While we participated in this program for several times , we accepted two interns from Vietnam in 2020. Since their internship ended, we have been using communication tools to regularly keep in touch. While we mostly share the latest update each other, we have also asked them to work as interpreters and invited them to participate in Japanese language study sessions and online seminars on management topics and the pandemic-affected economy of the future that might be beneficial for them, whenever such events are held. While our interns could not speak Japanese well during their internship, we had communicated with them in English, they apparently continued to diligently study Japanese after their internship and are now able to reply the message in Japanese. Indeed, we were surprised to see how much their Japanese has improved.

What we realized by participating in this program in 2019 and 2020 is that foreign personnels are highly capable of thinking and possess originality, such that they can more freely act and produce results when we can provide them with big goals towards which they can work rather than when we issue them with detailed instructions. In 2020, we asked them to work on a market survey with a view to exporting beer to Vietnam. While it is true that they were exceptional individuals, it should be noted that they completed the survey more quickly than expected and even went as far as finding breweries who were interested in producing our beer locally.
Opportunities to interact with foreign people, whether through visits by foreigners to Japan or meetings held through online channels, have increased, which means that friction between employees and foreigners has disappeared. Telecommuting and online meetings have also increased thanks to the fact that the activities of this program were carried out online. We believe that these sorts of new changes in the framework within which our company operates have had a very good impact.

There are two new projects that we would like to take on in the future. The first is the adoption of IT for the tourism industry. We have heard that young engineers are being trained in Da Nang, which is where one of the interns we accepted in 2020 is from. Even among overseas human resources, Vietnamese people seem to get along especially well with Japanese people. We would like to take on the challenge of developing a new business whereby we can collaborate with young overseas individuals to have systems developed for the tourism industry, which is lagging behind other sectors in terms of IT adoption.
The second is the development of a framework for workplace trainer programs. A workplace culture that allows foreign employees in the company to pass along their know-how, such as with respect to not just the Japanese language but also work etiquette and manufacturing techniques, to younger colleagues would be ideal. There are many technical interns trainees and other foreigners in Nikko City. Our goal is to have such people become local trainers, develop an environment in which foreign workers working locally can learn Japanese, and increase the number of foreign workers working in Tochigi Prefecture for the purpose of revitalizing the local community.