Press Release
2022.03.24
-Grooves Sustainability Page has also been released-
Grooves Inc. (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo, Representative Director: Yukihiro Ikemi, hereinafter” Grooves “) has rebranded its corporate logo and corporate site according to its corporate vision of “Career Discovery” In addition to this rebranding, we have released a page about Grooves sustainability, “To create a future where people can be excited about working and career growth even at the age of 100 years old”.
<New corporate logo>
<New brand DNA>
<New corporate site>
https://www.grooves.com/
Grooves has a vision of “Career Discovery”. Since its establishment in 2004, the goal of Grooves is to revitalize the Japanese economy and to solve problems such as the decline in the Japanese population, the decline of the local economy due to the concentration in Tokyo, the shortage of IT engineers, and slow digital transformation.
Currently, we are operating two services, “Crowd Agent” and “Forkwell”. The number of jobs postings on Crowd Agent is approximately 8,000 and the cumulative number of clients exceeds 11,000 companies. The number of registered IT engineers is 68,000 in Forkwell. It is growing rapidly and the service is used by multiple customers.
The changes in working styles due to COVID-19 (such as lifting the ban on side jobs and promoting “specified employment”*) and anxiety about the future will lead to business expansions. In addition to that, with the advent of the 100-Year Life era, children are more likely to work for a longer period, and there is a need for more career opportunities to choose according to their stage in life.
As a result, we have rebranded Grooves to highlight these responsibilities that should help revitalize the Japanese economy.
We would like to further promote the awareness of Grooves’ vision of “Career Discovery”.
*Note: In Japan, the common employment concept is “general employment”, where companies will employ people not based on their specialization or skills, but their commitment towards the company. It is not common to lay off an employee in Japan, instead, they will rotate them to a different specialization ie. from General Administration to HR, despite not having any work experience.
Japanese companies have the mindset that they are responsible to care for their employees and offer them satisfaction at work. But due to Covid-19, Japanese companies have started to practice “specified employment”, where companies will employ based on evaluating their current skill and whether it matches the description of what they’re looking for in the job. Companies are free to lay them off if they cannot take up the job and employees have the ability to change careers.
From Yukihiro Ikemi, CEO of Grooves Inc.
In 2004, I founded Grooves with the idea of “revitalizing the Japanese economy with the human resource business”. We have taken on the challenge of innovating the human resource industry, by focusing on our core services, “Crowd Agent” and “Forkwell”.
We believe that our values will become more diverse in the future as we move into the paradigm shift of longevity, climate change, population change, the fourth industrial revolution, and the plague. In addition, it is said that the average life expectancy of a child today is 100 years old. The time will come when we will be working longer than ever before.
We have the three intangible assets (from “The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity” by Lynda Gratton) to create a future (Utopia) where people and jobs match easily, and where people can be excited to work and gain career growth even at the age of 100.
The first asset is “Productive assets” which are intangible items that support productivity at work and boost income and career prospects. The second asset is “Vitality assets”, which refers to physical, psychological well-being, and building good relationships with friends and family. The third asset is “Transformational assets”, which is to have a dynamic and diverse network of people and allow yourself to have new experiences.
In the human resource business, we imagine it is necessary to understand that we need a sustainable society and we can improve these three assets by creating matches between people and jobs that suit their lifestyle instead of just basing it on skills.
Based on the vision of “Career Discovery”, we will contribute to the revitalization of the Japanese economy more than ever. This is the responsibility we shall fulfill and the future we want to envision.
Grooves Inc. CEO
Yukihiro Ikemi
March 2022
Established: March 2004
Representative: Yukihiro Ikemi, CEO
Location: 5-4-27 Minami Aoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo Barbizon104 7F
Business content:
・“Crowd Agent”, Cloud service with the highest overall satisfaction
・“Forkwell”, a career support service with the highest degree of IT engineer satisfaction
Regional revitalization Network: 18 prefectures and 27 organizations nationwide