Employees

• Together with Employees
• KAITEKI Health and Productivity Management
• Respect for Human Rights and the Development of Diversity
• Effective Placement and Human Resource Development
• Labor-Management Relations

Basic Policy and Personnel Strategy

Mitsubishi Chemical (MCC) is implementing a range of initiatives aimed at enabling employees—upon whom realizing KAITEKI depends—to exercise their abilities to the fullest as well as at achieving sustainable corporate development based on a relationship of trust between employees and management.

Basic Policy

"Utilizing people’s capabilities" is a component of the basic management policy of the MCC Group. We will practice KAITEKI Health and Productivity Management and conduct business by empowering all Group members to engage in their work with enthusiasm, self-motivation and initiative and to demonstrate their individual capabilities to the fullest as we promote diversity in human resources as a positive force.

Personnel Strategy for Sustainable Corporate Development

MCC is mainly implementing initiatives related to the following issues with the aim of utilizing people’s capabilities.

• KAITEKI Health and Productivity Management
• Respect for human rights and promoting diversity
• Effective placement and human resource development

In implementing initiatives related to the first of these, KAITEKI Health and Productivity Management, we are focusing on both health support and workstyle reforms, aiming to improve health at the individual and workplace levels. That is, we are working to realize workstyles that facilitate health and job satisfaction for every employee as well as workplace environments that allow each individual to thrive and utilize their abilities to the fullest. MCC is working strategically—investing and building frameworks—to make this happen. We are encouraging every employee to proactively examine their own health, work and workplace, ask what they can do to enhance their own health and vigor at work, and take action accordingly. We believe that this approach will help each employee achieve a greater sense of satisfaction and achievement both at work and in their everyday lives. Furthermore, individuals and organizations backed up by health exert a positive influence in their families and communities. In this way, we are confident that we can contribute to society through our businesses and thus contribute to realizing KAITEKI.

As for the second issue, respect for human rights and promoting diversity, we want the MCC Group to be an organization in which all employees respect one other’s diverse individuality and values, including nationality, race, religion, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation and disability or lack thereof, and together fulfill the Group’s corporate social responsibility while enabling every individual in the Group to exercise their abilities to the fullest. Aiming to lay the foundations and create support to enable diverse human resources to thrive, we are further developing our existing initiatives related to respect for human rights, hiring people with disabilities, enabling women to succeed, and providing support for child care and nursing care. At the same time, we are working to create environments that are accommodating of all employees, regardless of nationality, and to foster understanding and provide support for LGBT individuals and other sexual minorities.

The third issue is effective placement and human resource development, an area in which we aim to enable every employee to work with enthusiasm, motivation and initiative and to exercise their abilities to the fullest. Specifically, we are engaging in personnel placement on a Group-wide basis to meet the demands created by globalization. We have also adopted a career development program—a system for medium- to long-term strategic personnel placement and development with the aim of encouraging employees to pursue self-directed growth. Going forward, based on this program, while clearly delineating the roles of the Group in Japan and the regional headquarters, we will advance effective placement and human resource development across the MCC Group as a whole.

Aiming for “Sustainable Engagement”: The MCC & me Survey

In fiscal 2019, MCC Group launched the MCC & me Survey, an engagement survey replacing the Employee Perception Surveys implemented in years past, on a global basis. In fiscal 2021, approximately 39,000 Group employees answered the survey, for a response rate of 83%.

We aim to use the survey to understand the state of “sustainable engagement”—a term we use to refer to the intensity of employees’ connection to their organization, marked by committed effort to achieve goals (being engaged) in environments that support productivity (being enabled) and maintain personal well-being (feeling energized). We believe that understanding and bolstering sustainable engagement will help enhance employee performance and thereby improve customer satisfaction and business performance.

