Hiroshi Kobayashi acts as Managing Director for SEKISUI Europe B.V. (SEBV) since the beginning of 2018. We met him at his office in Roermond, Netherlands, to talk about his plans, his tasks and the future of SEKISUI’s business in Europe.
Working for a global company like SEKISUI has a lot of advantages. There are subsidiaries all over the world and you can roll out businesses internationally. But that comes with some issues: how to communicate correctly with employees of different countries? How to translate guidance from the parent company correctly? And how to act the right way in everyday international business?
From October 2017 to February 2018, the Japanese SEKISUI Safety Group carried out safety audits at 6 European production sites in order to further improve the safety of European employees in the workplace.
SEKISUI QESH Managers are responsible for plant development in terms of Quality, Environment, Safety and Health. In February, the “E” was the most important letter on their agenda. They met for the third time in Spain at SEKISUI Specialty Chemicals to learn from Japanese colleagues about the current environmental plans and how to implement them.
Every year at the beginning of spring, the cherry blossoms turn Japan upside down for a few weeks. While the whole country transforms into a pink-white sea of cherry blossoms, the Japanese celebrate the blooming with their families, friends and colleagues in the open air with a so-called Hanami.
Overall, there are three important things, if you are working in an intercultural environment like a European SEKISUI company. First of all, you must have business skills to represent your position. Then, you need local language skills and of course English language skills to understand your co-workers. And last but not least, you should own intercultural communication skills to interact successfully with everyone you’ll meet in your business. But how do you get these skills?
The annual SEKISUI KAIZEN Convention took place this year in January for the 52nd time. Together with global companions, the winner of the latest European KAIZEN convention presented his project in Kyoto, Japan.
Last summer, 47 SEKISUI employees’ children with high environmental awareness – including 10 European participants – met in Narita near Tokyo to get a deeper understanding for the significance of nature. The 7-day-event offered the participants a wide range of different activities e.g. there were guided tours of group business facilities and they learned about biodiversity and scarcity. Finally the children presented recommendations for a better environment and President Koge promised to take these ideas into a declaration regarding environment protection. Check out the video to gain insight into the highlights of the Global Children’s Eco Summit 2017.
