Below is the English translation of the article:
“【社会評論】検索支配とCSR──パーソルキャリアに問う「沈黙の責任」”
originally published on April 12, 2025 by Inclusive Solutions LLC.
This English version is intended for overseas readers, including international investors, members of the PERSOL Group, and individuals involved in HR and compliance.
If you find any mistranslations or inaccuracies, please contact us.
The Japanese original is available on our official website.
For the English Edition — On the Historical Significance of This Document：
This English edition is published not only for overseas readers, but also to preserve this article as an important primary document in the history of corporate risk management in Japan.
The events described here record, in real time, how a major human-resources company failed to respond to repeated requests for clarification, how its public relations and legal divisions remained silent, and how the resulting “vacuum of explanation” reshaped the company’s reputation through search engines.
In this sense, the document functions similarly to historical records exhibited in museums: it allows readers to observe the mechanisms by which a corporation’s governance structure collapses under the weight of its own silence.
The sequence of emails, unanswered inquiries, and contradictory statements by anonymous “customer centers” are preserved here exactly as they occurred, providing future researchers, journalists, and corporate professionals with valuable material for examining crisis communication in the age of SEO and AI-driven information ecosystems.
As companies increasingly face reputational risks emerging not from newspapers but from search results, this article may be viewed as an early case study of a new era—where the absence of corporate dialogue itself becomes a form of corporate misconduct.
March 29, 2025.
This date marks the day when our company began publishing a series of whistleblowing articles on the web regarding PERSOL CAREER CO., LTD., one of Japan’s major human-resources service companies.
The initial problem was the lack of transparency in the internal operations of “HiPro Tech,” an IT-freelancer related business run by the company.
After that, the situation developed in an unexpected way.
Only a few days after the article went public, the first page of major Google search results for several related keywords—such as
“PERSOL CAREER suspicion,” —パーソルキャリア 疑惑“ ,Teppei Nomura,”—野村鉄平 and “HiProTech problem”—Hipro Tech 問題 became dominated by the articles on our whistleblowing site.
Since then, until today, the company’s public relations department has made no attempt to “put out the fire,” and the “corporate image” visible on search engines is now effectively controlled by our company, which originally has no direct connection to PERSOL.
This phenomenon is clearly different from an ordinary online scandal.
It may even be described as “the first case in which a company’s social responsibility was questioned through search domination.”
CSR means “responsibility to explain”
CSR stands for Corporate Social Responsibility.
Some people may think of CSR as something similar to “activities that contribute to society.”
However, the real core of CSR is “fulfilling the responsibility to explain and correct the impact that the company’s actions have on society.”
In this entire situation, the biggest mistake made by PERSOL CAREER was “silence.”
- A clear contractual trouble occurred between the company and project stakeholders
- Multiple requests for fact-checking were ignored
- Even though the company stated that “a lawyer will respond,” there was no contact by the deadline
- Finally, the company sent a takedown request under the name of “Customer Center,” without revealing the name of the responsible person
All of these responses represent an abandonment of the responsibility to explain, and an attitude of shutting down dialogue with society.
What is SEO? And why is it now essential for CSR?
Here, I would like to briefly explain the meaning of the term “Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
It refers to the techniques and strategies for making a company’s website or articles appear in higher positions on search engines such as Google or Yahoo! for specific keywords.
Until now, SEO has mainly been discussed as a technical field related to marketing or promotional activities.
It is often associated with words such as customer acquisition, advertising, or conversion.
However, in the present time, SEO is directly connected to a company’s reputation.
The reason is simple:
Many people search for a “company name,” “person in charge,” or “service name,” and then decide intuitively—based on the search results—whether the company is “trustworthy,” “suspicious,” or “favorable.”
If a company has not accumulated sincere or transparent content, it is natural that a “search gap” will occur.
Into that empty space, critical information from third parties easily enters.
And once that information gains higher visibility, the company’s reputation becomes effectively controlled by others.
Because of this, SEO is no longer only a technical topic.
It is increasingly being redefined as something that exists on the extension line of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility).
In other words, modern CSR includes not only responding to society, but also considering how that response is expressed in the media space called search engines.
The typical corporate phrase, “we refrain from commenting,” can become fatal from the SEO point of view.
When a company lacks public explanations or fails to fulfill its responsibility to explain, that vacuum immediately becomes “a form of social sanction within search results.”
The case of PERSOL CAREER, in this regard, has clearly demonstrated this mechanism.
The absence of public relations is evidence of a governance failure
Originally, the public relations (PR) department is “the face of a company.”
In particular, when a crisis occurs, the role of PR is not only to extinguish the fire.
PR should embody the company’s values and design the dialogue between the company and society.
This responsibility includes more than simply “explaining.”
It also includes the strategic task of protecting the company’s reputation and making it visible within the public space of search engines.
CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) is supported by the responsibility to explain and the responsibility to correct.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the technique for designing the “place” where those explanations will reach.
If the PR department carries the company’s CSR, then it is not an exaggeration to say that its actual performance should also appear in SEO.
However, in the case of PERSOL CAREER, the following actions were noticeable:
- A one-sided deletion request from an anonymous email address
- A statement saying only “a lawyer will respond,” without providing the lawyer’s name
- No contact at all from the supposed lawyer by the stated deadline
- No internal announcement, including job titles or department names, explaining any measures to prevent recurrence
These actions cannot even be called “information control by PR.”
Rather, they appear to be “pretending to be silent while abandoning responsibilities,” showing that the company’s ability to engage in social dialogue is collapsing.
Furthermore, because the company itself created this empty space, the “search results,” which function as a public arena, are now dominated by critical content created by others.
This is not a temporary online scandal.
It is appropriate to call it a collapse of corporate brand value through natural search.
