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Astellas aims to be an “Employer of Choice: A company that is chosen by its current and future employees,” and we are investing time and energy into various initiatives to reach that goal. We want our employees to feel empowered to shape the future of our organization and to that end, we are building a workplace where employees from all backgrounds and cultures can thrive amid a culture of mutual learning and respect. We are committed to creating an environment where all our employees can become peak performers at their jobs and stay both physically and mentally healthy.
Our organizational values are the high-level principles that guide our company’s actions and serve as the foundation of our culture.
To activate these organizational values in the way we work day-to-day, we use five behaviors that are action-focused, and collectively define the requirements for effective performance across our organization:
Harmonization of grade structure and job evaluation
We established a common global grade system for consistent people and organizational management. Positions above a certain grade are subject to job evaluation by globally common methodology and process to aim for consistency in grade based on each position’s responsibility regardless of where they work or which division they belong to.
Harmonization of compensation structures and levels
We completed a common global compensation structure* for Vice President above through Top Management and proceeds gradual reduction of the disparity in compensation levels between regions.
*Compensation structure that consists of base salary, short-term incentive and Stock compensation.
Global employee database
By integrating different employee data platforms in each region, we have established a database that will serve as a foundation of talent management by visualizing all talent data worldwide, regardless of where employees and their managers are located.
Succession planning
Utilizing a system based on the global employee database, we established a global consistent and integrated approach to talent reviews and succession planning for positions above a certain grade. Our global approach includes succession planning for positions at the Functional Unit Head level and above, as well as Business Critical Roles. Through our approach we discuss and identify top talents, create succession plans to ensure we have a pipeline of talent, and discuss and agree the development of our top talent to retain, and prepare, them for their target roles.
Development for Next-Generation Leaders
As part of our efforts to develop next-generation leaders, we offer the Next Gen Leadership Program—a six-month program for globally nominated participants. Through this unique, practical program, participants work in groups to develop solutions to real business challenges the company is facing. Proposals approved during the final presentation to top management are put into action. The program brings together talent with diverse backgrounds and expertise, helping participants broaden their perspectives and build networks across functions and regions.
Internal job posting system
Employees can search and apply for internal positions around the world through our global job posting system. This system enables our employees to work globally according to their skills, abilities and career aspirations.
Global Mobility
With globally common Global Mobility Policy, we ensure the fairness and consistency for cross-border assignments, which contributes to the realization of “right person in right position” globally.
Astellas recognizes that the experiences of our global workforce are as wide-ranging as the patient populations we serve. By embracing our differences, we enable all employees to bring their various perspectives to their work. This not only heightens creativity in our organization, but also helps to attract and retain talented people and enhances our competitiveness.
Engagement
When people are treated with respect and valued for who they are and what talent they bring, they speak up and share brave ideas in unimaginable ways.
Inclusion
When we foster inclusive environments that create psychological safety, a sense of belonging, and empowerment, there is high-quality and efficient collaboration, problem-solving, decision-making, innovation and ultimately, VALUE creation. In Japan, we are promoting activities to encourage “Reflection and Dialogue” on the personal values and purpose that each employee holds in mind in order to enhance the inclusive culture. In the US, we are proud of our 7 Employee Impact Groups that foster a sense of belonging and focus on aspects of career, culture, commerce, and community.
Astellas is committed to pursuing organizational health through the support of varying work styles and the promotion of employee health, ensuring all employees enjoy physical and mental wellbeing, thus enabling them to strive for even greater productivity. Putting into practice work styles that allow every employee to demonstrate high productivity and creativity and realize their own potential will energize us as an organization and lead to corporate growth as One Astellas.
Creating safe, healthy working environments
Ensuring employee safety in the workplace is a crucial component of Astellas’ management philosophy. Along with providing a pleasant workplace for its employees, who are key Company stakeholders, Astellas believes that one of its major responsibilities is to ensure employee safety.
