Social Working Together with Employees

Basic Approach

Nihon Parkerizing strives to maintain and promote employees’ physical and mental health by enhancing tangible environments, such as facilities, and intangible aspects, such as health management, to ensure that employees can exercise their full potential safely and comfortably.
In addition, our Safety, Health, and Environment Policies state that our top priority is to protect the safety and health of everyone working for our company. We proactively implement occupational health measures, including health management, to prevent occupational diseases and establish safe, comfortable workplace environments that enable employees to be highly productive.

Objectives

We aim to achieve good health for all employees through the prevention of lifestyle-related diseases, mental health care, and basic activities (health checkups, secondary examinations, health guidance, support for balancing treatment and work, infection control measures, health management and hazardous substances worker management, etc.), with guidance obtained from industrial physicians as needed. We issue a post-health checkup action form even when reexamination is required after regular health checkups. We are working to achieve 100% collection of reports of health checkups from employees.

Prevention Program

Believing that it is of utmost importance for employees themselves to understand, maintain, and improve their health, we encourage employees to receive regular health checkups, aiming for a 100% checkup rate for employees. Further, special health examinations are also conducted once every six months or less under "workers who regularly use organic solvents in indoor tasks (Article 29 of the Ordinance on the Prevention of Organic Solvent Poisoning)” and “workers who are or were engaged full-time in the work of manufacturing or handling a specified chemical substance(s) (limited to some of such substances) (Article 39 of the Ordinance on Prevention of Hazards Due to Specified Chemical Substances)."

• Stress checks
  We provide employees with an opportunity for stress checks once a year to prevent mental health problems. Employees who are highly stressed in the stress check are encouraged to undergo an interview with an industrial physician. We also conduct group analyses of offices and plants in addition to analysis of individuals and conduct hearings as necessary to improve the workplace environment.

Percent of employees who have undergone a stress check

• Counselling service
  Recent social and environmental changes have made it difficult to maintain physical health and mental health. To prevent and improve the physical and mental health of employees and their families, including stress, substantial distress, and anxiety, we have contracted with a mental health counseling service provider and made counseling services available anytime. The counseling services include support for employees on temporary leave before their return to work.

Health and Management

• Health promotion
  We believe that it is essential to check the health condition of our employees regularly, and we encourage all employees to receive health checkups. We also subsidize expenses for comprehensive medical examinations, gynecological examinations, and influenza vaccinations. In addition to the above, we also provide recreational and contracted sports facilities and other places where employees can refresh themselves. We will continue to support our employees to lead healthy, affluent lives and maximize their job performance.
• Specific health checkups and specific healthcare guidance
  Disruptive lifestyles lead to future health risks and poor day-to-day performance. We provide with health guidance through specific health checkups and advice to improve their habits to reduce t lifestyle-related diseases such as diabetes and pre-diabetes. Lifestyle-related diseases often progress without subjective symptoms. We provide health guidance so that individual employees can review their lifestyles and change their thinking or habits through health checkups. In particular, we provide specific health guidance to people with high risk of developing lifestyle-related diseases and people for whom lifestyle improvements are expected to be highly effective. We provide a variety of encouragement and advice to help the subjects become aware of their health status and voluntarily improve their lifestyles.

Support for Work-Life Balance

We have introduced various programs so employees with different values can continue to work while demonstrating their potential according to their life stage.

• Elimination of long working hours
  Working for long hours has a negative impact on the health of employees. We manage employee overtime so that it does not exceed 45 hours a month. We strive to prevent the concentration of work on specific employees, review work management, and improve work environments to make them more comfortable. We also ensure that our subsidiaries in Japan are fully aware of this policy through meetings of Group company presidents, meetings of administrative managers, and other opportunities. We will continue implementing initiatives to achieve the maximum results for establishing appropriate work environments.

• Encouraging employees to take annual paid leave
  We have introduced annual paid leave in half-day increments to enable employees to realize work-life balance. We pay attention to employees’ lifestyles and accommodate diverse work styles.

• Flextime
  This system allows employees to flexibly decide when to start and finish work within a specific time frame. With the significant revision of Employment Regulations in October 2017, this system became widely available, enabling employees to work more flexibly and efficiently.
• Leave programs for employees
  We offer leave programs, including leave to use during employees’ life events (such as marriage, job transfer, transfer without family, maternity, childcare, nursing care, and care for sick family members), disaster leave, inter-work adjustment leave (interval of 11 hours), leave for women in an impaired physical condition and extended service leave. We provide an environment that enables employees to take leave without hesitation to promote their physical and mental health. Thus, we support them to maximize their performance.
• Teleworking system
  We have established a teleworking system and rules and encourage employees to use this to achieve the optimal work styles for each job. This new system helps employees work flexibly and appropriately, making balancing work and their private lives easier.
• Compensation for employees working from home
  We provide 3,000 yen per month as compensation for data communication, and utilities costs to employees who work from home at least three days a week.

Employee Satisfaction Survey

We have been conducting the “Employee Attitude Survey” with the aim of understanding and improving the actual state of employee satisfaction. Compared to the results of the previous survey, this year's survey confirmed that satisfaction with skills and know-how training and development has improved, and that their sense of contribution and discretion in their work has increased. Establishing a workplace environment in which employees can work comfortably and with a sense of fulfillment is an essential foundation for corporate activities. We will use the results of this survey to advance our efforts to increase the engagement of individual employees further.

Childcare Support System (support for balancing work and family life)

We provide childcare support services for employees’ children to further support the realization of flexible working styles in each employee’s life stage.

Expatriate Support

• Support for expatriates living overseas
  We support making expatriate life comfortable, including language training, various leave programs, health checkups, vaccination assistance, maternity expenses, supplies, and subsidies for children’s education.

Employee Welfare

• Retirement payments, insurance systems
  We have introduced systems including a defined contribution pension plan, an asset-formation savings scheme, an employee stock ownership program, a retirement lump-sum payment system, and a corporate pension fund system. In addition to various social insurance plans, we also provide group insurance, pension for orphans and other bereaved family members, condolence money, and a severe disability allowance to prepare for any eventuality. We are thus proactive in establishing environments where employees can work with peace of mind.
• Other support
  We provide various types of support for employees according to their life stage.

Labor-Management Relationship (for the sound maintenance and development of the labor-management relationship)

To develop and maintain peaceful, sound labor-management relations, we have signed a labor agreement with the labor union under the principle of labor-management equality.
The labor agreement stipulates that the company shall grant union members the freedom to engage in union activities unless they violate the provisions of the labor agreement and that the company shall not treat employees unfavorably regarding labor conditions and other matters on the grounds of their union activities.
We hold regular labor-management consultation meetings to discuss labor conditions, the management environment, the company’s management policies and vision, wage increase demands, and other issues. Labor and management share management information and work to enable the reform of union members’ work styles and improve labor conditions and treatment.
We have adopted a union shop system, and all employees permitted to join the labor union are members.

Measures against COVID-19

We take the measures to prevent COVID-19 that are appropriate for the situation in light of the following internal definitions (phases) and consideration of legal requirements (the declarations of states of emergency/quasi-states of emergency).

Further, as basic infection control measures, we ensure that employees manage their health conditions, such as measuring their body temperature every day and refraining from coming to the office when their health condition is bad. When an employee has been infected or had close contact with an infected person and in similar cases, we take the measures prescribed by the government to prevent the spread of infection.