OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

Employee Safety

We want employees to feel engaged in their job and to reach their full potential. A necessary condition for this is providing employees with a safe, secure, and pleasant working environment, with safety measures in place for times of disaster. On this belief, the KOKUYO Group Central Safety Health Committee—which has the function of overseeing safety and health within the KOKUYO Group—coordinates with the health and safety committee of each workplace to establish the necessary systems and processes for employee safety, incorporating the opinions of employees themselves. The goal of our health and safety efforts is to reduce occupational accidents to zero.
We participate as a board member company in the labor standards association and job-creation association at the head office location to stay up to date with latest announcements and guidance from public authorities so that we avoid violating the Labor Standards Act. We also have a dedicated internal team that monitors regulatory developments to ensure that we comply with the latest regulations and manage regulatory risks effectively. If an occupational accident or incident does occur, it will be reported to senior management without delay so that steps can be taken to minimize the risk impact.

Initiatives in 2024

KOKUYO Group Construction Industry and Plants Health-and-Safety Conferences

During Japan’s National Safety Week* (first week of July), we organize health-and-safety conferences to enhance safety-consciousness across the corporate group. The conference programs are intricately designed for each region. They include presentations about cases that occurred during the year and instructions about preventing similar cases. They also include a presentation of awards to commend excellence in health and safety. Each conference concludes with a pledge to make the ensuing year incident-free.

• ※
  Run by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and the Japan Industrial Safety & Health Association, National Safety Week is a campaign that calls upon employers to take voluntary actions to prevent workplace injuries. It also aims to raise awareness about health and safety and entrench workplace safety.

Construction Industry: KOKUYO Group Construction Industry Health-and-Safety Conferences

The KOKUYO Construction Industry Health and Safety Promotion Committee organizes health-and-safety conferences at seven venues for our construction partners in the KOKUYO Group. It does so on the belief that employee health and safety is foundational to business growth. The first half began with presentations about best practices during the previous year followed by the presentation of awards to exemplary health and safety staff. For the second half, a guest speaker delivered a presentation about health and safety. The conferences concluded with attendees reciting on mass the conference slogan and pledging to make the ensuing year incident-free.

Plants: Safety Conventions and Safety Patrols in Plants in the KOKUYO Group in Japan

We held safety conferences and safety patrols at six key plants in Japan. The conferences presented occupational accident data from the previous year, gave briefings about safety initiatives, delivered themed training, and declared a pledge on safety. We will also continue to provide opportunities to take a pause and think about safety once a year at each site over our entire group in the future. We will do that to connect a culture that protects safety with the future.

Development: Manufacturing Safety Conference and Safety Patrol

Safety conferences and safety patrols are organized in a hybrid format by connecting the workshops held in Osaka that develop our products and inspect quality to Shinagawa X-stage.
The purpose is to keep employees ever mindful about occupational accident prevention and about what needs to be done to prevent such accidents, as we handle mechanical tools and various chemical substances in product development processes as well as in plants. In FY2024, the conferences and patrols used a hybrid format. This format resulted in a higher number of attendees, as it was possible for remote workers and staff at the Shinagawa office to attend online. The conference therefore succeeded in raising safety awareness among many employees.

Zoomed-In Central Safety Health Committee

KOKUYO’s Mie Plant and KOKUYO Logitem’s Mie distribution center held a meeting of the Zoomed-In Central Safety Health Committee for staff in charge of health and safety in relation to forklift operation in manufacturing and distribution sites. Invited to the event was an outside instructor with expertise in forklift safety. On the day of the event, the instructor listened to the safety practices in each workplace, toured the workplaces, assessed the risks, and gave detailed feedback. The instructor’s feedback included important perspectives for managing workplace safety, observations about risks that can easily get overlooked, and other valuable knowledge that is rarely gained in everyday work. The participants found the event very useful. In this way, the participants gained many valuable tips and insights. Further meetings of the Zoomed-In Central Safety Health Committee will be held with a flexible approach to setting the them. These meetings will help improve safety awareness and workplace effectiveness across KOKUYO Group.

Management Training for Plant Staff

To help develop the talent pool for plants over the medium and long term, the KOKUYO Group Central Safety Health Committee and KOKUYO Academy provided leaders with management training. For young staff with leadership potential, they ran a two-day training camp focusing on communication and problem-solving. Both training programs involved tasks in which attendees practice expressing their ideas, communicating with others, and solving problems, all of which helped the attendees discover their leadership potential. The training programs were delivered at Mie Plant and Shibayama Plant. They will be rolled out to other plants across KOKUYO Group.

Employee Health

【Wellbeing : Building a healthy workplace】

We support employee health and productivity on the belief that the key to employee wellbeing is to encourage employees to take an interest in their health and engage positively at work.

