Employees
Health & Safety and Well-being
For safety and mental & physical health
The Nidec Group’s CSR Charter stipulates that, “based on cooperation between our management and employees, we strive to ensure workplace safety and good health to establish a work environment that brings out the best in each individual. Nidec’s health-oriented business management is based on the promotion of making a safe and comfortable work environment, and securing safety and good health for its employees.
Nidec’s Declaration on Promoting Good Health
The Nidec Group, which considers its employees’ good health and work satisfaction to be an important source of its business management, promotes actions for a “health-oriented management.” A good health is extremely precious for an employee and his/her family. In addition, our employees’ lively and continued action to achieve success will be the basis of Nidec as a “company to grow sustainably for the next 100 years.” We hereby declare to work in good health, which is an infrastructure for our employees and their families to support the next-generation society, so that each employee continues to work with passion and enthusiasm to demonstrate his/her highest-level performance.
Shigenobu Nagamori
The Nidec Group
Safety
To build a sale and comfortable work environment, all group companies’ business bases, including newly built ones and those that newly joined by way of M&A, try hard to manage their health and safety conditions via, for example, an annual risk assessment on accidents and illnesses such as infectious diseases.
Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate
| FY2018 | FY2019 | FY2020 | FY2021 | FY2022 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nidec Corporation (Non-consolidated) |
0.40 | 0.40 | 0.10 | 0.50 | 0.50 |
| Nidec Corporation (Consolidated) |
- | 0.78 | 0.66 | 0.73 | 0.85 |
| Industry Average (Manufacturing) |
1.20 | 1.20 | 1.21 | 1.31 | 1.25 |
Nidec’s major factories outside Japan, particularly in Asia, engage in health and safety activities based on ISO45001, the international certification standard in occupational health and safety management system, In the meantime, uncertified factories undergo a third-party audit based on our self-prescribed standards substantially equivalent to RBA* Code of Conduct (Nidec Group CSR Declaration).
Third-party Audit
The third-party audit are conducted at Nidec’s selected Asia-based factories and covers eight areas of focus, including emergency preparedness, occupational injury and illness, as well as machine safeguarding. Based on the audit findings, we identify problem areas and launch corrective actions. In FY2018, the highest priority was given to the following areas:
・Schedule a regular check of first aid kits to ensure immediate assistance to workers suffering from occupational accidents or illnesses
・Implement risk-relief measures to protect pregnant and breastfeeding workers against occupational safety hazards
Due to the COVID-19-caused pandemic, the third-party audits scheduled for FY2019 - FY2021 were postponed.
*Responsible Business Alliance (RBA) (former Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition: EICC):The RBA, renamed from the EICC in October 2017, is an organization established with the aim of resolving social, environmental and ethical issues in supply chains. The RBA Code of Conduct established referencing major internationally recognized norms and standards focuses on the following aspects: respect for human rights, improvement of the working environment, assurance of safety and health, environmental conservation, establishment of corporate ethics, and improvement of management systems.
Raising safety awareness
A measure to prevent accidents
We regularly issue a newsletter to share the information on individual group companies’ risks management activities in the entire group. In addition, when an accident occurs, we share with all sites photographs and other easy-to-understand information on the accident and measures taken, as part of preventive measures.
“Visualizing” safety
Anti-collision warning signal
In March 2016, to promote more active internal safety activities and raise employees’ awareness of safety, Nidec Corporation’s Nagano Technical Center submitted two proposals to the FY2015 “Visualize Safety Action Project” competition hosted by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, and both proposals were selected as examples of good practice. These were: (i) a buzzing-and-flashing warning signal to prevent contact between a person and an opening door; and (ii) chemical- and accident-handling manuals.
Health
Aiming to create a work environment that promotes our employees’ mental and physical health and help them to shine at Nidec to the best extent possible, we have a Health Promotion Committee in place. Each business base has health promotion personnel to launch measures tailored to its workplace, while working in collaboration with industrial doctors, i.e., health experts, and a health insurance union for the entire company to promote a health-oriented business management. In March 2023, Nidec Corporation was certified as an “Excellent (Large-scale) Health-Conscious Corporation 2023” for the third consecutive year for its strategic health management measures for its employees based on a management perspective.
Health management promotion system
Health & Productivity Management Organization 2023
(large enterprises)
Strategy map
A “strategy map” is a plan that explains management issues a company hopes to solve based on its health-focused management style, and that shows measures to solve the issues. Nidec promotes health-focused management based on its strategy map.
