Honda Motor Co will scrap its mandatory retirement age of 65 for highly skilled software engineers and other workers from June as part of efforts to accelerate the development of advanced technology.
The automaker will also invest 15 billion yen in training engineers over the next five years from fiscal 2025 so they can gain deeper knowledge in key areas such as self-driving and electric vehicles, it said.
With its overseas rivals such as Tesla Inc and China's BYD Co leading innovation, Honda Executive Vice President Noriya Kaihara stressed that the new measures will make the company more attractive for workers with highly competitive skills.
"We will do our utmost to create an environment that will be chosen" by such workers, he said in a briefing in mid-January.
To allow IT engineers to work more flexibly, new offices will be set up in Osaka and Tokyo, the automaker said.
The automaker will also scrap the retirement age for skilled employees in fields other than IT to enhance its competitiveness and plans to raise annual pay by 2 to 3 million yen for workers in posts equivalent to manager positions who are leading the transformation of businesses, it said.
Honda said in May last year it would invest about 10 trillion yen in areas such as EVs and software for the 10-year period through fiscal 2030.
© KYODO
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sakurasuki
Life time employment and seniority, is that something new in Japan?
P_C
Oh the irony, software engineering is the realm of a young person's mind. Keeping the senior engineers will simply keep the higher salaries with low quality code. Basic code should be "written" by AI algos anyway. Honda falling farther and farther behind. Put my 15 years in at Honda Research so a bit sad.