Women’s College Alum Voices

I really feel like attending the Sekisui House Women’s College was a turning point in my life. I learned how to logically consider what is needed to solve a problem and what specifically should be done, in addition to learning the methods of taking action by myself. Other big plusses were the people I probably never would have met had I not joined the College and the interactions I had with experts from outside the company.

The problem-theme I worked on in my second year on the program was “Implementing Advance Exterior Work* in the Production of High-value-added Houses : Toward Site Beautification and Safe Construction.” I really felt like the vectors were aligned between the direction that the company is taking under the Mid-Term Management Plan and the advance exterior work implementation rate that has been slow to grow within my branch, and it gave me an opportunity to think about future initiatives. Thanks to my project, attitudes toward advance exterior work within the branch have changed, and we are implementing improvements on a continuous basis.

Currently, I’m involved in planning and implementation of training seminars and mixers relating to personnel training, planning for ways to improve work, study and trial of methods and tools for improving productivity, and so on. The reason that I am able to engage with my present work with such motivation is not only my experience in design and as an on-site supervisor but also the highly valuable experience that the College provided me in raising issues and coming up with solutions from scratch. I was having trouble balancing these with my day-to-day work, but it was a big step for me to think about my own career development and put it into practice.

In the work that I do, I was able to really feel and immediately put into practice the skills and ways of thinking that I learned at the Sekisui House Women’s College. I truly believe that while attending the College I got a real sense of the importance of analyzing problems and working on solutions. The reorganization of my workplace from the Corporate Social Responsibility Department to the ESG Management Promotion Headquarters was my tailwind, and it really provided me with an opportunity to reexamine the content of my work from a variety of perspectives—the added value produced by my work, quantifying effectiveness, or visualizing and quantifying my work.

In my second year on the program, I selected “Utilizing Social Contribution Activities for the Improvement of Corporate Value” as my theme. I used a questionnaire to survey employees regarding their activity status and level of awareness regarding social contribution activities, and based on the challenges that became apparent from the results of this survey I produced a proposal to strengthen our dissemination of information and our promotion of utilizing both “planning and development of housing education programs at exhibition halls” and the “Sekisui House Matching Program.”* During the results presentation to top management, I received lots of comments and feedback, which led to new realizations. I feel like this gave me a lot of food for thought when it came to taking on actual challenges.

After graduation, I set up an internal website, Volunteer Web, for all Sekisui House employees to apply to join volunteering activities with the content and location that suits them. The site went online in July 2021. In order to create systems and mechanisms to make the Sekisui House Matching Program more accessible, and I’ve also been planning the “Tsunagari Café,” an online café exclusively for Sekisui House employees. I’m also moving ahead with trials of a housing education program that will connect local elementary schools with exhibition halls over the Internet. The ability to create presentation materials, which I honed at the College, have been coming in handy not just in my day-to-day work but also in creating easy-to-understand slides at housing education presentations. I really value the experiences and relationships I got out of the College, and I hope to continue playing an active role in creating opportunities for people to make ESG a personal matter for themselves.

Studying at the Sekisui House Women’s College allowed me to take on my design work while keeping in mind the work policies of the company, its headquarters, and my branch. Up until that point, I had thought of those policies as being some far off thing, but this made me keenly aware of the need to recognize them as something that is right here beside each one of us. Since taking the course, I have noticed positive changes in myself, such as being able to take the lead in promoting various initiatives in the Planning & Design Section, and speaking up at branch meetings toward the goal of winning orders for added-value Sha Maison houses.

In my second year on the course, I turned my attention to the drop-off in the number of rental housing construction projects that is expected as a result of Japan’s aging population. I had the idea that we should aim for long-term stability in our branch’s business by breaking out of market rent and building high-added-value rental housing in accordance with Sekisui House’s price leader strategy. Have three-way meetings for each project between sales, design, and Sekisui House Real Estate, and move forward only after considering the optimal proposal; devise proposal contents that set us apart from the competition, such as including elevators; prepare materials in PowerPoint to make presentations that tell a “story”: I clearly presented these three initiatives, and it was decided that we would move ahead with them within our branch.

Now, all three initiatives have set in at the branch. The whole branch’s motivation was increased, and in terms of results we became the No. 1 branch in Japan. By providing good products and services, the number of orders increased, and this led to stable operations at our branch. Furthermore, while attending the Women’s College, I was able to talk with Sha Maison designers from other branches, and I was able to form relationships with them such that I am still in touch with them and can exchange information and advice. It was tough balancing my regular work with the training course, but I really feel like my efforts have paid off big-time.