My contribution to a board
A board that appoints me would gain someone who has looked at working hours, pay and recruitment from three positions: as a clerk recording them in a site office, as a consultant keeping the ledgers of small firms, and as the executive who now signs the schedule assumptions in a listed contractor's tenders. Many Japanese boards are now asked to explain their human capital in the annual securities report and to treat labour shortages as a strategic risk, yet they still see the workforce mainly through headcount and engagement scores. I can help a board ask where its people's hours are actually decided, which contracts or service levels fix them, and whether the company's own figures include the subcontracted and outsourced workers who do much of its work.
I would also bring practical experience of reforming a seniority-based pay structure by negotiating with an enterprise union rather than working around it, and of recruiting and keeping foreign skilled workers on a long-term basis, including the parts that went wrong and what they cost to put right.
I would not offer myself as a financial expert or as a specialist in construction engineering. My natural place is a nomination and remuneration committee, where I would expect to serve a full cycle as a member, including one round of officer pay decisions and one succession review, before being considered as chair. On a sustainability or human capital committee I could help connect the published disclosures to the operating decisions that produce them.
My first year on a board
Before I accepted, I would ask the chair two questions: what the board believes it currently lacks, and which decision in the coming year it expects to find hardest. My first year would be shaped by the answers more than by any plan of my own.
For the first three months I would read and listen rather than propose. That means three years of board and committee minutes, the human capital section of the securities report together with the data behind it, the officer remuneration policy, and any labour inspection findings or serious accidents the company has had. I would ask to visit two operating sites without a head-office guide, perhaps a warehouse floor or a care home on a weekend shift, and to compare one frontline employee's monthly working-hours record with the summary the board receives.
Across the year I would take part in one complete cycle of the committee I joined, including officer pay decisions and the succession review, and keep my questions to what the papers did not answer. If I saw a working-hours or safety risk that could not wait, I would raise it with the chair privately first and then in the meeting.
At the end of the year I would ask the chair and the company secretary whether my contribution had justified the board's time, and whether my construction background had narrowed my view of their business. Hearing it in the first year would be more useful than hearing it in the third.
Conflicts and their management
Asakage remains my first obligation, so any outside appointment would need our president's written consent and a review by our legal department, and that review would begin with customers and suppliers. Asakage builds factories, warehouses and hospitals for private clients and civil works for public bodies and railway companies. I would decline a seat at a current or likely client, a competing contractor or developer, a building-materials supplier or any of our partner firms. I would also ask the nominating company to search its own records for contracts with Asakage over the previous three years, because its procurement team may know of work I do not.
Some conflicts would appear only later. If the company planned a building on which Asakage might bid, I would tell the chair as soon as I learnt of it, stay out of every discussion of the project and ask for the minutes to record that I had done so. Information would not travel in either direction: not Asakage's wage settlements or pay data, however useful a comparison might seem, and not the other company's plans. My directorship at the training foundation would be disclosed as well, since some of its apprentices go on to work for contractors. If the number of discussions I had to leave grew large enough to reduce what I could offer, I would resign rather than remain a director in name.
My independence statement
I am an executive officer of Asakage Construction and hold a small number of its shares through the employee shareholding association. Whether I can be treated as independent is for the nominating company to decide against its own criteria and the exchange's standards for independent officers. Its review should include any construction contract between the two companies in recent years and my directorship at a training foundation whose apprentices join contractors. I would set these interests out in writing before a nomination went forward, and I would accept a finding that I could serve as an outside director without being designated independent.
Judgement in practice
01Giving the audit and supervisory committee the less flattering hours figure
In 2021 I proposed that our quarterly working-hours report to the audit and supervisory committee cover the document support centre, home log-ons and partner crews as well as site offices. That quarter the site-office average was 41 hours of overtime a month; the combined figure was 49. Our head of construction argued that the committee would read the higher number as failure and lose confidence in the programme. I argued that a committee could only oversee compliance if it saw where hours had moved. The committee chair asked for both figures side by side, and has received them every quarter since; the combined figure was 36 in the final quarter of FY2025. As a director I would ask management which records any compliance figure leaves out, and I would want management to feel safe answering.
