cooperation of the users and on-site staff. We would like to continue to expand the circle of community interaction among the users, children, and care workers as one integrated area.
Reiko Fujita
Prime Assistance
Business Development Division Planning Office
The My Purpose that I uphold is “to resolve the world’s inequality and disparity in a sustainable way with our partners.” There were many individuals who have assisted and supported us in order to realize this wish through “Eyeco Support.” We believe that if were not for every single one of them, we would not have been able to win this award, so we are filled with gratitude toward everyone who has shared this purpose with us.
The SOMPO Awards are a group-wide internal award program that recognizes ideas and initiatives based on each employee’s My Purpose which then lead to the realization of SOMPO’s Purpose. In FY2022, the first year of the program, more than simply introducing a new awards program, we have also closely coordinated our efforts with such purpose penetration strategies as holding town hall meetings and case study sessions to help spread the program, resulting in a total of 993 entries from Sompo Group companies in Japan and overseas.
Overview of the Program
Aiming to transform our corporate culture into one that embraces challenges and is driven by employees’ My Purpose, we divided the SOMPO Awards into the three categories of “Learning from Challenge,” “Building a Unified Culture,” and “Driving Sompo’s Purpose,” and then collected initiatives and ideas. For the selection process, emphasis was placed on stories that were unique to those individuals and based on the feelings, sense of mission, and My Purpose behind their challenges, along with whether qualities distinct to the Sompo Group were conveyed, such as I&D, Group synergy, and contribution to resolving social challenges. Moreover, as part of the selection process, interactive methods were adopted, including conversational style interviews to delve deeper into the applicant’s thinking and implementing employee voting to select the initiatives that resonated the most with them.
Aspiration behind the launch of the program
Since joining the company, I have been given the opportunity to take on various challenges by the company, which led me to think about how I could use my position to encourage my colleagues in the Group to take on new challenges. In addition, I felt that while we are a group with diverse businesses, from the viewpoint of a single employee, there may not be sufficient chances to feel this diversity. These thoughts led me to establish the “SOMPO Award,” a Group-wide award system that supports each and every employee’s unique challenges, with a focus on raising the total amount of challenges. The key message, “Our Purpose begins with you,” contains our desire to honor, encourage, and support the challenges of all employees.
- Mr. Hoshino changed careers and entered the nursing care industry with the ambition to “change people’s perception by conveying that the nursing care profession is highly specialized and is a worthwhile profession.” Gradually, he became convinced that the direction of the company’s transformation matched his own ambitions.
- He took on the challenge of building the best possible team by working across business divisions to promote the SOMPO Style Children’s Cafeteria while utilizing the strengths of each person in charge.
- As a result, through running the SOMPO Style Children’s Cafeteria as a place for multigenerational exchange, they have not only improved teamwork but also contributed to fostering children’s aspirations to become future caregivers and to creating the perception that nursing care facilities are cheerful and open.
Promotion Project of the SOMPO Style Children’s Cafeteria in the Chubu Region
- The other day, I visited a home located in Nagoya. I felt that it had the power to create change for children and the elderly as well as the society and community.
- It is rewarding for us workers to see the residents smiling as they interact with children. It makes me happy to see children showing interest in nursing care work.
- Led by Ms. Fujita, the organizer, and Ms. Fujii, who is visually impaired, this initiative arose from the desire by those involved to “create a more exciting society for everyone, regardless of one’s disability.”
- With the support of SOMPO Digital Lab and the Digital and Data Strategy Department, a service providing “visual information by voice” to those who cannot see or have difficulty seeing was developed using Prime Assistance’s call center.
- Users have commented that as the number of things they can do increases, they feel more motivated to try new things.
Team Eyeco Support
- It contributes to making everyone’s life fulfilling in their own way and is truly an effort that brings us closer to realizing SOMPO’s Purpose.
- When I heard the users voice their delight, I felt proud and was moved as a member of the company providing this service.
- The members’ desire to “contribute to the development of Okinawa and resolve its issues” led them to take on the challenge of resolving Okinawa’s issue of child poverty.
- The branch manager also showed commitment to the project and fully supported the members.
- As a result, the “Okinawa Children’s Future Work Experience Event,” in which children learn about work from professionals, was planned as an opportunity for children to have high aspirations and was achieved through co-creation with 17 companies and organizations.
- The event attracted a great deal of interest, with the number of applications far exceeding the number of participants along with attracting numerous media outlets to cover it.
Okinawa Contribution Team
- This is a wonderful initiative which takes on the challenge of doing what is possible now for the future without putting off local issues. I hope that these kinds of activities will spread from Okinawa to the rest of Japan.
- This is a wonderful initiative that has the potential for lateral development into other regions outside of Okinawa. We would like to develop it further in coordination with our activities.
The first SOMPO Awards Ceremony was held combining a real venue with a metaverse. It was the Group’s first attempt at introducing a metaverse into an awards ceremony, and the motivation behind this was to have the employees make an awards ceremony of their own. We introduced a metaverse with interactive elements so that employees could not only watch and listen to the awards ceremony but also create and enliven it themselves by praising the winners and sending them words of encouragement while transcending the boundaries between countries and businesses.
Employees who participated in the Awards Ceremony’s metaverse watched the live broadcast of the ceremony on the metaverse screen and cheered on the winners by clapping, dancing, and making other reactions as well as using the chat. In addition to the live broadcast, participants also viewed videos and posters about the award-winning projects on the metaverse and enjoyed interacting with other participants.
The emotions felt within the real venue were shared with these participants, resonating in such comments as, “Listening to the interviews with the award winners made me cry.”
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