Personnel System Aimed at the Growth of Both the Company and Employees

We believe that, even in an environment changing as rapidly as the one we find ourselves in today, if each employee takes up new challenges and demonstrates creativity, it will lead to corporate growth. To that end, we must ensure that the Company and employees build relationships in which they both choose to engage with and energize each other and develop a corporate culture through which they can grow together. As the foundation for such relationships, MCC has built a personnel system focused on the three key themes of self-directed career development; transparent working conditions and compensation structures; and promoting and supporting workforce diversity. We will bolster a shared value of mutual respect and thereby develop a culture that will help realize KAITEKI through career development support that includes using open recruitment as the main means of employee transfer, consideration for employee preferences in location transfers and more frequent meetings; a compensation system that is better linked to responsibilities and results and not dependent on age, years of service or family structure; and welfare and benefits that accommodate diversity and the differing circumstances of each individual.

KAITEKI Health and Productivity Management

Basic Policy

Mitsubishi Chemical (MCC) is implementing KAITEKI Health and Productivity Management, aiming to ensure that every employee can thrive and find purpose and satisfaction in their job while leading a rich life, striking a good balance between work and private life. We have defined what KAITEKI Health and Productivity Management is and set out initiatives and goals in this area under a name that incorporates our ideal of KAITEKI—KAITEKI Health and Productivity Management. Accordingly, we are strategically investing management resources in order to maximize the performance of one of the greatest assets of any company—the people who work there—from the perspective of health.

KAITEKI Health and Productivity Management

We are advancing KAITEKI Health and Productivity Management, based on health support and workstyle reforms, by carrying out specific initiatives and measures based on the three perspectives shown below.

We have established key performance indicators (KPIs) of the progress and results of the initiatives and measures based on the above three perspectives. We use these KPIs to implement PDCA cycles.

We are also working with our health insurance union and labor unions while promoting information sharing and coordination with Group companies.

Health Support

Health Support Measures to Realize KAITEKI Health and Productivity Management

MCC positions all health support measures, including those required by law, as KAITEKI Health and Productivity Management initiatives. We are implementing a variety of measures to realize self wellness, workplace wellness and social wellness. Specifically, we maintain a health and safety management system and provide health check-ups and stress check tests in compliance with relevant laws and regulations. While duly respecting our employees’ privacy, we actively support the maintenance and improvement of their physical and mental health. We are coordinating and collaborating with the health insurance union to more accurately grasp challenges to employee and workplace wellness and promote more effective and efficient measures in line with such challenges as we aim to realize KAITEKI from the perspective of health.

Raising Health Awareness and Improving Lifestyle Habits

Collaborative Health Initiatives

MCC proactively coordinates and collaborates with its health insurance union, working to raise the health awareness of employees and their families and carry out effective, efficient health promotion efforts based on the clear division of roles and good workplace environments. Specifically, using ICT, we have set up a health portal system that makes medical data easily accessible all in one place. Such data includes health checkup results for single years and over time, health risk diagnoses and other health information, and medical fee notices. In addition, to help employees make changes to their behavior to improve their health, we have adopted a new health point incentive scheme designed to maintain motivation and encourage self-directed efforts.

Going forward, we will use special health guidance related to metabolic syndrome to help prevent lifestyle-related disease, provide follow-up guidance by mutually sharing health check-up data between the Company and the health insurance union and, to help prevent more serious health issues, encourage at-risk employees who meet certain criteria to receive consultations at medical institutions. By doing so, we aim to raise each individual’s awareness and help them change their behavior for the better.

Creation of Safe and Healthy Workplaces

Second-Hand Smoke Countermeasures

To create workplaces where all employees can work in good health and with peace of mind, we banned smoking by employees at all company workplaces, including the head office and branches, effective April 1, 2020. At the same time, in consideration of the health of individuals from outside the company, local residents and employees’ families, we have banned smoking during working hours even when employees are working outside company premises. More than a year has passed since the introduction of these measures, and thanks to the understanding and cooperation of both smokers and non-smokers, we have greatly reduced exposure to second-hand smoke in workplaces. In addition, we offer employees aiming to quit smoking an antismoking support system that utilizes external support services, and the smoking rate among employees is gradually decreasing.

Support for Employees Balancing Work and Medical Treatment

In addition to its extensive compensation system for absence from work, in April 2021, MCC established a system of reduced working hours and reduced work days for those undergoing medical treatment. The new system allows employees to choose between taking leave and continuing to work while undergoing medical treatment, depending on their preferences and the demands of their treatment. Along with the launch of the system of reduced working hours and reduced work days for medical treatment, we created a handbook that serves as a manual for using the system as part of efforts to ensure that employees are aware of it.

