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We have finalised the Top 30 rankings for the largest Japanese employers in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region (free download below). As before, the extent to which Japanese companies take the UN Sustainable Development Goals pretty seriously has had a noticeably positive effect on disclosure of data and transparency. But there are still some laggards in terms of the metric we focus on, which is the number and location of employees outside of Japan.
Overall, the year from 2021/2 to 2022/3 has been one of very little growth for Japanese companies in Europe.
83% of companies have the majority of their staff overseas
More often than not, the detail on human resources in terms of diversity and inclusion in the various sustainability reports published by Japan headquarters is all about employees in Japan. And yet, 83% of the companies in our rankings have more than 50% of their employees overseas. Those with less than 50% of employees overseas are the ICT companies – NTT, Fujitsu and NEC, along with Toyota and Asahi Glass. In some cases no clear figures were given for Japan and overseas employees, so we estimated them based on employee numbers give for consolidated (Japan and overseas) and non-consolidated (which we took to be the Japan parent company).
The non-disclosers
NTT does not disclose the number and location of its staff, which is perhaps excusable as the huge consolidation and reorganisation of its group companies and overseas acquisitions is still working its way through.
The two recruitment giants, Outsourcing and Recruit are notably lacking in transparency on employee numbers. The excuse may be that is difficult to calculate numbers on a consistent basis, given that in some countries, temporary workers on their books will count as employees. Outsourcing has had to delist from the Tokyo Stock Exchange and may be bought out by Bain, following investigation for fraud and inflating revenues and expenses. We estimate Outsourcing is now the second largest Japanese corporate employer in Europe, after Sumitomo Electric Industries, pushing Yazaki to third place.
The other companies who do not disclose regional data on employees are Sony, Toyota Tsusho, Japan Tobacco, Dentsu, Toyota Industries, Kyocera, Mitsubishi Electric and Mitsubishi Corporation. Japan Tobacco does not even disclose how many employees are outside Japan at all. Some estimate can be made by looking at the employee numbers given for each location, on their website however.
No growth?
The lack of data from Outsourcing makes it very difficult to estimate the trend for the whole Top 30. We think their acquisitions in Europe over 2018 to 2021 may have grown the European workforce to 48,000. If we assume that this held level in 2022/3, then there are around 629,000 employees working for the biggest Japanese companies across the region and growth was only around 1%.
The only companies who grew significantly in the region from FY 2021/2 to FY 2022/3 were Daikin (10%) and Dentsu (6%). Shrinkage was noticeable in the automotive sector – Nissan (-22%) . Toyota Motor (-5%) and Toyota Industries (-6%). Honda has dropped out of the Top 30 since the closure of manufacturing in the UK, but has shrunk further by 3%. NSG, which supplies automotive glass, has shrunk by 5% over the year.
The influence of Europe through acquisitions
The total employed in EMEA as a proportion of all employees in the Top 30 companies is 16%. Those companies with significantly above that proportion of employees in EMEA are NSG, Outsourcing, Japan Tobacco, Toyota Tsusho and the Asahi Group. The Asahi Group acquired many beer and alcohol brands in Europe around eight years ago, which was also when Toyota Tsusho acquired CFAO, a France headquartered company with substantial operations in Africa. NSG acquired Pilkington in 2006 and Japan Tobacco acquired Gallaher in 2007.
The lack of any large scale acquisitions since 2021 is undoubtedly one of the factors behind the lack of growth of Japanese companies in the region.
Click the link below for a free pdf of the Top 30 Japanese employers in the EMEA region:
FREE DOWNLOAD OF TOP 30 JAPANESE COMPANIES IN EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA
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