Tsunagu Solutions and Mama Square sign a capital and business alliance agreement Aiming to promote women's empowerment, we support "moms who want to work but cannot" and "companies that want to utilize women"

Tsunagu Solutions and Mama Square enter into capital and business alliance agreement

Aiming to promote women's participation in the workforce, we support "mothers who want to work but cannot" and "companies that want to utilize women."

Tsunagu Solutions Inc. (Head Office: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo / CEO: Yoneda Mitsuhiro, Stock Code: 6551, hereinafter "Tsunagu Solutions") provides recruitment and consulting services to food and beverage service and retail distribution chains, as well as large-scale companies looking to hire part-time workers. The company aims to "become the infrastructure of the recruitment market" and is committed to strengthening ties with companies active in a wide range of fields in order to eliminate various "problems" in the recruitment process.
Mama Square Co., Ltd. (Head office: Minato-ku, Tokyo / CEO: Fujishiro Satoshi, hereinafter referred to as Mama Square) provides a comfortable working environment for housewives raising children by operating and developing working spaces with childcare facilities.
Through this capital and business alliance, the two companies will work to promote women's participation in the workforce and create more innovative ways of working and diverse careers for women.

■Background In an environment where it is difficult to secure labor, with an effective job offer ratio of 1.62 (seasonally adjusted value as of June 2018), it is said that there are approximately 860,000 women who want to work but cannot due to childbirth and childcare issues, including the problem of children on waiting lists (calculated from the 2016 Labor Force Survey). As an increasing number of companies are introducing the use of foreigners, women (housewives), and seniors as an important recruitment method to secure labor, Tsunagu Solutions acquired Asetonia Co., Ltd., a company that specializes in recruiting foreigners, as a subsidiary in September 2017.
Mama Square, which is forming this capital and business alliance, operates an office with a working space and a kids' space, providing both a place of employment and a place of childcare (=hardware) in one. By combining Tsunagu Solutions' recruitment know-how, consultation, and connections with clients (=software) through this capital and business alliance, we believe that we can support the labor participation of "mothers," who are expected to play an active role as a potential labor force, and create innovation in new ways of working and diverse careers for women.

■ Specific support content and effects envisaged
1. Increasing the social value of the Tsunagu Solutions Group, in our labor policy that aims to create a society in which 100 million people are dynamically engaged, female labor participation is a top priority.
The number one reason why people who wish to work do not seek work is "childbirth and childcare (31.4% of the total *calculated from the aforementioned "2016 Labor Force Survey")." In response to this issue, mamasquare has the potential to provide a major solution by operating and developing working spaces with childcare facilities. We hope that this business partnership with mamasquare will send a message to society as a whole and serve as the first step in ESG investment, further enhancing the social value of our group.

*The office space (Mama Square) is adjacent to the kids space through glass.

2. Development of "Work-Life Balance Jobs (tentative title)" suitable for mothers and their families Tsunagu Solutions provides one-stop service for all recruitment activities in the part-time job market, from job recruitment support to application reception support. This is made up of a wide variety of tasks and occupations, and we aim to develop and provide "work-life balance jobs" that are truly suitable for mothers working at Mama Square and their families, utilizing the extensive know-how we have accumulated through this service.

3. Further strengthening the supply of human resources to Mama Square and Tsunagu Solutions' customers We will create new employment opportunities outside of the work that Mama Square currently undertakes, such as providing work opportunities at Tsunagu Solutions' customer stores located in the commercial facilities where Mama Square is located, and realize a recruitment matching model that makes both working moms and customers who are looking for work happy.

4. Developing a career model for women and expanding the recruitment business through the know-how and data research gained from the above efforts. By creating a database of the large amount of information that can be accumulated through the business alliance with Mama Square, we will be able to further expand our recruitment business, such as by creating employment opportunities for "future" mothers and developing a next-generation recruitment model for the career development of women who are looking to return to work full-time after raising their children.