Strategy mapIssues regarding the company’s overall health-focused management and specific numerical targets
Issues: Helping employees feel “more comfortable working,” launching metal health measures, and better addressing of high-risk employees
Targets:
1. 7.5 points for the average of the replies to the questions on the “degree of comfort at work” in the FY2025 Health Survey (an internal awareness survey on health).
2. Less than 10% for the ratio of high-stress employees in the stress check
3. 100% for the rate of high-risk employees who have had a detailed medical examination
How we set our targets
To achieve the objective of “becoming a global company growing sustainably for the next 100 years and beyond,” it is essential for us to build a highly engaging corporate organization where each employee can work actively and sustainably. Among the results of the analysis of the “Nidec Health Survey (an internal health awareness survey),” we focus on the scores of “Engagement” and “Comfort of the work environment,” to promote measures to improve the latter in particular in our company’s health-focused management. In our opinion, improving our score of “Comfort of the work environment” requires us to maintain and enhance our employees’ physical and mental well-being in addition to having in place better organizational development and productivity enhancement systems. We will therefore design and implement actions for high-risk employees and for promoting mental health.
Actions towards the targets
To improve our score in “Comfort of the work environment,” we have introduced one-on-one meetings and career plan sheets to expedite supervisor-staff communications, while holding workshops for each workplace to rejuvenate organizations. Our other activities include reforming staggered work shift, home-working, and other systems. To help our employees maintain and enhance their physical and mental well-being, we effectively provide, for example, individual high-risk people with health instructions, and recommend a detailed medical examination based on their health checkup results. In addition, to prevent injuries and sicknesses, we have our industrial doctors and health instructors hold online seminars to help improve our employees’ health literacy, while reforming their behavior by eliminating the smoking areas on the company’s property, and recommending fitness habits. In addition, to address mental health issues, we will perform a post-stress check group analysis, and follow up on its results, to improve our scores in “Pleasantness in the workplace” and create a high-engagement business organization. With these actions, we will improve our “Comfort of the work environment” score, and establish a highly engaging corporate organization.
Concrete efforts
Promoting a non-smoking environment
The entire company is promoting a smoking ban to curb smoking- and secondhand-smoking-caused health risks. This non-smoking campaign designates no-smoking hours on a three-month basis, and expands them, to achieve a total smoking ban in all the business bases in FY2021. Thus, the company supports this campaign based on a mutual understanding so that both smokers and non-smokers promote the ban for their own health and their loved ones.
Health seminar
Since fiscal year 2020, to improve our employees’ health literacy, and improve and enhance the health of the entire workforce, we have been distributing videos of health seminars by our company’s industrial doctor, while holding e-learning classes for managerial employees (FY2023 saw 378 of the company’s employees attend the health seminars). For these videos, we utilize the results of the “Nidec Health Survey,” the annual survey on our employees’ health, to select topics requested by many employees and those directly linked to health-related issues (e.g. stiff shoulder, lower-back pain, sleeping, and quitting smoking).
Health management
Our health and safety managers conduct safety patrols in our workplaces to anticipate and instruct on risks detrimental to employees’ health.
An industrial doctor and a health nurse pay monthly visits to inspect our workplaces with us monthly, and provide instructions, mainly after checking mechanical equipment’s operational status, employees’ working positions, and the level of workload on employees. Inspection results are reported to the monthly health and safety committee meeting, where we share good practice and important points with one another. The committee also listens to comments by the industrial doctor and the health nurse to make workplaces more comfortable for employees. In addition, the committee holds health and safety seminars by an industrial physician and a health nurse to provide a better work environment for our employees .
Preventing infectious diseases
To prevent its employees from contracting infectious diseases, the Nidec Group’s sites in Japan offer their employees opportunities for mass influenza virus vaccination, and recommend that they be vaccinated, while providing those seconded overseas and their accompanying families with the region-specific vaccinations that Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs recommends. In addition, the group provides its employees with a chest X-ray to prevent tuberculosis infection.
Mental healthcare
Maintaining good health requires one to keep a good balance between physical and mental health. It is for this purpose that, in addition to an annual health checkup, special health checkup, and stress check, we hold a mental health lecture for employees to help them learn what they need to do to maintain good mental health conditions, while providing employees with opportunities to see the industrial doctor or the health nurse if they so wish.
Health-focused management in numbers
*1 No measurement in FY2022
*2 The Communicative and Critical Health Literacy scale is used for health literacy data.
The Health and Work Performance Questionnaire (WHO-HPQ) scale is used for presenteeism/absenteeism data.
The Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) is used for work engagement data.
