Growing to Help Solve Social Problems! What is the Ajinomoto Group’s Management Cycle for ASV Results Creation?

Like many companies, we have defined our own management philosophy and policy, and embarked on initiatives to help us practice what we preach.

For these initiatives to work, it’s vital that employees internalize the company’s goals as their own initiatives. This naturally presents a challenge, which is why the Ajinomoto Group has introduced a special management system designed to work at the organizational level, promoting a sense of our Purpose in our employees, and enhancing their empathy and engagement.

Growing to help solve social problems!

You might be wondering how our growth could help solve social problems. We’ll now walk you through the process used by the Ajinomoto Group to create social and economic value by helping our employees to relate to our Purpose and internalize the company’s goals as their own initiatives.

The Ajinomoto Group reformulated its Purpose in 2023.

We define it as contributing to the well-being of all human beings, our society and our planet with “AminoScience” By 2030, we aim to reduce our environmental impact by 50%, and aim to help extend the healthy life expectancy of one billion people.

The realization of our Purpose is what we call “ASV.”

ASV stands for Ajinomoto Group Creating Shared Value.

ASV means that, rather than pursuing our own sales and profit exclusively, we’re creating social value by addressing social problems through our business, and thereby creating economic value too.

Making ASV happen will take more than the efforts of our management alone. We need the power of every employee in the Ajinomoto Group’s global workforce.

We’re aiming for a corporate culture where each employee focuses on the overlap between the Group’s Purpose and their own “My Purpose,” taking ownership of their own work, and striving continuously to achieve our shared vision of what we want to be.

To speed up the process from acquiring the “ASV as one’s own initiative” mindset at the individual level to creating results at the organizational level, the Ajinomoto Group has introduced a unique system we call the management cycle for ASV results creation.

For employees working as members of a business organization, internalizing the company’s goals as their own initiatives means perceiving the company’s goals and challenges as their own, and addressing those goals and challenges proactively and with a sense of ownership. Internalizing the company’s goals as their own initiative is likely to enhance employee engagement and productivity, and strengthen team cohesion.

Of course, all this is easier said than done.

Our own engagement survey for fiscal year 2023 showed that the Ajinomoto Group has achieved an employee engagement score of 76%.

One of the reasons why we have achieved an employee engagement score of 76% is that since fiscal year 2020, the Ajinomoto Group has been strengthening the “ASV as one’s own initiative” mindset by working on the management cycle for ASV results creation, implementing appropriate measures at every step of the process.

Another reason for implementing the management cycle for ASV results creation is to strengthen our intangible assets.

In order to attain our Purpose, the Ajinomoto Group is focusing on investing in our intangible assets. We define four categories: technology assets, human assets, customer assets and organization assets.

Of the four categories of intangible assets defined by the Ajinomoto Group, human assets are the most important.

We recruit and nurture diverse human resources with the passion and drive to achieve our Purpose, who produce innovation by matching our technologies with customer issues, and who maintain close connections with the peoples and cultures of the world. This human resources strategy is designed to help us create innovations for the future.

A key part of our human resources strategy is the management cycle for ASV results creation, a system created to help us attain our Purpose.

The management cycle for ASV results creation already set in motion by the Ajinomoto Group includes a training policy focused on human capital management, along with goal setting, internalizing the company’s goals as one’s own initiative, diversity, and our in-house engagement survey.

We see the management cycle for ASV results creation as an important element of our human resources strategy, which itself plays a key role in bolstering the Ajinomoto Group’s intangible assets.

Next, we’ll walk you through the management cycle for ASV results creation.

The management cycle for ASV results creation has four main steps.

These are Understanding/Sense-making, Empathy/Resonance, Execution/Realization, and Monitoring/Improvement.

Understanding/Sense-making

The first step is Understanding/Sense-making.

The process of enhancing ASV engagement begins with having employees engage in a dialogue with the CEO, with the General Managers of each division, with the corporate leaders of Group companies, and with other management.

In the dialogue with the CEO for fiscal year 2022, a total of 5,106 employees participated in 63 sessions at Group companies in Japan and around the world.

Through this collective dialogue with management, employees come to understand and make sense of our management policy and our Purpose. Then, having internalized the company’s goals as their own initiative, they go on to set personal goals linked to the goals for their own organization.

Empathy/Resonance

The second step is Empathy/Resonance.

