DE&I is a familiar concept.
We will continue to practice DE&I to achieve our goals.

The Current Status of DE&I

Since the Diversity Declaration in 2012, DE&I has gradually become more widespread within the company, and I feel that awareness has increased particularly over the past four or five years. However, company-wide awareness is still focused heavily on women’s participation in the workplace. Naturally, women’s participation is not the only DE&I topic, so we need to move to the next stage quickly. Even if DE&I advances, it is meaningless if it cannot be implemented in theactual workplace, so an important issue is applying it to organizational management. I feel like we are gradually transitioning, but we are still halfway through.

“By 2030, increase the ratio of women in management staff to 30% and increase the rate of men taking childcare leave” has been adopted as a company-wide materiality. However, there is no limit to how far DE&I can go, and we believe that the goal is for employees to feel that implementing DE&I will produce tangible results and improve work efficiency.

Why is DE&I necessary?

DE&I should be a natural part of society and companies. The world continues to change at breakneck speed. In anticipation of changes, Eisai has amended its Articles of Incorporation in 2022, expanding the focus of our corporate concept from "patients and their families" to "patients and the people in the daily living domain," and aiming to realize "social good". However, if we stick only to traditional ways of doing things and fail to adapt to change, it will be difficult to create innovation, let alone achieve our ultimate goal of social good. DE&I is a concept that is necessary to respond to change, and is not actually a concept that is far away from us. There are many things that are familiar to us in our daily work, and some of them can already be put into practice. DE&I will not be achieved immediately by doing something but will be a long-term activity. We need to keep DE&I in mind and keep practicing it to achieve our goals. I believe that an organization is not the sum of its individual abilities, but rather the combination of those abilities. Therefore, organizations can accomplish things that cannot be done individually, and innovation can be created We recognize that DE&I is a management agenda that should continue to be put into practice.

What are DE&I Initiatives that only Eisai can do?

Eisai is a company that seriously pursues corporate concept-based management. We spend 1% of our business time socializing with patients and the people in the daily living domain, and apply what we learn from this experience to our work. That's why everyone is able to think for themselves "for whom" and "for what purpose". The same goes for DE&I. I would like to adopt the thought process of the hhc concept. The hhc philosophy does not have one answer; each person has their own answer. But if you ask them what their purpose is, I think everyone will answer something similar. With DE&I, each person has their own answer, but in the end it’s best to be heading in the same direction. Multiplying the strengths of individuals to create a greater power will lead to the creation of innovation and the realization of social good. I believe this is the kind of DE&I that Eisai can achieve. Obtaining approval for LEQEMBI (generic name: lecanemab) was an event that convinced us that we can accomplish great things with DE&I as the driving force. This was possible not only because of the power of science, but also because of changes in the mindset of organizations and employees through DE&I. There is an environment where DE&I can become a climate and culture. It is important to set the goals you want to achieve and the problems you want to solve, and then consciously incorporate the DE&I concept into your activities and put them into practice to achieve them.