Nintendo’s CSR Report 2021 – Business, COVID, & Future

Nintendo has released and translated their CSR Report 2021, and it is chock full of insight into the business, the goals they have, the handling of COVID-19, and putting smiles on as many people as possible.

You can access the entire CSR Report 2021 here, but in this article, we will highlight some of the more interesting points instead of going over the whole thing.

The CSR (Corporate social responsibility) expressed in this year’s report goes over management, workplace diversity, pleasing shareholders, and response to COVID-19 among other things.

For example, during the midst of the pandemic, Nintendo released the Jump Rope Challenge software to help encourage exercise during the mandatory stay-at-home period, which allows players to jump rope indoors using the Joy-Con controllers. They are providing this software free of charge so that they can assist their many constumers in staying active. Since the release of Jump Rope Challenge, people all over the world have jumped rope approximately 5.3 billion times (as of June 2021).

Another area of improvement that Nintendo is working towards are environmental initiatives. According to the CSR Report 2021, Nintendo will be working towards better and safer designs in their hardware, reducing CO2 emissions while transporting goods in certain areas, improving repair for consumers, and simply doing a better job recycling.

It is all encouraging, but I wanted to focus mostly on Nintendo’s top three priority areas: Putting Smiles on the Faces of Our Consumers, Putting Smiles on the Faces of Our Supply Chain, and Putting Smiles on the Faces of Our Employees. Let’s check those out:

Putting Smiles on the Faces of Our Consumers

We aim to always deliver new surprises and unique experiences in our development of entertainment.

With Nintendo Switch and its integrated hardware-software approach, our goal is to offer original products and services that anyone can enjoy. The time and energy that our consumers have devoted to playing games have given life to Mario and the characters he represents, which we feel has allowed them to become familiar to many across generations. Consumers have cultivated Nintendo as a brand, and this is a precious asset.

We develop many of our products with the hope that they will be enjoyed by the entire family or together with friends. To help families play with peace of mind, we provide a way for parents to monitor their children’s gameplay with Nintendo Switch Parental Controls. Through efforts like this, we work to continue delivering smiles to our consumers in every way, including from a service perspective.

CSR Report 2021 Page 10

This is an obvious one, as Nintendo has clearly raised the value of family friendliness in their products and approach. The use of fun and helpful parental controls and the partnership with Starlight Children’s Foundation have continued to show Nintendo’s goal in caring for their customers and genuinely bringing smiles to their faces.

Putting Smiles on the Faces of Our Supply Chain

We believe that promoting CSR activities throughout our entire supply chain helps cultivate CSR awareness among our suppliers and production sites, leading to improvements in working conditions, which brings smiles to everyone in our supply chain. In addition to increasing worker retention and productivity, we believe that these initiatives also make it possible to stably produce high-quality, appealing products, thereby enabling us to deliver smiles to our consumers and everyone Nintendo interacts with. We will continue to focus on communication and mutual understanding, working closely with our production partners to actively promote CSR activities.

CSR Report 2021 Page 12

It appears Nintendo is really starting to level up their connections with people on the inside. With this point, Nintendo is trying to create better relationships with the supply lines that help produce their products, and it looks like Nintendo will truly make some big steps here, as CSR Procurement Policies will be put in place, written surveys will help understand the status of things, site visits to keep an eye on the work conditions of these supply chains, and working towards improving follow up to improve things even more.

This is some great news and an area that Nintendo has desperately needed to work on, because there have been concerns about slave labor and even prison labor over the many years.

Putting Smiles on the Faces of Our Employees

The final area of the CSR Report 2021 focuses on Nintendo’s own employees and keeping them happy. Nintendo has been called out many times in the past for their lack of diversity in the workplace, and although Japan is still heavily male and nearly 100% Japanese, other countries have already moved more towards a diverse and safer work environment.

The Nintendo group employs people with a wide variety of unique talents, who all work to bring smiles to everyone they interact with. As a global entity, while establishing an appropriate awareness of human rights issues, we introduce systems and initiatives suited to each country and region to create a work environment that supports and empowers our employees, who are the source of Nintendo’s competitive edge.

CSR Report 2021 Page 13

This is fantastic to hear, and it looks like Nintendo put the most effort and energy into this particular area of the report. Each area has their own initiative, as Nintendo of America, Europe, Australia, and Japan all shared their goals in great detail and hope for a more diverse, equal, and inclusive culture withing the business.

There is a lot more information in the full report, so if you are interested, please take a moment to click here and read through it.

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Thank you for stopping by Nintendo Link for all of your gaming news and updates! What did you think of this CSR Report 2021 for Nintendo? Were there any surprises? Anything interesting? Let us know in the comments below! Happy gaming, everyone.