Since its inception in 2005, Astellas has not experienced any accidents leading to the loss of life among employees (including contract employees). In order to prevent such work-related accidents and minimize the impact when such accidents occur, Astellas is promoting initiatives to ensure the safety of its working environments. These initiatives include activities based on knowledge obtained from past experience and consideration of measures to identify and address work-related risks.
The Company will continue to share information regarding occupational safety and accident prevention throughout the Group, based on the belief that business sites will be able to utilize this information including case examples of work-related accidents to lower risk on an ongoing basis.
Occupational health & safety action plan
Astellas has drawn up an Occupational Health & Safety Action Plan for the purpose of maintaining and securing a safe work environment, preventing work-related accidents, and minimizing accidents caused by workplace mishaps. The Astellas Environment, Health & Safety (EHS) Policy and Guidelines set forth unified standards that identify Astellas’ aspirations in its EHS activities. Based on this policy and guidelines, Astellas is building an EHS management system at each business site and promoting related activities.
| Severity Rate of Work-Related Injuries |
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| Risk Assessment |
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To prevent work-related accidents, we share information on work-related accidents and near-misses that have occurred at business sites in Japan and overseas, without identifying any individuals involved. We are striving from more diverse perspectives to ensure a safe work environment.
From April 2025 to March 2026, there were no work-related fatalities, and 10 cases of injuries requiring leaves of absence. The largest number of workdays lost was 485 days (assumed) because of a contact accident (with machinery, fracture) . We will strive for risk reduction activities on a global scale through safety awareness-raising activities to maintain a work-related accident severity rate of 0.005 or less.
Global
| 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |
| Number of work-related injuries (leave of absence) | 20 | 9 | 10 |
| Frequency rate *1 | 0.66 | 0.32 | 0.34 |
| Severity rate *2 | 0.005 | 0.008 | 0.026 |
Japan
| 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |
| Number of work-related injuries (leave of absence) | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Frequency rate *1 | 0.20 | 0.11 | 0.12 |
| Severity rate *2 | 0.001 | 0.000 | 0.001 |
US
| 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |
| Number of work-related injuries (leave of absence) | 8 | 1 | 3 |
| Frequency rate *1 | 1.00 | 0.13 | 0.43 |
| Severity rate *2 | 0.007 | 0.000 | 0.010 |
Established Markets
| 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |
| Number of work-related injuries (leave of absence) | 7 | 4 | 4 |
| Frequency rate *1 | 1.01 | 0.62 | 0.53 |
| Severity rate *2 | 0.007 | 0.025 | 0.085 |
China
| 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |
| Number of work-related injuries (leave of absence) | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Frequency rate *1 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Severity rate *2 | 0.000 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
International Markets
| 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |
| Number of work-related injuries (leave of absence) | 3 | 3 | 2 |
| Frequency rate *1 | 1.01 | 0.86 | 0.47 |
| Severity rate *2 | 0.006 | 0.015 | 0.012 |
*1 Frequency rate: This rate shows the number of employee deaths or injuries resulting from work-related accidents causing leave of absence per million hours of work. The larger the number, the more frequently work-related injuries occur.
*2 Severity rate: This rate shows the number of lost workdays due to work-related injuries per thousand hours worked. The higher the number, the more serious the injury.
Safety initiatives
Astellas is building management systems related to occupational health and safety, security, accident prevention and other priorities, and is making well-organized and systematic efforts to implement occupational health and safety management activities. Astellas employees are required to give top priority to safety in all business operations, as confirmed by both management and labor. Moreover, Astellas strives to ensure the safety of all of its workers. With regard to safety management of business contractors, regular safety education is regulated under the Astellas EHS Policy and Guidelines and Astellas requires business contractors obtain permission to perform certain tasks, as necessary. Furthermore, Astellas has built a system to prevent accidents and other troubles in such ways as providing information on hazards and harmfulness related to outsourced operations to companies commissioned to conduct operations in Astellas business sites.