We strive to create supportive environments for employees who wish to work while undergoing medical treatment, working in coordination with their primary physicians, our human resources divisions, industrial physicians, industrial nurses, and employees’ bosses and coworkers. By creating frameworks that allow employees to easily seek advice, such as setting up an online cancer salon, we aim embrace our colleagues who are balancing treatment with work and, by working together, gain new insights into diversity and different values, thereby fostering a richer corporate culture. Enabling employees to balance work with medical treatment aligns with MCC’s mission of realizing KAITEKI.

Occupational Accident Countermeasures Focusing on Human Factors

KAITEKI Exercises and Safety Fitness Tests

In Japan and within the company, falls are one of the most frequently occurring causes of injury. We have made company-wide efforts to prevent such falls, including improving facilities, revising work practices and implementing various forms of training, but these initiatives have not reduced the number of injuries caused by falls.

To address this problem, in addition to existing measures, we have begun focusing on human factors, namely physical strength and dexterity. Specifically, we are advancing fall-prevention physical training as part of KAITEKI exercises and carrying out safety fitness tests to assess employees’ fall risk. Beginning in fiscal 2017, we steadily began such initiatives across the company. Medical interviews over the ensuing four years through fiscal 2020 found that the number of times employees reported having fallen in the past year had declined, and employee fitness test results showed a decrease in employees at high risk of falling. In fiscal 2020, we worked on exercise-related tools, such as videos, for the global Group and diverse employees to accelerate the expansion of initiatives at Group companies in and outside Japan. As remote work increases and workstyles undergo other changes, we will continue to practice KAITEKI exercises, working to help employees of all ages, throughout the MCC Group, develop the physical strength and skills to prevent falls.

Workstyle Reforms

Work Reform

By achieving radical innovations at the workplace level under the leadership of on-site managers, we are eliminating inefficiencies and freeing up time. Through these efforts, we aim to pursue more value-creating work and improve work-life balance. The corporate function domains, such as human resources and administration, publish guidelines for running meetings and preparing documents and e-mails. At the same time, we are supporting such work reforms by providing enhanced IT communication tools. We are advancing work reforms in coordination with Business Reengineering projects.

Proper Management of Working Hours

As part of workstyle reforms under KAITEKI Health and Productivity Management and to prevent excessive working hours and ensure compliance, MCC is striving to appropriately manage working hours.

Eliminating Excessive Working Hours and Increasing the Paid Vacation Usage Rate

To accurately track actual working hours, our attendance system records when employees log on and off the computers they use. This helps prevent discrepancies between actual and reported working hours.

We are also implementing awareness-raising activities, such as presentations for managers about the proper management of working hours, aimed at reducing overtime through self-directed work improvement in each department.

Furthermore, we are working to make it easier for employees to take time off using such programs as the refresh leave system^*1 and by setting planned annual days off.^*2 Also, to support employees’ self-directed social contribution efforts, we have established a volunteer leave system (up to five days per year) and donor leave system (as many days as needed).

Between-Shift Intervals

To help ensure that employees get adequate rest and do not begin a new day before recovering from the fatigue of the previous, and to avoid health risks stemming from overwork as a result of long working hours, we have established the Between-Shift Interval Guidelines. These guidelines recommend that employees try to secure an interval of at least 11 hours between the time they finish work one day and begin work the next. We have also made it easy to check if employees have secured this interval on their attendance charts.

*1 Employees who take two or more consecutive annual paid vacation days can receive one additional day off on the following business day once a year (up to three days a year for employees who are 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, or 55 years old as of April 1 of said year).
*2 A system that makes it easier for daytime employees to use their annual paid vacation by designating certain days for everyone in the company to take off at once. Up to three days per year.

Promoting Flexible Workstyles

Remote Work System

As part of efforts to enable employees to work more productively and in light of recent lifestyle changes, we are strongly promoting the use of remote work. We allow employees to work the entire week remotely to enable more flexible workstyles. In addition to their regular workplaces or homes, employees can use satellite office spaces contracted by the company.

