DE&I (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion)

In 2023, KDDI phased up to DE&I, adding “Equity” to D&I, accelerating efforts to promote the success of diverse employees.
In 2024, the management team engaged in extensive discussions and defined KDDI’s DE&I as leveraging diverse individuality as an organizational strength, without barriers in any situation.
Diverse individuality includes not only attributes such as gender, age, sexual orientation, and gender identity, but also skills and experience. By building a relationship in which individual strengths and organizational strengths support each other, we believe that we can grow into a company resilient to change, a company contributing to society, a company consistently chosen, and a company embracing challenges, thereby achieving both corporate value improvement and sustainable growth in society.
While continuing attribute-focused initiatives, we will increasingly focus on initiatives that leverage every individual’s “personality” as an organizational strength.

As a foundation for this vision, our philosophy—shared by all employees—has been revised from “Diversity as the foundation” to the more proactive “Leveraging diversity.”
We are working to instill our commitment to DE&I as a management strategy in every employee.

With the President as the top decision-making authority, KDDI is engaged in company-wide efforts to promote diverse work styles and the professional advancement of women, employees with disabilities and LGBTQ+ ^*1 people.

Since fiscal 2023, we have operated the Women’s Talent Development Conference as a forum where the management team regularly discusses the advancement of women. The management team regularly aligns its awareness of the promotion of women’s advancement and strives to further strengthen and accelerate company-wide initiatives.
Since fiscal 2025, it has been renamed the DE&I Promotion Conference, expanding its scope from the advancement of women to include the active participation of employees with various attributes, such as gender, disability, age, and individuality.

As a first step in promoting DE&I, KDDI is strengthening initiatives to close the gender gap.

As of June 2025, KDDI’s employment rate of persons with disabilities is 2.82% (including KDDI Challenged, a special subsidiary, and KDDI Engineering), exceeding the legally mandated employment rate of 2.5%.

KDDI Challenged Corporation, a special subsidiary established in 2008, promotes the independence and advancement of employees with disabilities by providing an environment where many people with disabilities can work and by expanding and creating job duties and roles.

In addition, many employees with disabilities are active across KDDI workplaces. In 2023, three employees—the largest number among participating companies—won the Grand Prix at the ACE Awards, which recognize model cases in which the employment of persons with disabilities contributes to corporate growth and to the strengthening of corporate competitiveness.

Launched in 2024, the “Long-Term Internship Program for Persons with Disabilities” has contributed not only to achieving the legally mandated employment rate but also to creating diverse advancement opportunities for persons with disabilities through DX and generative AI programs.
Going forward, we plan to further support flexible career development for employees with disabilities by establishing intra-group secondment and transfer schemes.

KDDI is undertaking various initiatives so that employees who identify as LGBTQ+ (sexual minorities) can work vibrantly and with peace of mind.

Increase Allies

We at KDDI are engaged in an initiative to increase allies―supporters of LGBTQ+ people. To LGBTQ+ people, the presence of allies around them boosts confidence. Allies can also promote dialogue about the issue in the workplace.
We have created KDDI ALLY logo stickers and begun an initiative to make allies visible by placing them on PCs and other locations visible to colleagues

We also launched the Ally Community as a place to learn about the feelings of the parties concerned and deepen our understanding about them, and we are working with approximately 60 volunteers.

• KDDI recruitment website | Shaping employees’ voices: Creating a workplace where everyone can work comfortably through LGBTQ+ support.Open in a new window

External Evaluation

KDDI has received the highest rating, Gold, for nine consecutive years since fiscal 2016 in the PRIDE Index, an evaluation indicator for corporate initiatives related to LGBTQ+ and other sexual minorities (hereafter referred to as “LGBTQ+”).

As we enter the era of 100-year lifespans, KDDI has adopted systems that help its employees aged 50 years or older can play an active role in a workplace. We have established a post-retirement re-employment program for employees who have reached the age of 60 and satisfy certain requirements, encouraging them to work as non-regular employees until age 65 at the latest. This system employs open recruiting, allowing the employees to select their desired job type and activity while creating a mechanism for former full-time employees to make full use of their skills and experience in various workplaces.

In addition, for the career development of senior employees, we offer opportunities such as seminars and individual career consultations to support them in considering their ways of living and working after retirement.

KDDI has introduced the KDDI Version Job Style Personnel System, which accelerates the growth of employees through evaluation and compensation based on individual abilities, regardless of nationality.
We also provide assistance to foreign employees in completing the necessary procedures for working in Japan, and have set up a religiously-responsible worship space.