In addition, it will be crucial to continuously develop occupational health and safety managers with specialized skills, and provide the training needed to integrate the approved procedures into day-to-day activities. Accordingly, Astellas has been improving skills by fostering collaboration between business sites and divisions, along with enhancing various safety education initiatives.
At business sites that must be established under laws and regulations, Astellas has set up occupational health and safety committees led by the business site manager and attended by representatives of labor and management. These committees meet on a regular basis to hold discussions on maintaining occupational health and safety, and safe workplace environments. The committees conduct activities such as identifying hazards, performing risk assessments and sharing information on occupational health and safety.
We support our employees’ work styles and well-being, helping enhance productivity and creativity while enabling them to thrive at work and strengthening organizational capabilities
Astellas has been recognized by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry as a 2026 Certified KIH Outstanding Organization in the Large Enterprise Category (White 500) for the second consecutive year. This certification is awarded to the top 500 large enterprises that demonstrate outstanding practices in KIH.
Enhancing Employee Well-being and Strengthening Organizational Capabilities
Implementing work styles that enable every employee to work productively, demonstrate creativity, and thrive at work leads to organizational growth as One Astellas and accelerates the creation of VALUE. Enhancing employee well-being and fostering a psychologically safe corporate culture are essential to realizing such work styles.
A psychologically safe corporate culture is built on an environment where all employees respect one another and can communicate openly and actively.
At Astellas, we support diverse working styles and promote employee health to enhance their well-being, improve productivity and creativity, and enable them to thrive at work and strengthen organizational capabilities.
Priority Items for KIH (Japan)
Health Support
Creating Safe and Secure Workplaces
Work style reform
KIH Promotion System
Astellas' KIH promotion system is led by the President and CEO, with strategic direction provided by the Executive Officer in charge of Human Resources. The HR Department, Health Insurance Association, and Labor Union work together to plan and implement these initiatives.
Reference (1): Results of KIH Initiatives (Numerical Data)
| Results | Targets | Mid-term Goals | |||||
| Main Category | Subcategory | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 | FY2025 | FY2026 | FY2027 |
| Improved rate of lifestyle habits | Establishment of exercise habits(based on health checkup questionnaire) | 27.4% | 29.8% | 31.4% | 32% | 33% | 34% |
| Breakfast skipping rate (based on health checkup questionnaire) | 22.3% | 21.0% | 21.2% | 20% | 19% | 18% | |
| Percentage of respondents who feel well-rested after sleep (based on healthcheckup questionnaire) | 65.6% | 67.2% | 70.9% | 68% | 70% | 70% | |
| Improved employee productivity (presenteeism) | WHO-HPQ： Health and work Performance Questionnaire (lost productiveity rate) | 33.1% | 31.7% | 31.2% | 30% | 29% | 28% |
| Improved employee engagement | Work engagement score from stress check (deviation value) | 54.3 | 55.0 | 54.7 | 56.0 | 56.5 | 57.0 |
| Health support | Annual health examination attendance rate | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| Secondary health checkup rate | 92.8% | 95.0% | 92.0% | 100% | 100% | 100% | |
| Specific health guidance implementation rate ※Including voluntary continuous insured persons and dependents ,etc. | 53.5% | 67.6% | - | 80% | 80% | 80% | |
| Employees with appropriate body weight rate (BMI between 18.5 and less than 25) | 65.9% | 65% | 66.4% | 66% | 67% | 68% | |
| Stress check participation rate | 96.3% | 97.6% | 97.1% | 100% | 100% | 100% | |
| Heavily stressed individuals rate | 5.4% | 5.3% | 5.7% | 5% | 5% | 4% | |
| Work Style Reform | Annual paid leave acquisition rate (figure is companywide average) | 85.6% | 76.6% | 74.9% | 85% | 85% | 85% |
| Annual paid leave acquisition rate (ratio of individuals taking at least 70% of leave) | 71.1% | 67.0% | 64.6% | 100% | 100% | 100% | |
| Number of people exceeding 80 hours of overtime in terms of health management time ※Health management time is calculated by subtracting prescribed working hours from total working hours | 71 | 59 | 119 | - | - | - | |
The Specific health guidance implementation rate (Results) for FY25 will be announced around October 2026.
