Health and Productivity Management Initiatives
Promotion of Health
The SUMCO Group's Approach to Employees' Health
Under the principle that “the safety and health of employees take the highest priority over all,” the SUMCO Group strives to create a bright, lively and fulfilling workplace. The Group has announced the SUMCO Group Health Declaration both internally and externally, and strategically promotes various health advancement activities as investment in health.
SUMCO Group Health Declaration
The SUMCO Group considers employee's health to be an important management resource and strives to be a group in which all employees work energetically by supporting the voluntary health promotion by each employee, as well as implementing active organizational initiatives.
Health Promotion Framework
- Health-related Meetings
The Company-wide Health Committee and Health Promotion Meeting are convened regularly. These bodies report on the status of initiatives and attainment level of health objectives (KPIs) for each site, and reflect finding in the planning of new measures and improvement activities. As expert knowledge is important to promote these improvements, working primarily through the supervising industrial physician in the Health Promotion Section under the Human Resources Department, industrial physicians, full-time public health nurses and regular nurses (12 full-time, 2 part-time) have been assigned to each site of the SUMCO Group to offer Group employees individual health guidance, meetings and smoking cessation support, as well as to promote health and productivity management including efforts to improve the workplace environment through stress checks, mental health training, and other services.
Health and Productivity Management Initiatives
We promote initiatives to maintain and improve the health of each employee as a company through various well-planned company-wide initiatives.
SUMCO was selected by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) as a company that excels in health management under “the 2023 Health & Productivity Stock Selection,” for the second consecutive year, where one company from one industry category was generally selected from among the listed companies. Additionally, SUMCO Group has been certified as one of the “White 500” corporations under “the 2023 Certified Health & Productivity Management Outstanding Organization Recognition Program” sponsored by the METI and The Nippon Kenko Kaigi for the fifth consecutive year from 2019.
Our health management challenges
We focus on three health management issues in particular: "1. mental health," "2. smoking cessation," and "3. lifestyle-related diseases," set target values, create medium- to long-term plans, and carry out activities.
1. Mental Health
SUMCO believes that maintaining good mental health among employees leads to the development of a workplace environment where employees meet the high demands of customers, be highly productive and work with vitality. As a part of the primary prevention of mental health issues, since 2003 SUMCO has been operating and assessing workplace environment improvement activities as part of its occupational safety and health management system (OSHMS).
In addition, based on the results of stress checks conducted regarding workplace environment improvements at each workplace, we have each employee exchange feedback aimed at improvements to be made within the workplace, decide on and implement action items, and post collections of effective initiatives as good practices on the company intranet site.
Main Action Items
- Mental health training (stratified training, e-learning) and consultation framework for counselors and other staff
- Workplace environment improvement activities based on stress check results
Results of Activities
- Workplace Environment Improvements Based on Stress Check Results
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- *1General health risk is calculated from the stress check using a work stress determination chart.
- *2ERI-adjusted general health risk is calculated using general health risk and an effort reward imbalance model.
Case Studies of Activities
- Workplace Environment Improvements Based on Stress Check Results (Examples of Good Practices)
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In the SUMCO Group, departments whose stress check results show higher loads in the analysis are voluntarily improving the workplace environment by their respective departments within the framework of OSHMS. As an example of improvement activities, there is a case where the leader of a workplace where long working hours continued created and executed a Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), reviewed the results, and evaluated the effectiveness of the countermeasures. We succeeded in earlier leaving times for each employees and reduction of overtime hours by adjusting work volume and personnel, redistributing tasks among employees, and implementing initiatives such as posting messages on workplace bulletin boards to reduce overtime hours in order to foster awareness towards reducing working hours and monitoring the utilization of regular leaving days. In addition to these efforts, the SUMCO Group promotes initiatives that respect the employees’ work-life balance, such as tracing the annual paid leave utilization rates and encouraging them to take annual leave.
Main Action Items
- Workplace environment improvement activities by OSHMS
- Preparing and sharing a collection of workplace good practice case studies
- Company-wide development of workplace environment improvement award system, including the SUMCO Group companies in Japan
2. Activities to Encourage Smoking Cessation
In January 2020, a survey on smoking was conducted among all Group employees. Trend analysis was conducted on factors such as smoking frequency and number of smoking sessions by employees who are smokers, and as a result of conducting smoking cessation training and individual health guidance in light of the various traits and age groups, the smoking rate among the Group employees has diminished by 14.1 % during these five years, from 46% in 2018 to 31.9% in 2022.
Additionally, to coincide with the closure of all smoking areas within SUMCO Group premises as a measure related to the nationwide spread of COVID-19, we reviewed our system to allow outpatient treatment for smoking cessation without co-payments and to provide subsidies through the purchase of medications, as part of our own support measures. This support provides smokers with the opportunity to take up the challenge of quitting smoking at no cost to themselves, while also taking advantage of health insurance programs.