Overview of Leave Systems

MCC has established the following leave systems to enable employees to balance their work and private lives.

“Mitsubishi Chemical Has Decided”

We have distilled our KAITEKI Health and Productivity Management measures into 33 declarations under the title “Mitsubishi Chemical Has Decided” and published them within the Group and externally. These 33 declarations were formulated to reflect employees’ wishes for the kind of company they want MCC to be and clearly declare the company’s stance and determination as it works toward the goals of KAITEKI Health and Productivity Management.

Respect for Human Rights and the Development of Diversity

Mitsubishi Chemical (MCC) regards respect for human rights as the basis of its management and the development of diversity as part of its management strategy and focuses efforts on these issues.

Respect for Human Rights

MCC established the Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation and its group companies Human Rights Policy as its paramount policy on human rights to complement its mission and basic management policy and to guide initiatives related to respect for human rights in business activities. This policy was published in February 2021. Building on an understanding of human rights as defined in the International Bill of Human Rights and the International Labor Organization’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, we uphold and conduct business activities based on the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the ten principles of the United Nations Global Compact. In addition to providing the necessary employee education to ensure respect for individual dignity and rights, MCC forbids child labor and forced labor and strives to maintain proper working conditions. Through these efforts, MCC seeks to fulfill its corporate social responsibility to ensure that the rights of all its stakeholders are respected.

Our core initiatives in this area comprise the promotion of human rights due diligence in line with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. In addition to providing education on business and human rights based on the Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation and its group companies Human Rights Policy, we monitor internal human rights risks and ensure preparedness to remediate any issues that may arise.

To promote human rights due diligence on a company-wide basis, we have established the Human Rights Due Diligence Committee, chaired by the president and with members that include the chief operating officer of each business domain and corporate function domain as well as the Chief Compliance Officer (CCO). The members of this committee regularly report on performance and discuss new initiatives as they implement PDCA cycles.

Human Rights Due Diligence Initiatives

Furthermore, to enhance its understanding of initiatives to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for negative human rights impacts arising from business activities, MCC participates in human rights initiatives through its parent company, Mitsubishi Chemical Group Corporation. In fiscal 2020, we participated in the Human Rights Due Diligence working group organized by Global Compact Network Japan as well as the Caux Round Table Japan’s Stakeholder Engagement Program.

Within the company, we maintain systems for appropriately dealing with human rights issues in order to create environments in which employees can exercise their abilities with peace of mind. Specifically, we are implementing a variety of educational and other initiatives, including rank-specific training and e-learning, aimed at deepening awareness and knowledge of human rights. In addition, we are promulgating a clear message of zero tolerance for harassment and are working to improve awareness and mindsets. At each plant, we have appointed harassment counselors that employees seeking help or guidance related to harassment or human rights issues can consult.

In fiscal 2020, we implemented training on unconscious bias for all workplace managers. The approximately 1,200 participants learned about inclusive leadership aimed at truly making the most of diversity to enhance competitiveness.

Fiscal 2020 Human-Rights Related Training

• *1To promote employee awareness of human rights, every summer we ask employees and their families to submit human rights-related slogans.

Enabling Women to Succeed

MCC is working to nurture female managers, provide career development support for female employees, implement workstyle reforms and develop its workplace culture through a range of initiatives.

The Mitsubishi Chemical Women’s Council, launched in 2018, is a company-wide project sponsored by the president and aimed at promoting the success of women. The Council works to provide career development support to women by holding career workshops for specific job types, providing opportunities for participants to network and consider their careers as well as their own development. In addition, the Council holds dialogues with top management as part of efforts to understand the challenges faced by female employees. Furthermore, we send employees to training programs organized by external organizations and offer training on various specific themes that is open to all. Through such initiatives, we are providing opportunities for employees to expand their perspectives and enhance their skills.

About once a month, we also hold Career Encouragement Seminars in which women who are leaders in various fields speak about their own careers and beliefs. These seminars offer employees opportunities to find role models from within and outside the company and to proactively consider their careers. They also help supervisors learn about how they can best support their female employees. All employees and managers, regardless of position or gender, can participate in these seminars.

