In order to promote the success of all employees, we are working on action plans that take into account the various lifestyle changes our employees might encounter, such as nursing care and medical treatment. Through these action plans, we make sure our employees can work with us for a long time with peace of mind. In addition, we encourage our employees to take on new challenges from their early stages of career, by providing opportunities and chances. Especially, to support our female employees' success in their career, who are vulnerable to changes in life stages, we will reinforce career development training programs that help them to explore their career and work-life balance and promote consciousness raising initiatives intended for managers.

We conduct evaluations and appointments based on individuals' abilities, regardless of social categories such as gender, by adopting the grade system in which the required ability for each grade is defined. We implement a fair salary system that ensures no gender gap for grade evaluation and payment of wages. However, we do recognize a difference between the average wages of male and female employees. This is due to the increase of recruitment of female new graduates in recent years, and the tendency to have fewer female managers in higher management positions. We will regularly monitor the gender composition ratio in promotions and in each grade and reinforce initiatives to increase the ratio of female employees in management positions and to eradicate gender pay gap.

We provide systems that enable diverse workstyles to pursue fulfillment in both life events and work, including the childcare leave system, to our employees regardless of gender. As of August 20As of August 2023, compared to 141.6% of female regular employees utilizing the childcare leave system, the usage ratio for male regular employees is 59.0%. We believe the main reason is that internal education and the fostering of corporate culture to understand and reduce gender gap is yet insufficient. We will reinforce our internal education activities, which are mainly implemented by the Diversity Committee, and promote awareness raising campaigns especially among the managers, and endeavor to create a corporate culture that encourages diverse workstyles and enables every employee to take desirable balance between life events and work.

We provide are employees with choices of workstyles which enable them to find balance between work and life events such as childbirth, childcare and nursing care.
The systems we provide include childcare and nursing care leave system, shorter working hour system, childcare system, family care system, flextime system, among others, and these systems can be used by all employees (except temporary workers) regardless of gender. We also offer a balanced four-day workweek system.
Today, various values on workstyles are being formed as more attention is being paid to achieving work-life balance. Respecting and corresponding to these values, we offer the choice to work as a regional employee, and 35.6% (987 people) of our regular employees have worked as regional employees in FY 2023. Our aim is to encourage them to maximize their possibility while maintaining and increasing productivity by respecting their own values.

Ryohin Keikaku began hiring individuals with disabilities in Japan in 2000 to promote the "sustainable happiness of co-workers," "self-development through mutual trust and cooperation" and "increase and stabilize employment at stores."

We have also established a support system that includes employment management and guidance tailored to the characteristics and individuality of each person and a step-up system based on evaluation to help people with disabilities reach their full potential.

In September 2021, we began year-round recruitment in which we opened doors to hiring new university graduates at any time, regardless of the job-seeking season. In addition, we also welcome first- and second-year university students and recent graduates with few years of work experience.
In FY 2022 and FY2023, mid-career hires accounted for more than 50% of new hires.