Reference (2): Astellas KIH Strategy Map
The KIH Strategy Map is a planning tool that visualizes the story of KIH and helps implement the PDCA cycle efficiently and effectively. In alignment with Corporate Strategic Plan 2026, we have reviewed the “KIH Promotion Policy.” Other indicators remain unchanged.
In FY2025, we implemented specific measures focusing on “health promotion measures,” “anti-harassment measures,” “overwork prevention measures,” and “encouraging employees to take annual paid leave” as priority items shown in the Strategy Map. For details of the measures and results, please see [FY2025 Specific Measures and Results].
Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) and Gender Equity in Japan
1. Astellas Diversity & Inclusion (D&I)
Transforming diversity into strength to shape the future of healthcare
Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) is not only a core value, but also embedded in our daily ways of working and in how we respect one another. D&I serves as the foundation that embodies our Organizational Values and Behaviors, enabling us to create and deliver VALUE to patients with diverse backgrounds and needs.
We believe that an inclusive environment—where every individual is respected and empowered to contribute regardless of gender, cultural background, age or life stage—leads to stronger collaboration, broader perspectives, and better innovation. By fostering diverse teams grounded in mutual respect and trust, and by strengthening cross-functional, autonomous, and patient-centric ways of working, we will deliver greater value to patients and society.
2. Commitment to Gender Equity
Driving gender equity in Japan to strengthen our organization and maximize patient value
In Japan, gender equity is positioned as one of our highest D&I priorities. While progress has been made, barriers to equal access to opportunities and career advancement still remain, resulting in the underrepresentation of women in decision-making roles.
Gender equity is not simply about achieving numerical targets. It is about creating an inclusive workplace where everyone has equitable access to opportunities and can grow together. Our aim is to build an environment where diverse talent is well balanced and where individuals can fully contribute as their authentic selves.
The Japanese government has set a target of “30% by 2030.” By establishing our own targets and transparently disclosing our action plans, Astellas aims to strengthen accountability and build trust with external stakeholders.
3. Our Commitment
Achieving gender equity in Astellas (Japan): 35% women in management by 2030
Astellas in Japan has established a target to achieve a 35% representation of women in management positions by 2030, as a key strategic milestone toward the advancement of gender equity.
This target has been determined through a rigorous assessment of the current status, structural challenges, and level of gender parity within Astellas Japan. Furthermore, it reflects our commitment, as a leading company in the market, to set an ambitious benchmark that surpasses the Japanese government’s target of 30%, thereby reinforcing our responsibility to drive meaningful progress in diversity, equity, and inclusion.
4. Key Approaches
Advancing diverse leadership through a Growth Mindset and stronger dialogue
To achieve these goals, we will focus on the following actions:
Green Supply Support Office
Astellas believes that one of its social responsibilities is to provide people with disabilities with work opportunities suitable to their skills and abilities, so that they can pursue independent lifestyles and actively participate in society. We have been striving to create appropriate work environments and programs in order to achieve this goal.
As a specific initiative, the Green Supply Support Office was established at the Tsukuba Research Center for the first time in April 2011, and established at the Yaizu Formulation Research Center in October 2014, and established at the head office as the third base in April 2016.
Employees with disabilities, called “green staff”, who work here, collect and process confidential documents, maintain greenery, grow flowers, and grow employee uniforms and shoes according to their disability characteristics and workplace characteristics. We conduct daily activities such as cleaning, cleaning work, and promoting the use of reusable products. While developing and providing duties according to these characteristics, we have created an environment where the “green staff” can play an active role, and are making efforts toward the independence of each individual.
In addition, from fiscal 2013,we participated in general incorporated association Accessibility Consortium of Enterprises（ACE）, and aims to "Establish a new employment model of people with disabilities with society which contribute to the growth of the company."
