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Company-wide Activities of the Kobelco Construction Machinery Group
Employees are at the center of the Kobelco Construction Machinery Group's company-wide activities. To realize an enterprise beloved by its employees we create, maintain and support workplace environments where all employees can feel pride and joy in being members of the Group as they engage in business activities.
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Workplace Formation
With a stance of "valuing people", the Kobelco Construction Machinery Group aims to be an enterprise beloved by its employees and trusted internally and externally. To that end it has put in place internal systems for personnel and welfare along the lines laid down by legislation. To those it has further added its own unique measures as it works to create workplaces that are healthy and pleasant to work in.
Childrearing Support System
In FY 2005 we framed a Main Action Plan for General Operations and since then have been making adjustments to create an employment environment that enables childrearing side-by-side with work. Our new Action Plan sets forth active efforts for laying the foundation to create such employment environment, and takes the three items below to be the priority tasks to that end.
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Put in place setups for providing information on and backup for maternity and childrearing, etc.
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Devise measures to diminish work-is-the-priority attitudes and gender-based fixed role divisions, together with measures to promote taking of annual paid leave.
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Work to raise employment awareness in young people and support their independence, by implementing internships, etc.
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The special leave (paid) for a male employee whose wife has given birth has been improved from "two days" to "up to five working days each year until the baby reaches the age of three".
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Childrearing leave can now be taken until "the baby reaches the age of three", whereas before the maximum was until "it reached the age of one year six months".
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To facilitate childrearing side-by-side with work, the scope of application of "special consideration for working hours, etc" and "exemption from late-night work and overtime exceeding a certain duration" has been expanded to include "employees engaged in rearing children up until the time of graduation from elementary school".
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Enhanced Care Support
Caring for family members on an ongoing basis requires more money than one might think. It also gives rises to constraints on a person's time. It is a fact of society today that this imposes a major burden on people caring for relatives. To alleviate that burden by however little, we have set our own unique standards for care support, standards that are in excess of statutory requirements. Those standards form the basis of our efforts in this area.
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Enhanced care leave
Up to three years of leave can now be taken for nursing care. |
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Shortened working hours
Carers can shorten their working hours by one hour per day. |
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Utilization of welfare leave
One day and upward can be utilized for care and nursing care. |
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Efforts for Prevention of Sexual Harassment
Sexual harassment degrades the workplace environment and can constitute a major problem. The Kobelco Construction Machinery Group indicates clearly its attitude to sexual harassment by laying down in the Conduct Guide for Employees, Labor Convention, and Rules of Employment that "sexual harassment will not be tolerated". We have also provided a sexual harassment counseling service in each factory, staffed by counselors who can rapidly address sexual harassment issues. Furthermore, we have drawn up and made widely known a Sexual Harassment Prevention Manual so as to proactively prevent incidents from occurring.
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Mental Health Endeavors
As the final phase of the Three-Year Plan for Mental Health Activities at Hiroshima Factory (covering the period from April 2005 to March 2008), we conducted managerial staff mental health step-up education for crisis management of the workplace, employees and family, which attracted 122 participants. For the future, follow-up education will be given to supervisory staff and self-care education to new recruits. Other mental health endeavors will include efforts for improvement of workplace environments.
Personnel Cultivation
Internships
Each year since FY 2005 we have run summertime internships on an open recruitment basis with the purpose of raising school students' specialist knowledge and employment awareness – especially as regards future career – as well as deepening their understanding of the construction industry, including the Kobelco Construction Machinery Group, and jobs at companies, through the experience of working. Last year a total of 15 young people served internships at our factories in Tokyo and Hiroshima.
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Employee Education System
Self-realization through one's work and fulfilling one's expected role while feeling a sense of achievement are the goals of our human resource cultivation, and to that end we provide opportunities for superiors and the people under them to talk together. In order for each employee to have specific goals and strive and grow daily toward their achievement, employees draw up work targets and future career plans under a self-assessment system. On that basis we also implement job rotation from a viewpoint of resource fostering and while considering the individuals' desires and the operational and departmental needs. Further, we give level-based training so that employees at each level from new recruits up to managerial staff can acquire the abilities and approaches required of them.
Senior Employment System
Provided that they satisfy certain standards, all employees past retirement age who wish to keep working are reemployed under our Senior Employment System. This system has been introduced as a system common to all the Group companies. By bringing the skills and techniques possessed by veterans into play in the workplace after retirement, it is intended to promote smooth transfer of skills and maintain and enhance workplace vitality through appreciation of the worth of these seniors' work.
Other Endeavors
Mechanisms for Reflecting Employees' Views
We periodically hold Health and Welfare Committee meetings together with labor unions, at which we incorporate employees' views in revisions of our personnel and welfare systems. We also exchange views with labor unions regarding specific matters such as the employment system and retirement pension system and reflect their views in the architecture of such systems.
Cafeteria Plan
To enhance our welfare system amid the diversification of lifestyles, we introduced the cafeteria plan in October 2007. This is a system that permits employees to choose from among items on a welfare menu those that are best suited to their own needs, and to receive aid accordingly. For this purpose the company distributes points, and menu items can be chosen as far as an employee's number of points allows. The choices are many and various, including savings schemes and self-development programs. Numerous employees availed themselves of the system in FY 2007.
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Physical Exercises for Low Back Pain Prevention
We have been conducting physical exercises for low back pain prevention at our Hiroshima Factory since 1996, to prevent such pain in those at risk and its recurrence in past sufferers, and thereby to reduce the numbers taking long-term leave because of it. At that time the number of employees taking leave for back pain had increased, and investigation showed that many of the past and present sufferers were those engaged in deskwork, particularly in the development departments. Accordingly it was in those departments that the exercises were first begun. Today they are highly rated for their relaxation and fatigue recovery effects, being conducted once a month at nine locations under the direction of trainers.
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Blood Donation Activities
For 38 years we have conducted blood donation activities twice yearly at our Hiroshima Factory as part of our social contribution endeavors. At the 74th such activity in May 2007 we achieved a record-breaking 237 participants (17% of whom donated blood). This is a top-level performance among the enterprises in Hiroshima Prefecture. We will be continuing these educational activities in the future, with a goal of blood donations from 20% of the participants.
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System for Collaboration with Group Companies
The departments at headquarters of Kobelco Construction Machinery collaborate in deliberations for establishment of new systems, and revision of existing ones, at Group companies, working to make Group operations the basis for such systems to the extent possible. We are also deepening collaboration with Kobe Steel Group in such ways as adopting its cafeteria plan system.
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