2025.2.14

Strengthening Human Capital: Insights from Cadira’s Investor–Company Dialogue

Cadira’s investment team conducts post-meeting surveys following IR meetings.


These surveys include questions not only about the overall impressions of the meeting, but also on timely topics deemed important to corporate management. For the October–December 2024 quarter, the focus was on employee training as a human capital development initiative.

The survey results are compiled quarterly and shared via email with participating companies. This quarter, the results were distributed to 189 companies, whose combined market capitalization as of the end of December totaled ¥329 trillion.

For reference, below is the body of the email sent to these companies:

Survey Results

Did this meeting cover topics that were important to your company?

  • Yes: 100% (previous: 92.3%)

  • No: 0.0% (previous: 0.0%)

  • Not sure: 0.0% (previous: 7.7%)

Which of the following were important discussion points for your company during the meeting? (Multiple answers allowed)

  • Medium- to long-term strategy: 80.6% (previous: 73.1%)

  • Sustainability: 64.5% (previous: 46.2%)

  • Business details: 51.6% (previous: 53.8%)

  • Corporate philosophy: 29.0% (previous: 38.5%)

  • Financial information: 16.1% (previous: 19.2%)

  • Other: 12.9% (previous: 3.8%)

Who would be potential participants for your next meeting with Cadira? (Multiple answers allowed)

  • IR personnel: 90.3% (previous: 100%)

  • Sustainability personnel: 41.9% (previous: 38.5%)

  • Executives in charge: 61.3% (previous: 61.5%)

  • CEO/top management: 25.8% (previous: 42.3%)

  • Business division heads: 3.2% (previous: 23.1%)

  • Outside directors: 3.2% (previous: 15.4%)

Summary of the Survey Results

Two notable points emerged from this quarter’s survey:

1. Rising interest in sustainability, and

2. Evidence of enhanced employee training programs.

In response to the question, “Which discussion topics were important to your company?”, the percentage of respondents citing "Sustainability" increased significantly from the previous quarter (46.2% → 64.5%).

One likely reason for this uptick is the seasonal concentration of integrated report publications in September and October, which prompted more companies to seek investor feedback on their reports.

Additionally, Cadira’s CIO, Yu Shimizu, spoke at a seminar hosted by the Impact-driven Financing Initiative in early October. Some companies reached out to us following that appearance, which may have also contributed to the increased engagement.

While sustainability-related dialogue can cover a wide range of issues, recently we’ve seen growing interest in the connectivity between financial and non-financial information. Leading companies appear to be moving beyond ESG data collection and are now experimenting with ways to link sustainability to long-term corporate value.

We expect investor attention to increase significantly for companies that can clearly demonstrate this link, and we’ll continue to monitor how these discussions evolve.

This quarter’s special topic was employee training. We asked:

“Please provide the trend in average training hours per employee over the past three years.”

  • 45.2% of respondents provided specific data on training hours or training-related expenditures.

  • 32.3% shared multi-year data allowing for time-series comparison.

Calculating the two-year growth rate for those responses showed that 90% of the companies increased their training volumes compared to the prior year, with an average growth of 28.4%, reflecting the recent emphasis on strengthening human capital.

We also asked an open-ended question on initiatives to improve training. The most frequently mentioned themes were:

  • Management-related training: 29.0%

  • Role-specific training: 25.8%

  • Tier-based training: 19.4%

  • Digital skills training: 16.1%

  • Sustainability-related training: 12.9%

These results suggest a relatively strong focus on strengthening management capabilities and professional expertise. On the other hand, while many companies publicly emphasize the importance of "DX talent development," the actual survey numbers suggest that digital training may not yet be as prioritized as expected.

The above summarizes the quarterly email content that accompanies our regular survey results.

Lastly, we are currently preparing an annual activity report, which will include aggregated survey results on a yearly basis.

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