People with disabilities employed
| FY 2017 | FY 2018 | FY 2019 | FY 2020 | FY 2021 | FY 2022 | FY 2023 | FY 2024 | FY 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| People with disabilities employed as a percentage of workforce | 2.31% | 2.30% | 2.11% | 2.37% | 2.49% | 2.78% | 2.73% | 2.91% | 2.95% |
Relationship with the Labor Union
The Astellas Labor Union comprises employees from Astellas Pharma Inc. As of March 31, 2026, the number of union members stood at 2,451. The Astellas Labor Union accedes to Japanese Federation of Pharmaceutical and Cosmetic Industry Workers' Unions, one of the domestic federation of industrial unions. The Management Council, the Workplace Council and the Health and Safety Committee serve as labor-management negotiation bodies that provide advice, exchange opinions based on their unique perspectives and share a mutual understanding and recognition of labor and management themes.
Supporting Volunteer Activities
In Japan, we have introduced systems for supporting employees who engage in volunteer work.
Our Volunteer Leave Program allows for up to five days of leave to be taken each year, to support participation in activities in social welfare, environmental protection, disaster relief, and international cooperation, and for the acquisition of knowledge and technical skills necessary for volunteer activities.
The Volunteer Leave of Absence System also supports an employee' volunteer activities over the long term, and allows leaves of absence of up to three years.
The Bone-Marrow Registration Leave Program reflects our respect of employees' wishes to donate their bone marrow. The system lets employees take special leave to register and donate.
The Changing Tomorrow Day*1 , which was launched in fiscal 2010, is our effort to encourage all employees to participate in volunteer activities. It has led to a higher awareness of volunteering among our employees.
*1 For details, please visit the following website:
Sickness and Injury Leave
An unexpected illness or injury can be a life-changing event. While employees often recover from using paid annual leave over a brief period, a system is needed to support employees during a longer period recuperation from an illness or injury.
In fiscal 2025, 34 employees at Astellas Pharma Inc. participated in the Short-Term Disability Leave. The Short-Term Disability Leave of up to 30 business days shall be granted when an employee requires additional or continued hospitalization and/or recuperation at home after receiving medical treatment for one month or more. This leave shall commence immediately after one month.
If more time is needed than allowed under the Short-Term Disability Leave, Astellas offers support systems including medical treatment benefits provided by Kyosaikai (a mutual aid association for regular employees), sickness and injury benefits from Health Insurance Association and income indemnity insurance for employees with long-term disabilities-a group insurance benefit.
In addition, to support the balancing of medical treatment and work, we introduced special medical leave in installments and a shortened work hours system in 2018, creating an environment in which employees can flexibly balance medical treatment and work without any concerns.
Compensation for wage levels
Astellas’ rewards practices ensure recognition of our employees’ contribution to our mission and enterprise value as a company – which includes our commitment to ensuring all employees earn a living wage above minimum wage level in the markets we operate.
Astellas annually surveys wedge levels and ensures pay ranges and employee rewards are set above any minimum wage level in the markets we operate. We will continue our practices of providing competitive pay in the markets we operate, aiming to exceed a living market competitive wage to all.
Equal pay for work of equal value
Astellas’ rewards practices ensure recognition of our employees’ contribution to our mission and enterprise value as a company – which includes equal pay for equal value.
Astellas’ global practices dictate that employee compensation decisions provide equal opportunity for pay regardless of gender or other protected category (e.g., race, sexual orientation, disability, etc.).
We will continue our practices of providing equal pay for equal work and experience, irrespective of gender, race, or other minority group consistent with our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion commitments as a global organization.
Astellas declared our support for the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) in 2011. We also joined the "Forward Faster"* initiative led by the UNGC in 2023 as an early mover.
*Forward Faster is a UNGC-led initiative, which has set a total of 9 goals in 5 categories (Gender Equality, Climate Action, Living Wage, Water Resilience, Finance & Investment) to accelerate the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
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