At the Empathy/Resonance stage, employees give individual target presentations. Having identified the customers served and the value created on the way to their own targets, and worked out how their own work leads to ASV, they share their understanding with their colleagues. This raises mutual awareness of individual targets, fostering an organizational culture where employees empower one another to tackle new challenges.

By having employees announce the ASV they want to achieve through their own work at their individual target presentations, we are creating a corporate culture where each employee is supported by the empathy of their colleagues while taking on new challenges. At each individual target presentation, the presenter shares case studies where they personally found ways to overcome challenges. This is followed by a lively discussion of the challenges involved, leading organically to improvements at the organizational level, and galvanizing the whole team to work towards achieving ASV. In fiscal year 2022, individual target presentations were held at 30 Group companies in Japan and around the world.

At AJINOMOTO CO., (THAILAND) LTD, for example, a total of 1,800 employees attended these sessions in 2023, representing an employee participation rate of 100%. Employees from every department, including research, production, business and corporate, took part in lively Q&A sessions. This raised mutual awareness of individual targets, fostering an organizational culture where employees empower one another to tackle new challenges.

At AJINOMOTO DO BRASIL INDUSTRIA E COMÉRCIO DE ALIMENTOS LTDA., individual target presentations are held remotely. Presentations held so far have covered personal targets ranging from technology to reducing discharges of wastewater and effluent for the production department, utilizing digital transformation (DX) for production management, and addressing food and health issues in Latin America.

Ajinomoto Group employees also share their ASV case studies on our Group’s own internal social-media-style platform Workplace.

Execution/Realization

The third step is Execution/Realization.

Execution/Realization is the process whereby individual employees who have acquired the “ASV as one’s own initiative” mindset spontaneously take on new challenges, transcending organizational and other barriers to work as a team towards the realization of ASV.

Outstanding initiatives that embody ASV are recognized by ASV Awards.

Ajinomoto Co., Inc. also runs the A-STARTERS business incubator program for budding in-house entrepreneurs.

The results and sense of achievement arising from these initiatives enhance employee ASV engagement and increase our corporate value.

Monitoring/Improvement

The final step is Monitoring/Improvement.

At the Monitoring/Improvement stage, we analyze the results of our annual engagement survey to measure progress made in employee ASV engagement. Challenges identified from the findings are then addressed in our plan for the following year.

Thanks to this initiative, the employee engagement score achieved by the Ajinomoto Group in fiscal year 2023 was 76%. By fiscal year 2030, we aim to raise this to 85%.

However, driving up our employee engagement score is not our sole focus. It’s also important to pay attention to the correlation between employee engagement and business performance.

Since fiscal year 2022, we have disclosed the correlation between employee engagement and business performance, and since fiscal year 2023, we have also disclosed our approach to the ASV realization process. We are speeding up our identification of opportunities and issues correlating with the scores for particular questions in the engagement survey. By making sure each organization has someone in charge of analyzing the engagement survey results, and by holding workshops at beginner and advanced levels and providing other training, we are encouraging organizations to make autonomous use of the information yielded by the survey.

As part of our drive to bolster our intangible assets, we measure our employee engagement score. We do this by finding the average score for the nine survey questions designed to assess the effectiveness of each step of the ASV realization process, from Understanding/Sense-making through the “ASV as one’s own initiative” mindset, to creating results at the organizational level.

We have already described the initiatives that lead to higher ASV engagement among our employees. Now we’ll explain how higher ASV engagement translates into improved business performance.

Every year, the Ajinomoto Group updates the results of the engagement survey, and analyses how the scores for particular questions correlate with business results. From the survey results for the past five years, we have ascertained that the scores for empathy for our purpose, customer focus, and enhancement of productivity correlate with both sales and business profit per employee.

Through the processes of Understanding/Sense-making, Empathy/Resonance, Execution/Realization and Monitoring/Improvement, the actions of each individual employee help to solve social problems and create a better future. By promoting the “ASV as one’s own initiative” mindset and working towards the realization of ASV, new social and economic value is being created at this very moment.

By evolving its management cycle for ASV results creation initiatives, the Ajinomoto Group will continue empowering its individuals and organizations to grow and develop together while ceaselessly enhancing its corporate value.

In addition to the examples covered in this article, other projects born of ASV initiatives can be found in the Stories section.