Creating Comfortable Workplaces
The Tosoh Group seeks work-life balance for its employees in the form of providing workplace environments where employees can continue to feel fulfilled in ways that enrich their overall well-being. Moreover, we are putting in place policies that better fit contemporary employee lifestyles.
Work Style Reform
We introduced work style reforms in April 2015. These include reducing annual working hours and establishing more comfortable workplaces.
We are promoting a morning work schedule and using a working hour management system to visualize the status of attendance. The latter is fostering greater awareness of time and optimizing working hours. We have also established a refreshment support leave scheme that encourages employees to take at least five consecutive-day vacations each year to improve our annual leave utilization rate.
The Tosoh Group’s goal is to put in place a virtuous cycle that improves the work environment and job satisfaction of employees and that builds a strong corporate structure that supports the Tosoh Group’s sustainable growth.
Working hours |
FY20 |
Annual total working hours1 |
1,897 hours/person |
Annual total overtime working hours1 |
205 hours/person |
Rate of use of annual paid leave2 |
79.2% |
1 Data is for nonexecutive level personnel.
2 Data is for employees, and the calculation period is July of the current year through June of the following year.
Personnel-related data |
FY18 |
FY19 |
FY20 |
Regular employees3 |
3,404 |
Male |
3,102 |
3,501 |
Male |
3,179 |
3,576 |
Male |
3,240 |
Female |
302 |
Female |
322 |
Female |
336 |
New employees |
163 |
Male |
145 |
215 |
Male |
189 |
208 |
Male |
176 |
Female |
18 |
Female |
26 |
Female |
32 |
Employees with foreign citizenship4 |
11 |
10 |
15 |
Reemployed employees 4 (*) |
48 |
53 |
47 |
Disabled person employment rate 4 |
2.03% |
1.91% |
2.00% |
Average age 3 |
39.9 |
39.5 |
39.1 |
Average years of continuous service 3 |
14.7 |
14.6 |
14.6 |
Employee turnover 5 |
0.59% |
0.91% |
0.98% |
Employee retention rate (three years after joining) |
98.7% |
97.4% |
96.9% |
3 Figures include employees from group companies seconded to Tosoh but exclude Tosoh employees seconded to group companies.
4 Figures include Tosoh employees seconded to group companies.
5 Figures reflect voluntary retirees, excluding mandatory retirees, tranfers to group companies, promotions to executive positions, expiry of sick leave period and punitive dismissal.
(*) Reemployed employees refer to employees who were reemployed by the company upon reaching mandatory retirement age.
Work-Life Balance
Tosoh is expanding and upgrading its regulations for a workplace culture that helps employees balance work and life outside work.
We have established childcare and family care leave and extended leave systems, including a reduced working hour scheme, to facilitate childcare. And we have transformed our nursing and family care leave systems into paid leave to make it easier for employees to use.
We also issued a family care guidebook presenting basic family care knowledge and information on how to follow government regulations and introducing our support systems in an easy-to-understand format. By making this information widely available, to employees engaged in family care and their coworkers not engaged in family care, we aim for an understanding work environment where all employees can work with peace of mind.
We will continue to establish a workplace environment that, while fostering the motivation and satisfaction of all employees, recognizes and values diverse employee lifestyles.
Data related to childcare and family care |
FY18 |
FY19 |
FY20 |
Childcare leave recipients |
Male |
1 |
22 |
26 |
Leave taken: 1% Returned: 100% |
Leave taken: 14% Returned: 100% |
Leave taken: 15% Returned: 100% |
Female |
13 |
13 |
14 |
Leave taken: 100% Returned: 100% |
Leave taken: 100% Returned: 90% |
Leave taken: 100% Returned: 100% |
Paternity and childcare leave recipients |
122 |
125 |
157 |
Returned: 87% |
Returned: 82% |
Returned: 90% |
Employees working reduced hours to facilitate childcare |
41 |
40 |
38 |
Extended family care leave recipients |
1 |
0 |
0 |
Family care leave recipients |
1 |
14 |
19 |
Health and Productivity Management
At the Tosoh Group, we engage in what translates as health and productivity management. This is a reference to Kenkokeiei®, a registered trademark of the nonprofit organization Kenkokeiei, or Workshop for the Management of Health. Our hope is to contribute to the mental and physical well-being of our employees and thereby strengthen our on-site capabilities, which is a key management issue.
The three pillars of our health promotion activities are physical fitness, lifestyle, and mental health. The Nanyo and Yokkaichi Complexes each have their own Health Promotion Committee that plans activities each year. In addition to health consultations and lectures by public health nurses and medical nurses, the activities involve participation-type campaigns that see employees take part in activities such as walking events.
We also seek to improve employee health by providing pleasant workplaces. Additional mental health measures that we undertake include employee stress checks. In fiscal 2020, 96.3% of our employees underwent stress checks.
