EMPLOYEE HEALTH

EMPLOYEE HEALTH AND SAFETY Employee health

Basic Concepts

【Wellbeing: Building a healthy workplace】

The foundations of wellbeing are employee health and engagement.

【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.

KOKUYO Health and Productivity Declaration

Sustainable Business Strategy is stated as follows: To build a self-directed, collaborative society, we will present a tomorrow you can’t wait for and lead the way in sustainable business practices. A key part of this strategy is promoting wellbeing both within and outside our organization.

Three main strategies for improving wellbeing:

• Pitch ideas for new workstyles
• Promote diversity, inclusion, and innovation
• Promote employee health and engagement

Wellbeing (a state of being healthy and happy) is critical to building a healthy workplace. We therefore support employees’ physical and mental health and encourage employee engagement. In this task, we cooperate with our employees, our health insurance association, and our workforce’s labor union, gleaning insights and best practices for promoting wellbeing in society at large.

Systems

Six core actions for building a healthy workplace

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.

^* 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.

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

Initiatives in 2023

Recognition as a 2024 Certified Health & Productivity Management Outstanding Organization (White 500) and a 2024 Certified Heath & Productivity Management Outstanding Organization (Large Enterprise Category)

On March 11, 2024, KOKUYO and Kaunet became two of the 500 whitelisted companies in an award program run by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and Nippon Kenko Kaigi, earning the official designation “2024 Certified Health & Productivity Management Outstanding Organization (White 500).” On the same date, KOKUYO Marketing earned a separate accolade under the same program (“Health and Productivity Management Outstanding Organization” 2024, large enterprise category). The program (officially translated as “2024 Certified Health & Productivity Management Outstanding Organizations Recognition Program”) gives recognition to companies that make exemplary efforts toward a healthy and productive workplace. We will continue to promote wellbeing in line with the KOKUYO Health and Productivity Declaration, which we established in October 2019 and updated in 2022.

Employee Health Goals: 2023 Results

In 2013, we set concrete goals for promoting healthy behaviors that help prevent lifestyle diseases. Since then, our internal health insurance associations have worked with the health management office on actions to meet these goals.
The health-promotion activities include tracking employees’ daily steps and weight, organizing fun walking campaigns, and running diet seminars in partnership with public health centers. We also encourage our employees to undergo regular screening for colorectal cancer and breast cancer. To that end, we have installed a mammography unit on the premises. Additionally, we worked to increase the range of health-check options, giving employees more opportunities to go and get a health check. For example, comprehensive medical checkups (called “ningen dock”) are available for employees who want them.
We have had to suspend some services because of the pandemic, but we still worked to promote health consciousness by running an online survey on health behaviors and an e-learning course.

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.

Other initiatives

• 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 2024. At the same time, we will engage in efforts to lower the barriers to taking vacations.

• 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 medical checkups (ningen docks), medical bills, and the cost of various health supplies. In FY2023, our employees redeemed a collective total of approximately 236 million yen in points.

• It encourages employees to promote their own health

  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 industrial 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.

Health Insurance Association: Increased Subsidy for Cancer Screening

Across the group, rates of screening for breast cancer and cervical cancer are low at 20%. Accordingly, in April 2020, the KOKUYO Health Insurance Association raised the subsidy for breast cancer screening from 5,000 to a maximum of 10,000 yen.

We have made it possible to undertake free cervical cancer risk screenings from 2021. That program also extends to colorectal cancer screenings for those who are 30 years old and over.

We will continue our efforts to help prevent or detect cancer and promote cancer awareness.

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.