【KOKUYO Health and Productivity Declaration】

We have issued the following declaration to signal our commitment to building a healthy workplace as part of our sustainability strategy.

Processes in Place

Six Core Actions for Building a Healthy Workplace

• 01

  Health management

  Provide health checks and follow-ups and
  offer a range of medical options to
  maintain employees’ health or prevent deterioration

• 02

  Workplace

  Continuously improve the workplace to support
  the physical and mental wellbeing of
  employees.

• 03

  Mental health

  Analyze the results of stress checks and
  other employee surveys to identify how to support
  employees’ mental health and engagement.

• 04

  New workstyles

  Facilitate flexible work arrangements—allow remote working,
  reduce overtime, encourage uptake of annual leave,
  support employees with caring commitments, and help employees balance work with family obligations.

• 05

  Health awareness

  Provide employees with
  information and education to
  promote self-care.

• 06

  Employee engagement

  Clarify problems in the organizational culture and make
  the necessary changes to
  encourage greater engagement in work.

Organizational Framework for Building a Healthy Workplace

In FY2022, we established the Health Management Taskforce within the Subcommittee for Building an Organizational Framework for Sustainability and Promoting Wellbeing in order to expedite efforts to build a healthy workplace.
Employee health and engagement is managed by the KOKUYO Group Central Safety Health Committee, Risk Management Committee, KOKUYO’s health management staff, group company members involved in building a healthy workplace, health insurance associations, labor unions, and the Health Management Taskforce.

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  View data on health-promotion performance here

Strategic roadmap for KOKUYO health and productivity management

As part of our strategy for promoting employee health, we set out goals, tasks, expected outcomes, and investments.

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  The roadmap shows, from the left, investments, expected outcomes, tasks, and the ultimate goal.

Initiatives in 2024

Employee Health Goals: 2023 Results

As part of our commitment to health and productivity management, we have set the following KPIs and targets, taking into account the latest circumstances.

Selected for Kenko Investment for Health 2025

Showcasing Our Expertise in Health and Productivity Management through THE CAMPUS, a Space for Experimenting with New Workstyles and Lifestyles

In February 2021, we opened THE CAMPUS in Shinagawa, Tokyo. THE CAMPUS is a space for experimenting with new workstyles and lifestyles.

THE CAMPUS is a space in which people from different professional backgrounds gather to explore and test new ideas to identify the values of the future. It is tied in with KOKUYO’S Next Experience, a project to engage in tasks for solving long-term social issues. We will continue to use THE CAMPUS to widely showcase to society the knowledge and know-how of health and productivity management that KOKUYO has put into practice and proposals to protect the mental and physical health, safety and security of employees and visitors.

The above initiatives have been recognized. This is the first complex in Japan to have acquired the WELL Health-Safety Rating* which evaluates health and safety according to global standards.

• *
  The WELL Health-Safety Rating for Facility Operations and Management provides third-party verification that the certified building is clean and safe. The rating was launched by the International WELL Building Institute in June 2020 in response to the spread of Covid-19. The criteria for the rating include anti-Covid measures, emergency preparedness programs, cleaning and sanitization procedures, and air and water quality management.

Actions

Management reform initiatives

In FY2023, we positioned management reform by management and managers in particular as an urgent matter for mid- to long-term sustainable growth. Accordingly, we worked to put into practice a partnership-based management style. Specifically, we developed the format and structure of 1on1 in KOKUYO through a 1on1 trial for all management and managers to solve the issues which arise in the course of engaging in business. We also put into practice business follow-up activities to eliminate imbalances in business and to create an environment to engage in high-market value work. This is an initiative in which roles and responsibilities are determined for each layer. The upper layers proactively involve members. The concerns facing each are then quickly resolved through man-hour forecasting and grasping the situation in a timely manner. These efforts have had an effect.
Overtime hours have significantly reduced and that has led to changes in how time is used. We will work to entrench this initiative in FY2024. At the same time, we will engage in such efforts to lower the barriers to taking vacations.

Women’s Health

Context
Previously, we had not done enough to build a women-friendly workplace. Employees complained that the workplace was women-unfriendly and that it was harder for women than it was for men to balance their work with family commitments (such as parenting or elder care). With young women making up a relatively large share of our workforce (disproportionate to their share in the general population), more employees than before have experienced life events related to women’s wellness (such as hormonal disorders, maternity, and motherhood).
Accordingly, in 2023, we committed to helping women balance their work and private life and to supporting women’s health and wellbeing. We also made a focused effort to build a more women-friendly workplace.