6 Health and productivity management, as translated here, refers to Kenkokeiei, a registered trademark of the nonprofit organization Kenkokeiei, or Workshop for the Management of Health.
Human Resources Development and Diversity and Respect for Human Rights
We are working to instill our corporate philosophy and the tenets of the Tosoh Spirit in our employees. We are also developing human resources services to enrich the personalities and characters; develop the cognitive abilities; and, in the interest of safe, stable operations, improve the knowledge and skills of our employees. To continue, moreover, to enhance our corporate value, we welcome diversity in people and values and respect human rights.
Human Resources Development
We provide young employees with on-the-job training. But we are going well beyond this by building a human resources program to develop our young employees as resources core to the Tosoh Group.
We offer rank-based education and training for all levels of employees, from new to longtime employees on up through our executive ranks. We also emphasize programs whereby employees can advance the skills necessary to perform their duties and learn about compliance.
We have upgraded and expanded our educational opportunities within a framework that allows employees to be proactive in enhancing their capabilities. We periodically review and change our education and training and find that this alters awareness and behavior for the better when employees return to their workplaces.
Rank-Based Training
We provide training to match the needs of employees of all ranks.
New employee training and logical thinking training are provided for the first through third years of employment to strengthen and consolidate basic skills as a member of society. Beginning-level supervisor training is provided for fourth- and fifth-year employees through which they can acquire problem-solving skills.
Mid-level employees who have worked at Tosoh for more than five years use e-learning programs to acquire business skills, such as business strategy and marketing skills. Those about to be promoted to management positions benefit from practical, case-based exercises where they apply the skills they’ve acquired through e-learning.
Executives are provided with training that gives them an understanding of the roles of employees at each rank. They also acquire the business skills they’ll need as future management executives.
Technical Education
At the Nanyo and Yokkaichi Complexes, we have established a training system that reflects the voices of those on-site to achieve safe, stable, and efficient plant operations. Employees there and at Tosoh Group companies in Japan and around the world benefit from the practical, hands-on learning opportunities we offer at our training facilities to maintain and improve their technical skills and our corporate technological levels.
We also provide continuous chemical engineering education to young manufacturing staff. This is essential for the safe and stable operation of chemical plants and for product quality and energy efficiency.
Diversity
We believe that to continue to improve and generate value, we must welcome and utilize diverse people and values. So we are working to promote diversity.
Female Employee Recruitment and Engagement
Tosoh prioritizes the recruitment and engagement of women. In the last three years, we have added 81 women to our employee ranks, steadily raising the percentage of female employees in our workforce to 9.8% as of the end of fiscal 2020.
Our Japanese operations have in place an action plan for female employment based on Japan’s Act on the Promotion of Women’s Participation and Advancement in the Workplace. Our focus is on increasing our ratio of and broadening our job categories for female employees, cultivating female managers, and working toward the retention and advancement of women within our operations.
Data related to female employees |
FY18 |
FY19 |
FY20 |
Number of female employees |
302 |
322 |
336 |
Number of female new graduate or mid-career female hires |
20 |
26 |
35 |
Number of management-level female employees* |
9 |
10 |
13 |
Proportion of management-level female employees* |
0.90% |
0.98% |
1.26% |
*Figures include seconded employees.
Disabled People
We consider the employment of disabled persons fundamental to our corporate social responsibility. Our workplaces employ people with physical, auditory, visual, intellectual, mental, and other types of disabilities, regardless of the degree of severity. In assigning work, we consider each person’s physical condition and potential for outpatient hospital care, adjust the amount and nature of work to suit the individual, and teach work procedures in an easy-to-understand manner.
Since fiscal 2018, our employment program for disabled persons in Japan has supported the transition to work for disabled persons in the Nanyo area and has led to our employment of six people as of the end of March 2020. We also utilize the Japanese government’s Employment Service Center and staffing agencies to hire the personnel needed for our various workplaces.
Mandatory Retiree Reemployment
Skills, knowledge, and experience acquired over a lifetime of work are essential to our corporate sustainability. To ensure that they are passed on to our younger generations of employees, we reemploy our mandatory retirees.
Foreign Employees
Hiring foreign nationals is another aspect of diversifying our human resources. It also assists us in pursuing our global development strategy and in broadening our worldview to include ways of looking at things that might otherwise escape us.
Human Rights
The Tosoh Group abides by policies of unequivocal respect for human rights. We support the aims of the United Nations (UN)’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Labour Organization’s (ILOs) Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and the UN’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. We are also a signatory to the UN’s Global Compact, enacted in April 2019, in support of its 10 principles across four areas.
Internally, our Tosoh Group Action Policy incorporates respect for basic human rights and individuality. That policy guides how we educate employees throughout the Tosoh Group in the importance of human rights as they relate to business.