02Recommending that officers' pay rise wait for the partner rates
In 2023 the nomination and remuneration advisory committee considered raising executive officers' base pay by 5%, in line with listed peers. As secretary I prepared the paper and recommended deferring the increase for six months, because our higher subcontract labour rates had been agreed but not yet paid in full, and partner crews had already lost Saturday income. The increase would have included my own pay, so I said so at the start and left the room for the decision. The president initially preferred to proceed. The committee deferred the rise until the partner rates were fully in place. The lesson I took is that a pay decision is read by people outside the room, and a committee should ask who those readers are before it asks whether the number is defensible.
03Asking a foundation board to count apprentices still in the trade
When the Owari Craft Training Foundation reviewed its courses in 2022, its reports counted completions, which stood at 92%. As chair of the curriculum committee I asked how many apprentices were still working in their trade two years later. The answer, assembled over three months from employers and former trainees, was 54%, and lowest for courses with no employer placement. I recommended moving budget towards courses with partner-firm placements and closing a popular weekend course with a poor record. Two directors objected that closing it would disappoint the employers who funded it. The board agreed after a year's notice to those employers. I would bring the same question to any board: what does this measure count, and what would we find if we followed the people a little further?
Committee contribution
Chair and member readiness| Capacity | Committees |
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| Ready to chair | Nomination and remuneration committee, statutory or voluntary, after one full annual cycle as a member · Curriculum or programme committee of a not-for-profit training body |
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| Ready to join | Nomination and remuneration committee · Sustainability or human capital committee · Audit and supervisory committee of a company with a large field workforce, as a non-financial member |
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Capacity and preferences
- Time available
- 25 days per year
- Current directorships
- 1
- Sectors
- Logistics and warehousing with large driver and warehouse workforces · Nursing care and healthcare services · Food manufacturing and building maintenance with shift-based field workforces
- Company type
- Company listed on the Prime or Standard Market with a nomination and remuneration committee, statutory or voluntary, and at least a third of its board independent
- Company stage
- A company where working-hours limits, recruitment of foreign workers or pay reform have become board questions, often because a regulatory change or a labour shortage has started to affect service
The seat I am pursuing
I am seeking one outside directorship at a listed company outside construction and real estate, where a large field or frontline workforce makes working hours, pay structure and recruitment central to the strategy. Logistics and warehousing companies facing the limits on drivers' hours that took effect in the same month as construction's, nursing care operators recruiting foreign care workers, and food manufacturers or building-maintenance companies running shift workforces are where my experience would apply most directly. I would like to serve on the nomination and remuneration committee and, after a full cycle, to chair it if the board wished. I would also welcome a place on a sustainability committee if it reviews the human capital disclosures. I would decline a seat offered mainly to improve a board's gender figures without a committee role. Before going further, I would want to know what the board learnt from its most recent effectiveness review and what it changed as a result.
Board and committee exposure
Served as a director
Owari Craft Training Foundation
Board of directors; curriculum committee chair from 2022; budget committee member
June 2019–present
Director of a public-interest foundation in Aichi that trains apprentices in formwork, rebar and plastering; chairs the committee that sets training standards and reviews course outcomes.
Reported to a committee
Asakage Construction Co., Ltd.
Nomination and remuneration advisory committee
2018–present
Secretary to the committee, which an outside director chairs; prepares papers on executive succession, officer remuneration and pay-reform outcomes by age band; withdraws when her own pay is considered.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Asakage Construction Co., Ltd.
Audit and supervisory committee
2021–present
Reports quarterly on working hours across site offices, the document support centre, home log-ons and partner crews, including breaches found late.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Asakage Construction Co., Ltd.
Board of directors
2019–present
Presented the schedule-page policy, the role-grade reform, the founding of Asakage Craft Works and the human capital section of the annual securities report.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Mizukuma Civil Engineering Co., Ltd.
Board of directors
2008–2012
Reported to a five-member family board on accident response, working-hours rules and subcontractor social insurance.
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
The IICA Independent Directors' Databank is maintained in India for independent directors of Indian companies, and it has no bearing on outside directorships in Japan, where a company assesses independence against its own criteria and the Tokyo Stock Exchange's standards for independent officers. I have not registered with it and do not intend to seek a board seat in India.
- Outside-director preparation programme for executives, covering the Corporate Governance Code and board effectiveness, completed in 2024
- Secretary to Asakage's nomination and remuneration advisory committee since 2018, including its annual board-effectiveness questionnaire
- Director of a public-interest training foundation since 2019, including budget approval and chair of its curriculum committee
- Evening MBA with coursework in corporate finance and governance, completed in 2011