To support employees’ independent learning and autonomous career development, the system provides financial incentives ranging from 30,000 yen to 10 million yen to employees who have passed an examination for specified qualifications, depending on the difficulty of acquiring the qualifications. The system is used for 139 different qualifications ranging widely from domestic and international MBAs to language, information processing, design, business management, legal affairs and accounting qualifications.

Under this system, employees apply for and strive to be matched to positions of interest. The system helps to prevent personnel turnover as it may make it possible to transfer an employee to a department they wish to work in or try a totally different type of business.

This is a system in which employees can propose challenging, medium- to long-term or cross-departmental projects, form teams to realize the proposals and recruit project members in-house. Employees who participate in a project via the in-house recruiting may, in principle, spend 10 to 20% of their working hours on the project. That enables them to take on the new project while continuing with their main work. “Project Open Call” has spawned many different projects. Some of the projects enable employees to try jobs they have never experienced. In one of these projects, an employee who had never worked an editing job took over the entire process from planning to final proofreading. Some other projects involve employees thinking about good workplaces and making them a reality. A typical example of this is “HR Project Focusing on Childcare Support,” a project for revising childcare-related regulations and proposing and implementing new welfare programs. Projects driven by the employees’ love for something or their enthusiasm about it include the “Asia BL Project,” an in-house cross-departmental project focused on the boys’ love (BL) genre of fiction. Project Open Call is also an opportunity to exchange personnel between the KADOKAWA Group companies, project-based practical learning and placing the right people in the right positions on a trial basis.

This system expands work-style options and supports voluntary career development and is available to all employees. Approximately 5% of KADOKAWA employees utilize this program (as of October 2026).

We offer opportunities to study programming and web design to support employee learning.

KADOKAWA recruits employees mid-career via employment agencies or media. In addition, we have a system that enables employees familiar with our worksites to refer personnel. The system is aimed at discovering personnel whose skills and experience are better matched to roles here.

KADOKAWA has a student work system for students of graduate schools, universities and specialized high schools in Japan and overseas. The students engage in work for a period of three months or longer. This is not a trial-based job experience program. They are expected to be part of the workforce supporting our content business.

●New Graduate Induction Training

The training is provided to all new graduates in April each year. It aims at ensuring that the new graduates understand workstyles, KADOKAWA’s in-house systems, various programs, an overview of the KADOKAWA Group, the company’s business lines, workplace atmospheres and things they should know as a businessperson. Besides taking classroom lectures, the new graduates visit a printing company and other facilities during the training period.

●New Graduate Follow-up Training

Held every February and March, the training is provided to all employees who entered the company as new graduates in April of the year before. The training focuses on the post-assignment follow-up of such employees. For example, it checks whether they have the perspective expected of a businessperson.

●Training for Newly Appointed Managers

Biannually held in the spring and fall, the training is provided to employees who are newly appointed to a managerial-level position. They learn what a managerial-level employee needs to know, such as KADOKAWA’s systems and performance appraisal methods.

●Training for newly appointed specialist employees

Biannually held in the spring and fall, the training is provided to employees who are newly appointed to a specialist’s position. Inviting lecturers from outside the Group, the training program involves workshops and group discussion in small groups to acquire the knowledge and skills required of a specialist employee.

●Mentor Training
*Former name: On The Job Leader Training

Held in July to August every year, the training is provided to employees who are assigned to teaching new graduates. It communicates the aim of developing new employees and the roles of senior employees and shares knowledge and information about new employee training.

●Next-generation Leader Training

Held once or twice in spring and/or fall, the training is provided to the internally selected employees. They learn subjects such as business strategy, leadership, finance, business planning and presentation.

●Editing and production course

This course is held continuously for the purpose of improving the skills of editors. It is held online on a wide range of topics necessary in the editing and production of publications such as acquisition of knowledge necessary for planning and production of publications, sales promotion and SNS promotion methods, as well as copyrights and the Subcontract Act and the Act on Ensuring Proper Transactions Involving Specified Entrusted Business Operators.

●System development courses for business divisions

These workshops teach basic tips for avoiding the failure of a project to (non-expert) employees who have recently become involved in new business development or system development within their business divisions.

●Data Utilization Lab

Our Data Utilization Lab is a project for achieving synergy between IP creation and technology in our publication business. It involves research and development and the internal communication of information about new data utilization measures from our editors’ perspectives. In addition to supporting the editorial office in the use of data, we also provide readily available tools for editing jobs.

●WinSights Memo

WinSights Memo is an in-house report on information that is useful in the planning, development and marketing of books and services, such as market research and analyses of hit content. We provide this as notes on valuable data that will lead to the identification of opportunities to succeed. Workshops are also organized to explain important points.

●Data literacy training

Highly specialized employees provide a wide range of training programs in accordance with trainees’ aspirations and skill level, from Tableau-based visualization analysis training to programs on the risks, countermeasures, and specific applications of generative AI to hands-on training on advanced analysis using Python.

●Project Open Call

●Global Business Acceleration Program (GAP)

In the field of international business, the “Global Business Acceleration Program” was launched in October 2022 to gather overseas business ideas from across the Group and identify individuals interested in international business. Through seminars and workshops, the program supports the commercialization of projects with global potential.
Since the launch of the program, 70 project proposals in cumulative total have been received. Seven of these projects have been commercialized or are being considered for commercialization as of March 2026.
We have begun publishing “KADOKAWA Masterpiece Comics” and holding the “KADOKAWA WORLD MANGA CONTEST (*Former name:Wordless World Manga Contest).” The former is a new series adapting masterpiece comics from Japan and beyond as comics, and the latter is a new manga contest open to aspiring cartoonists from around the world.

●Ideathon/Hackathon

DWANGO Co., Ltd. organizes the Ideathon/Hackathon for the KADOKAWA Group’s employees. Employees who choose to gather to discuss a specific theme, share ideas and refine them to implement them as a project. Initially, DWANGO alone held the event, before it expanded to the entire KADOKAWA Group in July 2022. To date, the Ideathon/Hackathon has been held 11 times, resulting in the collection of a total of 203 ideas as of March 31, 2026.
The themes of the Ideathon/Hackathon widely range from things the employees wish to have to collaborations, meetups, synergies, new routines, health, and more.
The Ideathon/Hackathon helps employees come up with new plans because it enables participants to experience benefits such as the stimulation of communication to facilitate work, the acquisition of innovative new insights through interactions between the KADOKAWA Group companies and opportunities to experience the fun of making things from nothing.