Safety and Health Initiatives
Safety Activities Initiatives
Safety activity policy
We will further strengthen global safety activities to eliminate occupational accidents. Elimination of occupational accidents cannot be achieved without development of safety-conscious human resources and facilities. We are promoting establishment of a safety culture such that individual employees are always aware of safety and autonomously take action to ensure safety.
1. Managers themselves will take the lead in correcting unsafe behaviors and conditions.
Protect their own workplaces. Improve communication. Ensure that workers comply with the rules.
2. Mitigate machinery-related risks and improve the work environment.
Prevent forklift-to-people contact incidents. Improve machinery safety. Measures against chemical substances and heatstroke. Regular cleaning and maintenance.
3. Standardization and implementation of operations.
Standardization and implementation with assurance of safety. Appropriate education and training.
4. Activities for the elimination of traffic accidents.
Analyze the causes and likely locations of accidents, communicate them to workers, and provide appropriate guidance.
Common Group-wide activities
In addition to our activity policies, we are engaged on a daily basis in the following common Group-wide activities.
| Activity name | Remarks |
|---|---|
| STOP - CALL - WAIT | Basic actions to be taken in the event of abnormality: 1) Stop operation, 2) Call the supervisor, and 3) Wait for the supervisor |
| Collect & Reveal Activity | Verbal communication by supervisors and early response to opinions expressed by employees |
| Po-Ke-Te-Na-Shi | Five rules to prevent occupational accidents during walking |
Safety dialogue with the President and managing supervisors
Executive management and managing supervisors conduct safety dialogue and maintain regular communication with employees. The leaders themselves are striving to foster a comfortable workplace environment in which employees can work in safety with peace of mind. In fiscal 2019 in particular, due to the frequent occurance of occupational accidents in Japan, Chairperson of Safety and Health Committee himself traveled around to all of the Group’s sites in Japan for patrols. He held dialogue with workers and shared safety and health approaches with managing supervisors, impressing on them that taking action after an accident happens is too late and urging them to be thorough with preventive measures.
Safety dialogue with the President
Safety patrols by Safety and Health Committee
Global Safety Standards
The Sumitomo Riko Group has established its own unique Global Safety Standards (GSS), which have been in use since 2015. GSS for forklifts, power-off, and cut prevention have since been added to the original four categories of (1) machinery, (2) construction, (3) operations, and (4) safety management. In safety management, the work site safety patrol GSS have been expanded.
Sumitomo Riko Construction Safety Training Program
We also hold the Sumitomo Riko Construction Safety Training Program once a year in cooperation with our partner construction companies to ensure safe construction work.
Global safety audit
We conduct inspections at the Group’s production sites to achieve autonomous safety activities at those sites. We also conduct global safety audits based on the key sections of ISO 45001 and the GSS. Improvements are promoted by sharing the strengths and weaknesses of the activities, for horizontal deployment of good practices throughout the Group. On-site audits of actual operations are the norm for these audits, but due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, we are also working on the introduction of remote audit methods.
Global safety audits
Tokai Rubber (Jiaxing) Co., Ltd., China, July 2019
Data on occupational accidents
Independent Assurance
Number of people injured by occupational accidents
Independent Assurance
Lost time injury frequency rate*1
*1 Lost time injury frequency rate: Number of lost time injuries per 1 million hours worked
*2 Source: Overview of Survey on Industrial Accidents in 2019 (survey on establishments (with 100 or more regular employees) and survey on general construction) by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. Data prepared by Sumitomo Riko based on data available from this survey result.
Health Management Initiatives
In the belief that the physical and mental good health of all employees of the Sumitomo Riko Group and their families is the foundation of management that supports the sound, sustainable growth of the company, in April 2017, we established the Sumitomo Riko Group's Health and Productivity Management Statement.
Sumitomo Riko Group's Health and Productivity Management Statement
The Sumitomo Riko Group places importance on managing the health of our employees and promotes initiatives to achieve "Health and Productivity Management Statement."
Based on this Health and Productivity Management Statement, we will increase health awareness among our workforce by actively supporting employees engaged in health improvement activities and implementing organizational measures for health improvement, as we aim to become "a corporate group that is highly regarded and trusted by society and whose employees work healthily and energetically".
