––Fueling Growth to Maximize Performance––

The LY Corporation Group (the “Group”) considers it a top priority to promote and support the growth of its employees in order for them to maximize their performance and contribute to the growth of the entire organization. The Group will enhance opportunities for employees to maximize their individual capabilities and to take on more autonomous and proactive activities and growth, which will lead to the sustainable growth of both employees and products.

Overview of LY Corporation's Human Capital Strategy (Check here for more information)

Human Capital Development

The growth of each and every employee of LY Corporation (the "Company"), who plays a key role in creating products, is the foundation for realizing the Company's mission, "Create an amazing life platform that brings WOW! to our users."
The Company enhances opportunities for each employee to maximize his or her abilities, and to play an active role and grow more autonomously and proactively. These opportunities will lead to the sustainable growth of both employees and products.

Providing Growth Opportunities

LY Corporation believes that the experience of creating WOW! products is the source of the employees' growth. The Company aims for the sustainable growth of both employees and products by creating diverse opportunities that contribute to employee growth, while employees enjoy changes and challenges and continue to explore opportunities for their own growth through the creation of products. LY Corporation works to create opportunities and an environment for this purpose.

Internal /Inter-Group Open Recruitment

As one of the opportunities for further growth and career development for each employee, LY Corporation has a year-round internal and inter-group open recruitment system "LY Corporation Job Challenge," that allows employees to voluntarily apply for positions. The available positions in this program are those for which the Company is seeking candidates for strategic business reasons in order to achieve both product and employee growth. Applicants are selected based on their past work performance and the degree to which they have demonstrated performance, and if successful, are transferred within the Company or to a Group company.

SoftBank Innoventure

LY Corporation also participates in the in-house entrepreneurship program, "SoftBank Innoventure," in which employees of the SoftBank Group companies can apply. At each call for applications, many employees take on the challenge of commercializing their own business ideas.

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Providing Opportunities for Challenge through Internal Award Programs

LY Corporation holds the “Data Award” program with the aim of discovering data utilization initiatives from across the company to promote new utilization, and "LY Corporation ChatAI CHALLENGE" to promote internal development of generative AI use cases, among others.
As both award programs are not limited to any specific fields, employees can submit their own initiatives and ideas regardless of their area of work, and the awards are used as an opportunity for employees to take on challenges in an autonomous manner.

Providing Feedback Opportunities

LY Corporation believes that performance is not just about results in terms of outcomes, but that performance also includes day-to-day work behavior and conduct. The Company provides multidimensional feedback on the behavioral aspects, which leads to the demonstration of employee performance and supports the growth of individuals, products, and the organization.

Multifaceted Feedback

In order to provide opportunities for employees to obtain advice from their peers on how to achieve further growth, the Company has established a multifaceted feedback system that clarifies the expected behavior on several items and provides multidimensional feedback from supervisors, peers, and direct reports. Actions that will lead to performance are considered when giving feedback.
The multifaceted feedback, conducted every six months, consists of a core review for each employee and a leadership review for managers.

1 on 1 Meetings

1 on 1 meeting is held once a week (around 30 minutes) between the employee and his/her supervisor. The meeting is held for supervisors to help solve the challenges that the employees are facing and to support the fulfilment of the employees' goals. It facilitates the employees to self-reflect and efficiently rotates the cycle of experiential learning.
In a remote work environment, it is essential to understand and confirm the physical condition of each employee, and 1on1 meetings also play an important role in this regard.

Supporting Managers

At LY Corporation, the role of the managers leading the frontline organizations is to produce results through organizational excellence. To fulfill this role, the managers are provided with the information and training they need to lead their organizations and develop their members.

COMPASS

COMPASS is a series of programs that provide learning opportunities for managers and a forum for mutual dialogue. To support the improvement of management skills necessary to enhance organizational performance, programs such as "Coaching Workshop for 1 on 1 Meetings," "Continuous Reflection," and "Delegation of Authority: Workshop to Learn Tips on How to Request and Delegate Work" are offered. Managers can select and participate in these programs based on the organization's challenges and their individual areas of weakness.

Training for Newly Appointed Managers

The Company offers a start-up program for newly appointed managers and senior managers. The curriculum is designed to develop and improve leadership skills for organizational success through dialogue and introspection and includes workshops to discuss with managers from other organizations at the same level to understand the expected behaviors and mindsets required in the role and to provide an opportunity for horizontal networking.

Management Portal

The Company provides a one-stop website on the intranet that provides all the information necessary for managers to lead frontline organizations. In addition to information necessary for management tasks such as business management, labor management, and risk management, the website also provides and updates management tips and training information, aiming to reduce the workload of managers and improve operational efficiency.

Training

LY Corporation offers a wide range of training opportunities that support work experiences.