During this time, PERSOL CAREER continued to publish only “beautiful” stories
Even while these susptions were spreading, PERSOL CAREER did not give any direct answers.
Instead, the announcements they published were mainly about topics such as “regional revitalization in the Goto Islands” or “the personal backgrounds of new executive officers.”
PR Theme 1: Regional revitalization in the Goto Islands
PR Theme 2: Introductions of new executive officers, Mr. Atsushi Ishigami and Ms. Saki Morita
One may question whether PERSOL CAREER currently has an attitude of engaging in dialogue with society or fulfilling its social responsibility to explain important matters.
As a result, the company that became “the most knowledgeable about PERSOL CAREER’s legal counsel” was Inclusive Solutions LLC
The biggest irony appeared around mid-May 2025.
When searching for “PERSOL CAREER legal counsel”ー顧問弁護士 on Google, the first result displayed was our company’s whistleblowing article.
Originally, when searching the web for “Company Name + Legal Counsel,”
the first result should normally be information about that company’s actual legal counsel.
This should be even more true for a major human-resources group such as PERSOL.
However, because our articles pointed out that “PERSOL CAREER has not disclosed whether its legal counsel actually exists,”
Google began treating our company as “the authority most familiar with the situation regarding PERSOL CAREER’s legal counsel.”
This happened despite the fact that PERSOL CAREER has around 7,000 employees and annual sales of about 100 billion yen.
The background is as follows:
The general manager of the HiProTech division, Mr. Teppei Nomura, stopped responding partway through the communication.
Then, individuals calling themselves “Contact Center” or “Customer Support” appeared.
They remained anonymous and attempted to apply legal pressure to our company, saying that “a lawyer will handle the matter.”
After that:
- No lawyer’s name was disclosed
- No contact information was provided
- No direct response from the supposed lawyer ever arrived
We organized these events in chronological order, collected the evidence, and continued publishing them as whistleblowing reports.
Through this process, our articles became the most accessed information source in the search results.
As of May 21, 2025, the top result on Google for “PERSOL CAREER legal counsel” was the Note article mentioned above.
The article is here:Overview of the Breakdown of Internal Controls and Governance at PERSOL CAREER(パーソルキャリアの内部統制/ガバナンスの崩壊問題まとめ)
In other words, when someone searches for information on “PERSOL CAREER legal counsel,”
the first article that Google recommends is a whistleblowing article stating that “PERSOL CAREER’s internal control has collapsed.”
As a result, among the pages appearing in search results for “PERSOL CAREER legal counsel,”
the one with the most detailed information is not the company itself,
but our company — Inclusive Solutions LLC.
This situation is unprecedented and very ironic.
The final example: the “beautiful story” included in the PERSOL Holdings shareholders’ meeting notice
On May 21, 2025, PERSOL Holdings Inc. published the convocation notice for the “17th Annual Shareholders’ Meeting.”
A convocation notice is an official agenda presented by the management to its shareholders, who are the sponsors of the company.
However, what I would like to highlight here is what was not included in the agenda.
There was no explanation at all for shareholders regarding the situation of the subsidiary, PERSOL CAREER, which has been pointed out as having governance problems.
For a company, a shareholders’ meeting is the most important opportunity to engage in dialogue with its stakeholders.
However, when reading this convocation notice, there was not a single mention of the serious internal-control concerns within the subsidiary.
Inside the notice, many positive phrases appear, such as:
- “expanding people’s potential”
- “providing diverse ways of working”
- “respect for human rights”
- “strengthening data governance”
However, there was no reference to the following important issues:
- Fundamental compliance problems within the subsidiary’s business model
- The fact that the company has not disclosed whether an actual legal counsel (“lawyer”) exists, creating a highly opaque situation
- The complete lack of response to whistleblowing reports, despite having about 7,000 employees, suggesting dysfunction in the PR and legal functions
In other words, without even saying “there is no problem,”
the company chose a strategy of not speaking about the problem at all, both to shareholders and to society.
While the company advertises the slogan “Work and Smile,”
its actual attitude appears closer to “Remain silent and hide.”
Our company had already published an article before the convocation notice
On May 18 — three days before PERSOL Holdings released its convocation notice —
Inclusive Solutions LLC had already published an article addressing the key governance issues of PERSOL.
In that article, we presented the following four topics as important agendas related to PERSOL’s management:
- Has PERSOL CAREER engaged in organizational non-attorney legal acts or improper intermediary practices?
- Who is PERSOL CAREER’s legal counsel? If such counsel exists, why is there no public information?
- Several critical articles are appearing at the top of search results — why does PR remain silent? Is this not an IR issue?
- Is Mr. Teppei Nomura still the general manager of the Talent Sharing / HiProTech division?
The “additional agenda” that is being hidden from shareholders continues to appear in search results.
For shareholders, and for the future of the human-resources industry, this is a social issue that cannot be ignored.
But for PERSOL’s management, it may be an “embarrassing issue” that they wish to hide or pretend never existed.
Today, the “other IR information” that shareholders should look at is not found on the official website,
but instead appears when they type “PERSOL CAREER susption” into the search bar.
A question to the company: “Was there really a lawyer?”
Although it may be too late to ask this now, I would like to raise an important question once again.
Why did the company say that “a lawyer will respond,” even though no such lawyer ever appeared?
This single fact alone gives the impression that the company’s legal structure is “not reliable.”
Companies are now entering an era in which they may be judged not by official press releases,
but by the results displayed in search engines.
Furthermore, the records left in the online space will eventually merge with AI systems and become part of society’s “collective knowledge.”
As one symbolic example of this trend, the events of this case may be discussed in the future.
Inclusive Solutions LLC
Representative Partner: Kosuke Abe