Premium Friday from March onwards, decided to include days other than the last Friday of the month.

SoftBank Technology Corp. (Headquarters: Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, President and CEO: Shinichi Ata, hereinafter SBT) has uniquely applied "Premium Friday", which started on Friday, February 24, 2017, and has We would like to inform you that from March 2020, we have decided to operate the system based on leaving work at 3:00 pm on the Friday of the month, but taking into account busy seasons and long holidays.

SoftBank Technology Corp. (Headquarters: Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, President and Representative Director: Shinichi Ata, hereafter SBT) has uniquely applied "Premium Friday" which started on Friday, February 24, 2017, We would like to inform you that from March 2020, we have decided to operate the system based on leaving work at 3:00 pm on the Friday of the month, but taking into account busy seasons and long holidays. Additionally, we conducted an employee survey after the first Premium Friday, and were able to identify issues regarding system operation. We will continue to consider these issues with the aim of creating an environment where employees can easily use this system.

The 2nd Premium Friday will be held on March 24th, promoting work-life balance optimization through unique operations

SBT 's theme is "Each employee can live a fulfilling life." By maintaining good mental and physical health and finding fulfillment in work, SBT will enable each employee to play an active role and utilize the power of technology. We are promoting work style reform with the aim of creating new added value. As part of our efforts to promote work-life balance, we introduced Premium Fridays on February 1, 2017, and introduced premium Fridays on February 24, 2017 as part of efforts to correct long working hours and expand systems to support efficient and flexible working styles. We have decided to hold the first event on Sunday (Friday).

After that, taking into consideration SBT 's business model and existing systems such as "A day where taking PTO is encouraged," we considered the operation policy for Premium Friday in March 2017 and next fiscal year, and decided to base it on the last Friday of the month, but also to include a day when employees can leave work at 3 p.m. on other days. The next day when employees can leave work at 3 p.m. will be Friday, March 24, 2017. For next fiscal year, we plan to operate according to the calendar below.

Implementation status of the 1st Premium Friday and future challenges

During SBT 's first Premium Friday on February 24, 2017 (Friday), approximately 30% of all employees left work around 3:00 pm, and approximately 50% left by 6:00 pm. By organization, approximately 40% of employees in the sales and administration departments left the office around 3:00 p.m. Approximately 20% of employees in the technical and service departments left work around 3:00 p.m.

Additionally, as a result of conducting a survey regarding Premium Friday among all eligible employees, approximately 60% of employees used Premium Friday to spend time relaxing at home, eating, and shopping. (Number of respondents: 361)

On the other hand, there are challenges unique to first-time customers such as ``The announcement was made a month in advance, so I already had an appointment with a customer,'' and ``Due to operations and support work, if the customer has not introduced Premium Friday, "It's difficult to leave work," "After leaving work at 3pm, I had to deal with inquiries from employees and customers," "I'm a project manager, so I can't go home unless external partners also introduce Premium Friday," etc. Many opinions were gathered regarding the issues related to this.

We are continually considering countermeasures for the requests and issues collected from employees through this survey, making improvements and ingenuity to make the system easier for employees to use, and working to change the way employees think about work styles and improve efficiency and productivity. I'm planning on going.
SBT will continue to promote work style reforms that are valuable to SBT 's stakeholders, including employees.

• *Company names, product names, and service names mentioned in this release are trademarks or registered trademarks of our company or each company or organization.