Three priority measures
- (1) Support for health improvement activities of employees and their families
- (2) Mental health measures
- (3) Lifestyle-related disease measures
Certified as a White 500 organization for the fourth consecutive year
In March 2020, Sumitomo Riko was certified as a White 500 organization under the Certified Health and Productivity Management Organization Recognition Program for the fourth consecutive year. We consider management of employee health to be one of the company’s most vital roles. Under the leadership of the Healthcare Office of the Human Resources Department, we are working together with the personnel in charge of health management at Group companies to share information, with the aims of creating invigorated organizations and improving the health of individual employees.
| FY2018 Actual | FY2019 Actual | FY2022 Target | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rate of regular health checkups taken | 100％ | 100％ | 100％ |
| Percentage of employees who smoke | 33.1％ | 31.6％ | Less than 25% |
| Percentage of employees who exercise regularly | 18.4％ | 19.5％ | At least 30% |
| Number of participants in walking events per event | 228 | 309 | At least 1,000 |
| Number of participants in health improvement training | 1,171 | 1,199 | At least 1,500 |
Priority initiatives
Initiatives for three priority measures
(1) Health improvement activities
At Sumitomo Riko, all employees take part in an original health calisthenics program every morning before the start of work as a way to practice daily safety, health and fitness, and regular exercise. In particular, we have a range of initiatives in place to increase the percentage of employees who exercise regularly, such as activities to encourage walking, physical fitness measurements, in-house health improvement education and training, and health-themed events. Besides education and training for all employees, we also provide training programs to meet the needs of individual workplaces.
Health calisthenics before
the workday starts
In-house training (for 50-year-olds)
At the training for 50-year-olds held in October 2019, SR Soft Vision, which was developed by Sumitomo Riko, and other equipment was used to conduct fitness checks.
Health events
Family walking
health event
(2) Mental health measures
Sumitomo Riko carries out comprehensive mental health measures. In addition to (1) in-house training, such as mental illness prevention education programs, (2) individual consultations with specialist psychiatrists, which are held monthly, we act promptly to assist employees who are mentally unwell and work to assist people to return to work after mental health leave and to prevent the recurrence of their condition, with our own unique return-to-work program. We also conduct a 120-question stress check to ascertain the working environment and degree of organizational vitality of each workplace and make improvements at the individual workplace level based on the outcomes of analysis.
Stress check
Group analysis findings briefing, October 2019
Return-to-work program guidebook
(3) Lifestyle-related disease measures
Smart Club activities - Health seminars on women’s cancers, etc.
Sumitomo Riko Smart Club (SSC) is the name of a voluntary in-house activity that involves members striving to improve their lifestyles while losing weight, in order to prevent lifestyle-related diseases.
We also hold Seminars for Women on various themes, such as countermeasures against women’s cancers and menopause, to help women work energetically. In fiscal 2019, 110 female employees participated in the seminar.
Prevention of passive smoking and quit-smoking measures
One priority area that we are working on is measures to combat passive smoking and to encourage employees to quit smoking. Our current target is to lower the percentage of employees who smoke by at least 5% compared to 2019 by 2022. To this end, the 22nd day of every month has been designated as a no-smoking day, with health officers patrolling the outdoor smoking areas and encouraging smokers not to smoke. This is just one of the ongoing quit-smoking promotion activities we are undertaking. Further, in 2019, employees who want to quit smoking were invited to join in the Sumitomo Riko Quit Smoking Challenge (SKC), in which small groups of smokers support one another in their efforts to stop smoking.
Sumitomo Riko Quit Smoking Challenge (SKC)
Meeting in July 2019
Quit Smoking Poster
Collaboration with all Group companies in Japan
Health training at a Group company
SumiRiko Yamagata, August 2019
To promote health improvement measures among employees of the Sumitomo Riko Group, we have strengthened our collaboration with all Group companies in Japan to conduct health improvement activities, such as holding our original health training programs at affiliated companies.
Communicating outcomes of Sumitomo Riko Group health improvement activities outside the Group
Communicating activities outside the Group.National Industrial Safety and Health Convention, October 2018
At events such as the National Industrial Safety and Health Convention and meetings of the Japan Society for Occupational Health, we present the outcomes of our various initiatives to maintain and improve the health of our employees, such as our passive smoking prevention measures and quit-smoking campaigns, our return-to-work program for people recovering from mental illness based on objective indicators, and our workplace improvement activities using stress check surveys.
Strengthening of collaboration between the company, labor union, and health insurance association
Support for labor union
leaders' training sessions, May 2019
Currently, as well as collaborative health programs with the health insurance association, we hold regular liaison meetings between the company, labor union, and health insurance associations to share the company’s health-related information and to work together to devise measures. This is one example of the way in which we are strengthening this three-way collaborative relationship to engage in initiatives for the prevention of illness and improve the health of employees.