Actions

• We provided a health advice service led by an occupational physician with expertise in women’s health.
• We established the Wellness Station to improve contact between a public health nurse and employees. We also provided a channel whereby employees can easily reach out to occupational health professionals.
• To address the health-related obstacles to empowering women in the workplace and make the workplace more gender inclusive, we organized a seminar led by an inhouse occupational physician. The seminar was about women’s health matters such as premenstrual syndrome, menopausal challenges, cervical cancer, and breast cancer). Male employees were also encouraged to actively participate in the events.
• We organized events (seminars, workshops, and a get-togethers with mentors) for employees with concerns about life events such as childbirth and parenting.
• Providing for women’s sanitary needs: With the support of Kao’s Laurier in the Workplace project, we installed sanitary pads in the restrooms of the head office.
• For women aged 40 or above, we expanded breast cancer screenings and established a subsidy program through health insurance.
  In the screening program, a mammography van and a ultrasonographer visit the Shinagawa head office and the Shibayama and Mie plants to screen employees there.

Employee Welfare

Health is the key principle in Play Work Mileage, our choice-based program of employee welfare. Play Work Mileage supports employee health in the following ways.

It encourages employees to invest in their own health
Employees can redeem points against expenses they incur in promoting their health, including expenses for optional examinations for comprehensive medical checkups, medical bills, and the cost of various health supplies. In FY2023, our employees redeemed a collective total of approximately 236 million yen in points.

Promoting employee health enhancement activities

We operate a program which allows employees to earn points which they can use to receive subsidies under the aforementioned choice-based program of employee welfare according to records of their walking and daily lifestyle habits. The aim of this program is to encourage employees to practice health promotion by making it a habit to engage in light exercise and to take actions with an awareness of their health in their daily lives. We have also been running the Walking Campaign for a limited time to encourage even more employees to participate in the program such as by competing over which team walks the greatest number of steps.
We ran a wellness program which provides seminars, surveys and individual guidance by trainers in a set to improve and enhance the health literacy of employees about physical ailments.

Program to Ensure the Full Use of Regular Screenings

This is a program to support employee health. We hold seminars with occupational physicians before and after employees undergo their regular health checkups so that the results of those checkups can lead to improvements for the next time. We hold these seminars online so that the families of employees can also participate in them.

Smokefree Workplace

Data from Japan Tobacco’s annual Japan Smoking Rate Survey indicates a high rate of smoking among male employees in our corporate group. On April 11, 2020, Japan banned indoor smoking with some exceptions. In conjunction with the ban, we banned smoking on all company premises in Japan. We continue our efforts to raise employees’ awareness of the risks of smoking.

Preventing Infectious Disease

The Covid-19 pandemic severely disrupted people’s lives around the world. The world continues to face the threat of infectious diseases, including the big three (HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria). We take steps to prevent infectious diseases among our employees, especially those going on overseas secondments or business trips. We inform such employees about health management tips and infection risks, including information about the necessary inoculations, along with a subsidy for such. We also have a medical assistance agreement that covers such employees.
To further support both these employees and their accompanying families, we provide a hotline manned by an occupational physician and health-management staff. In these ways, we help ensure that the employees and their families are healthy and have peace of mind.

KOKUYO Health Insurance Association: Collaborative Health Promotion

The KOKUYO Health Insurance Association collaborates with us in supporting employee health.
This collaboration includes delivering health checkups and cancer screenings.

• The association uses the network health checkup service to enable its members to receive health checks (including a general health check known as a ningen dock) at medical institutions nationwide. Members’ families can receive a health checkup at the same medical institution.
• In 2022, the association started providing us a subsidy for colorectal cancer screenings. We integrated the subsidized screenings into our health checkup program so that all employees get screened for colorectal cancer.
• The association has raised the maximum amount of subsidy for cervical and breast cancer screenings.
  －In 2020, it raised the maximum amount of subsidy for actual expenses incurred in breast cancer screenings.
  －In 2023, it raised the maximum amount of subsidy for actual expenses incurred in cervical cancer screenings.
• In 2023, the association started subsidizing prostate cancer screenings.
• In 2023, the association started mailing HPV and PSA test kits.
  These test kits are for members who do not receive a subsidy for cervical or prostate cancer screenings.

The association works with us to provide a round-the-clock counseling service for physical and mental health concerns. It also provides counseling services related to general health, medical care, long-term nursing care, parenting, and mental health. In 2023, it launched a health app that encourages health-promoting activities (regular exercise, healthy diet, sleep hygiene).

Mental Health Action

We conduct an annual stress check as required by law.
To promote a culture of self-care, in which employees feel comfortable asking for help after the stress check, we have introduced the Employee Assistance Program. This externally run program encourages employees to recognize the warning signs and symptoms of stress and to seek preventive health services at an early stage.
In addition to the employee survey, we have been conducting the pulse survey monthly since 2021. The purpose of this is to promote fixed-point observation of issues in ways of working and workplaces and to encourage dialogue in teams to build even better organizations.
We identify issues that we will tackle with priority and measures to deal with those issues by business and human resource departments engaging in dialogue while comprehensively looking at these survey results and personnel and organizational data.

• Social Actions