Ayako FujitaChief Human Resources Officer · Essays & perspective
Group employees
4,620
Asakage Construction, March 2026; about 14,000 partner-firm workers on its sites on a typical day
Average monthly overtime of site engineers
34 hours
FY2025, from gate and log-on records; 71 hours in FY2018
Annual consolidated personnel expense
¥46.2bn
FY2025; not the HR budget
Craftsmen employed directly
212
Asakage Craft Works, March 2026; average age 31

A contractor decides how long its people work, how they are paid and who leads a site in its tenders and pay tables, so that is where its head of people has to sit.

I am managing executive officer and chief human resources officer of Asakage Construction, a general contractor founded in Nagoya in 1919 and listed on the Prime Market of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. We build factories, logistics warehouses, hospitals and schools across central Japan and carry out civil works for prefectures and railway companies, with consolidated revenue of ¥386 billion in the year to March 2026. I am responsible for human resources, labour relations, training and the workforce standards we agree with our partner firms, for 4,620 group employees and ¥46.2 billion of annual personnel expense. I report to our president, Hideo Kuwahara, and act as secretary to the board's nomination and remuneration advisory committee.

I did not arrive by the usual route. I joined Asakage in 1994 on the clerical track that most women graduates were then offered, and spent four years keeping daily reports and attendance books in site offices in Yokkaichi and Nagoya. When it was clear that the track led nowhere near site management or professional HR, I left, qualified as a certified social insurance and labour consultant and spent six years advising specialist subcontractors on wage ledgers, social insurance and accident claims. I then built the labour function of a family-owned civil contractor in Gifu before Asakage asked me back in 2012.

Three questions have occupied me since. How does a contractor bring its site engineers within the overtime limits that reached construction in April 2024 without pushing the hours onto its document staff or its subcontractors? How should we pay and promote engineers once an age-based ladder stops keeping the people we most need? And who will hold the formwork saw and the rebar tier in ten years, when the average craftsman on our sites is over fifty? My answers have cost us tenders, payroll and some goodwill with our own partner firms.

Hours priced into the tender

Since April 2020 every bid above ¥1 billion has carried a schedule page that I sign, built on closing sites eight days in every four weeks. Average monthly overtime for site engineers fell from 71 hours in FY2018 to 34 in FY2025; we declined or lost nine tenders worth about ¥62 billion along the way.

Site managers in their thirties

Replacing our age-and-tenure pay table with role grades in April 2023 opened site leadership to evidence of competence. Forty-one engineers under forty have led sites since, against six in the previous five years, at an added personnel cost of ¥2.6 billion a year.

Craftsmen on a monthly salary

Asakage Craft Works, set up in October 2021, employs 212 formwork carpenters, rebar workers and scaffolders on monthly pay, 68 of them recruited from Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines. Their average age is 31, and 89% of the first two intakes remained after two years.

Women who stay in site engineering

Women site engineers rose from 44 in 2017 to 151 in 2026, and women leading sites from three to seventeen, after we let any engineer declare a home region for up to six years without a pay penalty. Men have made 62% of those declarations.

Current focus

I am working with our civil engineering division on engineers who move between disaster-recovery work, which is treated differently under the overtime limits, and ordinary contracts, because that boundary is where hours become hard to see. I am also preparing our partner firms for the scheme that will replace the technical intern programme, so that the foreign workers on our sites have a route to stay and lead crews rather than leave at the end of a term.

Conversations I welcome

I am not seeking another executive role. I would consider one outside directorship at a listed company outside construction and real estate, ideally on a nomination or remuneration committee, with our president's consent and a conflict review by our legal department. I also take a few advisory conversations with HR teams that run field workforces, and speaking invitations on working hours, foreign skilled workers and pay reform.

Beyond the page

The record behind the perspective.

In the boardroom

  • Owari Craft Training FoundationDirector; chair of the curriculum committee · June 2019–present

Formation

  • Bachelor of Arts in sociologyIkaruga University · 1994
  • Master of Business Administration (evening programme)Chikusa Graduate School of Management · 2011
When the committee reviewed officers' pay in 2023, Ayako's paper recommended deferring an increase that included her own, and she left the room for that item. We followed her reasoning on the partner rates. Few secretaries to a committee make its work harder in such a useful way.
Michiko HasebeOutside director and chair, nomination and remuneration advisory committee, Asakage Construction
The full record ↗

Contact

I am not seeking another executive role. I would consider one outside directorship at a listed company outside construction and real estate, ideally on a nomination or remuneration committee, with our president's consent and a conflict review by our legal department. I also take a few advisory conversations with HR teams that run field workforces, and speaking invitations on working hours, foreign skilled workers and pay reform.

  • Board appointments
  • Advisory roles
  • Speaking invitations
Write to Ayako Contact page