At Obayashi, under the leadership of the Diversity & Inclusion Promotion Department, awareness raising is conducted to realize the enhancement of engagement of diverse employees in work while mutually accepting other employees’ perspectives and ways of thinking and an organization where all employees flourish and find their work rewarding. As part of the reform, starting from 2021, we annually offer level-specific unconscious bias training to all employees and executives.

Unconscious bias means biased views and assumptions that people are not aware of having but which everyone possesses. Unconscious bias, which is primarily based on a person’s experience and environment where the person grew up, may negatively affect others as well as the person without the person knowing it.

In the training, participants learn how to notice and deal with unconscious bias through case examples of the impact from gender bias and tasks where participants review themselves.

Comments from the participants include, “I will try to be more aware of unconscious bias on a daily basis so I can reduce the negative impact on others as well as myself and contribute to the growth and revitalization of the organization as a whole” and “I will try to be continuously aware of unconscious bias that is difficult to deal with since we have it without knowing it.”

Obayashi will continue to work on the creation of a workplace where each individual employee is able to fully utilize their potential and work safely and energetically with pride regardless of gender or environment.