Main Action Items
- Trend analysis based on results of survey of all employees on smoking
- Smoking cessation training based on the results of the above survey and encouraging the use of smoking cessation treatment through individual health guidance (Free company-subsidized smoking cessation treatment)
- Workplace anti-smoking challenge race (All workplace participation: Kyushu Factory)
- Continued closure of smoking areas on company-premises as a COVID-19 related measure
3. Measures to Address Lifestyle-related Disease, Other Initiatives
The results of periodic medical checkups show that the percentage of employees with metabolic syndrome increases between the ages of 30 and 40. We therefore offer health classes and health guidance to employees before the age of 40 to improve their lifestyles. We also hold health classes for employees aged 39 with the cooperation of external managerial dietitians, to verify the effectiveness of these classes, which will lead to improve guidance for the following year.
To promote exercise habits, our Kyushu Factory (Saga Prefecture) has conducted a walking activity using SAGATOCO, a walking application developed by Saga Prefecture. As a result of the effort, our Kyushu Factory was awarded the 2021 Saga Saiko Grand Prize in the health management category. In the walking rally, we also visualize aspects such as team rankings based on participants' step analysis, aiming to enhance their motivation to participate.
Additionally, due to the advancing age structure of the workforce, we assume that incidents of falls and trips will increase. To address this, we have assessed the motor functions of employees in a joint initiative with the Department of Sports Science at Fukuoka University to develop the SUMCO Fall Prevention Exercises and implement them in-house. In addition, as part of measures to ensure the health of female employees, we conduct surveys targeting all female employees to understand their needs, and implement initiatives such as providing free health classes, conducting the free Equol test, and offering company assistance programs for women's cancer screenings.
Main Action Items
- Health classes for employees at age 39: Participation rate 100%
- Walking activities: Participation rate 51.7%
- Improvement of dietary habits: Participation rate 99.9%
- Individual health guidance following regular medical checkups (including guidance to improve blood pressure and blood glucose levels)
- SUMCO fall prevention exercises: Implementation rate 81.0%
- Free Equol test (for those who wish)
- Company assistance programs for women's cancer screenings
4. Results and Medium-term Targets for Mental Health, Smoking Cessation and Lifestyle-related Disease Issues
| Assessment Item | 2018 Results | 2019 Results | 2020 Results | 2021 Results | 2022 Results | Medium-Term Targets (2025) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Current smoker | 40.6% | 38.2% | 36.6% | 31.9% | 31.9% | 20.0% |
| Percentage of Employees with Metabolic Syndrome | 26.3% | 26.9% | 28.6% | 29.4% | 29.9% | 25.0% |
| Exercising for 30 minutes or more / week | 24.2% | 25.4% | 28.4% | 27.6% | 29.0% | 35.0% |
| Percentage of employees not feeling refreshed after a night’s sleep | 38.9% | 32.6% | 31.7% | 33.5% | 33.7% | 24.0% |
Comprehensive Indicators of SUMCO’s Health and Productivity Management and Their Development into a Strategic Map of Each Initiative
By working on health and productivity management, SUMCO believes that health and productivity management help solving the ultimate goal of our health strategy map, which is to create high creativity by ensuring a workforce that works with vitality, and to prevent the possibility of poor health, injury or illness to reduce productivity. Therefore, we quantify comprehensive indicators to visualize these status and apply each initiative to our health strategy map to achieve results by strategically systematizing each initiative as a health investment. This allows us to conduct evaluations each year, leading to the necessary measures being implemented in the future.
Comprehensive Indicators
- Reduced productivity indicators: presenteeism (reduced productivity when attending work despite poor health or physical condition), absenteeism (missing work due to poor health or physical condition)
- Indicators of vitality level: work engagement (positive perception and emotion for work), job fulfillment, job satisfaction
Results of Activities
- Results of Activities 1. Presenteeism and Absenteeism (From Employee Questionnaire Survey)
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- (Average number of days based on employee responses)
- *1Presenteeism :In the past 12 months, how many days did you work despite feeling you should have taken a sick day?
- *2Absenteeism :In the past 12 months, how many days did you take off due to illness, including annual leave?
- Results of Activities 2. Work Engagement (From Employee Questionnaire Survey)
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- *Work Engagement: average points from employee questionnaire on nine items regarding work (7-grade evaluation from 0 to 6 points)
- Results of Activities 3. Employee Satisfaction and Job Fulfillment (From Employee Questionnaire Survey)
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- *1satisfaction: the percentage of employees who responded that they were “satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” with their job
- *2Employee Satisfaction of Job fulfillment: the percentage of employees who responded “yes” or “somewhat yes” as to whether they are in a fulfilling job
Creation of the SUMCO Health and Productivity Management Strategy Map
Supervising Industrial Physician
Minako Iyadomi
Measures related to the various selection based on the Health and Productivity Management Strategy Map aim not only to solve our Company's challenges in health and productivity management, but also to evaluate the effectiveness of health-related measures and contribute to the improvement of the next measures. In the fiscal year 2023, we plan to evaluate the effects of newly established workplace environment support system, strengthened smoking cessation support measures, and newly established cancer screening subsidy system.