<Reskilling>

An Environment for Employees to Learn Anytime, Anywhere

In order to support autonomous and proactive challenges, LY Corporation does not have a fixed curriculum, but always provides an environment where employees can choose a program according to their own sense of challenges and growth goals, and learn at their own pace anytime, anywhere.
In addition to “GLOBIS Unlimited,” a set of video learning contents that enable employees to acquire systematic business knowledge that can be immediately applied to their work, the data education portal “DATA ViLLAGE” offers a variety of contents to learn about the essentials of data utilization, analysis methods, AI and machine learning fundamentals, as well as practical examples of such knowledge.
A number of voluntary study groups and lightning talk events organized by employee volunteers and divisions are also planned and held within LY Corporation, providing information and content for learning, along with the opportunity to gain colleagues to learn with.

LY Corporation Academia

LY Corporation Academia is a corporate university open to the employees of LY Corporation and its group companies. In addition to developing leaders, the program is established and operated as a learning community where the employees of the LY Corporation Group can learn and teach each other. LY Corporation Academia offers a variety of programs, including a select class for top leaders, a women's leadership class, AI Academia, and Sustainability Academia.
In addition, LY Corporation Academia University, in which employees can voluntarily participate, offers a wide range of training programs, with approximately 9,000 employees taking courses in the second half of fiscal 2023 (excluding video content).

<Supporting Engineers' Skill Development>

For engineers, designers, and others, the Company offers programs to improve their professional skills, as well as training programs to learn technologies (e.g., PaaS, CI/CD) designed with company-wide strategies in mind and proprietary technologies that form the foundation for providing services. Additionally, the Company implements various initiatives to improve professional skills, such as sharing the latest trends in the internet industry, attendance reports on domestic and international technology conferences and academic meetings, and cutting-edge technology trends (e.g., artificial intelligence, big data).

<Onboarding Support>

Onboarding Programs for New Employees

LY Corporation offers an onboarding program for new graduates and mid-career hires. The program includes an orientation immediately after the new employee joins the Company, an e-learning program to efficiently acquire the knowledge necessary to perform their work within the Company, a collection of internal information, and a follow-up questionnaire after a certain period of employment to help them achieve performance as quickly as possible. In addition, the Company believes that knowledge, mindset, and training on the part of the divisions receiving new hires are also important in onboarding, so it has focused on providing training for staff in charge of on-the-job training (OJT staff) to divisions receiving new graduates and distributing an onboarding guide for mentors to divisions receiving mid-career hires.

Official Sempai

In addition to their supervisors and OJT staff members, “official sempai” are designated as “older brothers” and “older sisters” in a related department with whom new graduates can feel free to consult. While OJT staff members provide support in acquiring knowledge and skills and checking work progress in the course of actual work, official sempai provide consultation and advice through regular communication, and are responsible for building relationships within the Company and discussing problems that are difficult to discuss with senior staff members in the department.

Second-Year Training for New Graduates

The second-year training for new graduates is offered to all employees who are in their second year of employment and provides an opportunity for them to look back on their first two years of work, deepen their self-understanding from multiple angles, and gain inspiration from the work of their peers to envision their third year and their future growth.

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Evaluation/Promotion & Salary Review

Goals & Evaluation System

The Company believes that each and every employee is responsible for realizing the Company's mission statement and supporting the creation and growth of products, and that the personnel system functions to promote the growth and maximize the abilities of the employees. The goals and evaluation system of LY Corporation aims to achieve the following:

• Through goal setting, support daily processes by facilitating communication between supervisors and direct reports
• Encourage goal attainment by supporting individual growth through feedback
• Reward individual efforts through evaluations and link the efforts to the next stage of growth

At the beginning of each term, employees set their own goals that correspond to the goals of the organization to which they belong and the products they are in charge of. A performance review is conducted on the degree of achievement and individual contribution in light of the expected role of the individual, and the results are reflected in the individual's bonus and salary increase. This system enables the company to evaluate the results brought by employees regardless of their age, gender, nationality, or career history, and to link the results to their compensation. The goal setting and evaluation are conducted twice a year.

In the performance review, the performance of the individual is evaluated based on the evaluation of each organization to which the employee belongs and the products they are in charge of, while also referring to and taking into consideration the results of “multifaceted feedback,” provided during the term from supervisors, colleagues, and direct reports on the individual's actions that led to the demonstration of performance. The design of this review is based on the idea that performance is not only about results, but also about work behavior and actions that lead to results.

The Company believes that goals and evaluation systems are growth drivers for both the organization and products, as well as for employees, and that the systems need to be constantly improved in response to the changes in organizations and businesses. The Company will continue to drive further growth by constantly upgrading the systems.

Strengthening Human Resources Portfolio

Recruitment

Through new graduate and mid-career recruiting activities, LY Corporation hires people who share the Company’s mission and values regardless of age, experience, nationality, or race, and who are passionate about delivering outstanding services.

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Promoting the Success of Internal Talent

LY Corporation Job Challenge, a system of internal and inter-Group open recruitment, is implemented throughout the year, with the aim of providing opportunities for talented people to play an active role within the Company and the Group, and to contribute to the growth of products and businesses.