Tokyo, Japan
Keith Kakehashi is a bilingual management and human resources consultant with extensive business management experience in manufacturing and operations at global locations such as Japan, U.S, Europe and Asian countries including China, Malaysia, Vietnam and India. After holding various senior management positions at Nippon Sheet Glass (NSG) Group, one of the largest glass manufacturing companies operating in more than 20 countries with over 20,000 employees, Keith launched his own consulting business in 2020. He provides consulting services to companies such as a TSE listed food oil company, a medical corporation, and a European global manufacturing company. He also works as a senior consultant for several HR related institutes.
Topics addressed by Keith in his consulting service include organizational purpose and values, competencies, compensation, performance management, merit increases, interviews for executive hiring, advice on terms and conditions when a foreign capital owned company hires a local Japanese manager, feedback training for managers, and policy handbook amendments.
At his first fourteen years with NSG Group, Keith was mainly engaged in domestic labor administration and human resource management roles. After 8 years as an expatriate in the U.S and the U.K, he was involved in the acquisition of a U.K listed company, Pilkington plc, in 2006. After the completion of the organizational integration he was appointed to be a Corporate Officer in 2011. He worked under British and Brazilian Chief HR Officers while being responsible for global Center of Excellence functions in Compensation, Learning & Development and Talent Management as well as Regional HR management as Regional HR Director for Asia. In 2017, he established a global Inclusion & Diversity Committee from scratch and drove DE&I initiatives across the group.
Keith was also active in external HR professional networking while he was at NSG Group. He delivered lectures on global M&A and talent management over 40 times including at Doshisha University’s global MBA program and at the Academic Association for Organizational Science. His interviews and articles were included in several HR professional magazines and bulletins published by organizations such as the Institute of Labor Administration, PWC, Recruit and CELM.
In 2018, Keith was appointed as an advisory board member for a project called “HR Leaders Next” organized by the Japan Management Association. In 2020, Keith was invited to be a study group member by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, to develop a “Report of the Study Group on Improvement of Sustainable Corporate Value and Human Capital”. In 2021, he completed a professional faculty development course at the Graduate School of Information & Communication. He also posted a joint paper, Working in Japan as an Expatriate: Practical Guidance towards Achieving Assignment Success, to the website of the EU-Japan Center for Industrial Cooperation.
