EMPLOYEE SAFETY

EMPLOYEE HEALTH AND SAFETY Employee safety

Systems

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 in fiscal 2023 was the first conference held after Covid-19 was downgraded to a class-5 disease. This meant that, unlike in the previous conference, the attendees could recite on mass a pledge to achieve zero safety incidents. The attendees’ voices reverberated throughout the venue.

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.Unlike the conferences in the previous three years, the conferences in FY2023 dispensed with attendance restrictions and a requirement to wear facemasks. 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 hold safety conferences and conduct safety patrols at seven bases in five plants in Japan. The safety conferences in FY2023 were held with no attendance restrictions, as in pre-pandemic times. The conferences presented occupational accident data from the previous fiscal 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.

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• Development: Manufacturing safety conference and safety patrol

  Safety conferences and safety patrols are organized in a hybrid format by the workshops held in Osaka that develop our products and inspect quality and by 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, particularly those related to chemical substances, which are frequently used not just in plants but also in product development processes. In FY2023, 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.

Initiatives in 2023

Meetings for Plants in the KOKUYO Group to Exchange Opinions in 2023

In November 2023, Kokuyo Product Shiga hosted a meeting to discuss solutions for occupational issues. The meeting was attended by supervisors and HR managers from the five major production plants in the Kokuyo Group.
Over the years, meetings of the Kokuyo Group Central Safety Health Committee and the production plants have highlighted a wide range of issues, not just those related to health and safety. These issues must be addressed to prevent occupational accidents, but they cannot be fully solved by a single person’s efforts alone. As such, occupational safety issues constitute an urgent HR concern for the Kokuyo Group as a whole. Accordingly, the Kokuyo Group Central Safety Health Committee and the Group HR and General Affairs Support Unit organized the meetings so that HR and other corporate divisions can work together and discuss solutions.

Step 1
Identify the issues that are important to each plant’s HR manager
Step 2
Arrange these issues into the categories hiring, training, and workplace culture, and discuss potential solutions with HR and other corporate divisions
Step 3
Clarify the solutions each plant will adopt

To ensure that the legacy of the meeting is more than empty words, we will keep taking action until the issues are resolved.

Foreperson leadership training

To help develop the talent pool for plants over the medium and long term, the KOKUYO Group Central Safety Health Committee and KOKUYO MVP (one of our manufacturing subsidiaries and plants) jointly ran workshops for training leaders and sub-leaders, with an emphasis on communication skills.
We plan to roll this leadership program out to other plants. In this program, attendees will practice getting their message across and engaging in dialogue effectively so that they can foster a positive workplace culture that keeps employees feeling secure and confident.