MCC is providing support to enable its female employees to achieve greater success as part of efforts to utilize its people’s capabilities. At the same time, we continue to build a foundation to ensure that women and all employees can succeed in their own ways by providing accurate evaluations and increasing awareness of flexible workstyles.

We have formulated the action plan below based on the Act on Promotion of Women’s Participation and Advancement in the Workplace.

Career Support Initiatives

To promote self-directed employee career development, we hold career fairs that include lectures by outside experts as well as career consultations and feature interviews with employees. Employees and their supervisors also engage in career design interviews in which they discuss the employee’s career from a medium- to long-term perspective, and we hold age group-specific career workshops in which employees think about the careers of people their age. Through these and other measures, we offer support centered around the theme of proactively considering one’s career.

Balancing Work and Home Lives

MCC not only offers support to employees who have child care and nursing care responsibilities, but considers each individual’s life plan and offers systems that enable diverse employees to remain highly motivated in their work to support employees in balancing their work and home lives.

Initiatives Related to Child Care

We have created an environment that supports employees with children from a long-term perspective to make it easier to work while raising children. To help avoid difficulties related to taking and returning from child care leave, we have made pre-child care leave (or for women, pre-maternity leave) meetings between employees and their line managers mandatory and, to facilitate an earlier return from child care leave, set up a “concierge service” to assist parents in finding and securing spots in daycare facilities.

To facilitate fathers’ active participation in child care, we have extended the period during which they can take paternity leave and allowed the use of expired annual paid vacation days for child care. We are also working to foster a corporate culture that encourages the use of child care leave by such means as providing awareness-raising videos that expecting fathers and their supervisors can watch together and handbooks on balancing work and child care.

We have formulated the action plan below based on the Act for the Promotion of Measures to Support the Nurturing of the Next Generation.

Initiatives Related to Nursing Care

Aiming to eliminate retirement due to the need to provide nursing care for a family member, MCC works to raise awareness of the importance of advance preparation for providing nursing care by offering a handbook on balancing work and nursing care and holding seminars. Through such efforts, we are creating environments that allow employees to work with confidence.

From fiscal 2020, we are working to make the information employees need readily available and accessible by, for example, publishing the handbook and a video on measures employees should take when the need to provide nursing care arises. We are also working to raise the quality of nursing care support services.

Consideration of Employee Work Location Preferences

MCC gives consideration to employees’ work location preferences in a number of ways, aiming to enhance productivity through the accommodation of diverse workstyles.

Work Location Continuation

Employee transfers that entail moving residence are carried out only after checking with the individual about such transfer and with consideration given to their life plan. For management position employees who may be ordered to accept a transfer that entails moving due to business management requirements, we have established a system by which they can register their desire remain in their current work location, guaranteeing that they will remain there for up to six years.

Preferred Work Location

Employees can register their preferred work location and job type when they would like to move from their current work location to another for such reasons as to accompany their spouse on a work transfer or to provide nursing care to a parent. Using this system, MCC does its utmost to find ways to align the needs of the individual and the company.

Remote Work

To avoid transferring employees away from their families, employees who are raising children or provide nursing care are allowed to work remotely from anywhere in Japan.

Main Systems to Support Employees in Balancing Their Work and Personal Lives

• Temporary retirement for child care: Until the April 30 after the child’s third birthday
• Reduced work hours/work days for child care: As long as approved by the company
• Injury/illness nursing care leave: Up to 10 days per year (can be used in half-day units)
• Temporary retirement for family care: Three years per qualifying family member
• Reduced working hours/work days for nursing care: As long as approved by the company
• Nursing care leave: Up to 20 days per year (can be used in half-day units)
• Livelihood support leave (system for accumulating expired annual paid leave): Can be used for recovery from illness or injury, child care, nursing care, etc.
• Temporary retirement for spouse’s overseas service: Allows employees to take leave of up to three years to accompany their spouse on an overseas work assignment
• Day care information service
• Nursing care allowances
• Establishment of external nursing care consultation points

Hiring People with Disabilities