Creating a rewarding, employee-friendly environment

We’re studying how we can be even more proactive about utilizing a diverse workforce as a business strategy. We have a range of programs and measures with a particular focus on gender equality and related issues.

Well-being policy
(health management declaration)

Throughout our history, we’ve sought to build up trust with a network of suppliers that we’ve cultivated since our founding in line with our belief that ensuring quality inputs will yield profit later. To that end, we’ve worked to resolve manufacturing issues through a three-in-one approach with our sales partners.
In addition, we set “Sincerity” as our company motto based on our management philosophy and developed the ACCESS action guidelines to put that motto into practice. These are shown to employees as a measure for their conduct.

In this time of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, when the future remains uncertain, we face a variety of significant challenges, including abrupt climate change, unexpected pandemics, and geopolitical risks.
Companies are being called upon to undertake sustainability initiatives and to draw on new technologies to solve problems. Their employees must cultivate the ability to pioneer unprecedented ways forward on their own initiative.
Every Nichiden employee must continue to live up to society’s expectations by understanding the essence of the ACCESS action guidelines, foster positive and flexible thinking, and embrace new challenges.
Nichiden’s strength in people underpins its business activities. We’re best able to provide service of the highest quality when employees respect one another and embrace their jobs in a workplace environment that fosters a sense of unity while experiencing their own personal growth so that they can deliver their highest possible performance.
The top priorities in our management are to create a workplace environment that generates employees’ feelings of engagement and fulfillment and to facilitate employees’ physical and mental health by actively providing opportunities to improve health. We hereby declare that we will make well-being a focus of our approach to management.

Creating a rewarding work environment

Action plan in line with the acts on women’s active workplace participation and childcare support

We’ve formulated and are carrying out an action plan to create a worker-friendly environment that lets employees balance their job and personal responsibilities as they navigate a variety of life events and empowers each employee to make the most of their skills and abilities. In addition, top management has issued a Gender Equality Campaign Kick-off Declaration. We’re working to create a workplace environment that offers workers long-term employment as they balance their job and family responsibilities while fostering gender equality.

Poster for the Gender Equality Campaign Kick-off Declaration

Supporting women’s careers

We regularly publish a newsletter about gender equality on the company’s intranet to deepen all employees’ understanding of gender equality measures carried out by the company and national government. Topics include President Fuke’s kick-off declaration and the government’s programs for certifying companies that promote gender equality and childcare support.

Training for female employees

Reflecting our belief that the company will need contributions by both male and female employees going forward from the standpoint of Japan’s labor shortage and the need for workforce diversity, we offer career development training for women. This training gives them a chance to examine their own career and consider how they can move past a variety of life events to pursue it at Nichiden.

Hiring people with disabilities

Nichiden employs many people with disabilities in its back office and logistics centers. We entered into a contract with Ibuki Hirakata Farm, an organization that employs people with disabilities at an indoor farm, in 2021 to maximize opportunities for such workers.
Workers at Hirakata Farm, which is engaged primarily in herb cultivation, plant and pick herbs to make herbal teas. They approach their daily work with a sense of responsibility and a high level of motivation.

Creating a worker-friendly environment

We work to foster employee motivation and career development by putting in place a variety of systems designed to help them balance parenting, nursing care, and treatment obligations with their work responsibilities. We leverage those programs to further gender equality and retain a talented workforce. In fiscal 2023, 100% of female employees and 34.6% of male employees took childcare leave.

Work-life support program

This program lets employees who have used all their annual paid leave take up to five more days off as required to care for a child or other family member or to seek treatment for their own illness or injury (for example, to undergo outpatient care).

Shortened work hours for parents of children age 3 and older

As a result of Japan’s low birthrate and aging population, society needs to take advantage of its workforce while giving consideration to employees’ home situation. Nichiden’s shortened work hour program for parents of children age three and older allows employees to shorten their workday if they so desire until their children complete the third grade.

Reemployment registration

To help maintain its workforce, Nichiden has a program that lets employees register their intention to return to work after having to leave the company due to personal circumstances like marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, parenting, transfer of a spouse, or the need to care for a family member. Currently nine employees have registered under this program.

Paid leave

To provide an employee-friendly workplace where it’s easy to take time off, we encourage employees to utilize their paid leave in a planned manner by, for example, offering a program that lets them take seven or more days of annual paid leave and another program that lets them use paid leave before or after a weekend or holiday to create a four- or five-day long weekend. Furthermore, we’ve introduced an hourly paid leave system as a way for employees to take time off while accounting for conditions at work. Since they’re able to take paid leave in hourly blocks, this makes it possible to take time off as necessary in a variety of situations so that employees can flexibly maintain a work-life balance.

Hotline for childcare leave and new fathers

To comply with Japan’s revised childcare and caregiver leave act, which requires companies to put in place an employment environment in which workers can easily take parental leave, we created a hotline in fiscal 2022 in response to a roundtable discussion with female employees indicating that they wanted a hotline that they could turn to for advice about company programs, maternity/childcare leave, and women’s health. The hotline lets all employees seek information about a broad range of topics related to parental leave and leave for new fathers.

Special childbirth-related paid leave

This program allows male employees to take two days of special paid leave, for example so that they can be present at the birth of their child or accompany their wife when she’s admitted to or discharged from the hospital.

Health Challenge Campaign
(October and November 2023)

We participate each year in the Health Challenge Campaign, a program offered by Tokio Marine & Nichido Medical Service Co., Ltd. to foster employee health. The program helps employees who want to live a healthier life but don’t know where to start, who are worried about not being able to keep up healthy habits over the long term, or who feel embarrassed about exercising alone take the first step in increasing their physical and mental health and creating a healthy workplace environment. Designed so that all participants can have a good time while working to improve their lifestyle habits and foster health, the program attracted a total of 763 participants.

Health questionnaire

We’ve been administering an employee questionnaire about physical health since fiscal 2021. The results help us analyze health risks faced by employees and associated issues and provide support for employees as they strive to live healthier.

Subsidies for medical checkups

We augment assistance from the health insurance association by providing a unique subsidy program for employees age 35 and over (regular employees, fixed-term employees, and contract employees).

Subsidies for flu vaccinations

We offer a subsidy to employees and their dependent family members.

Employment data

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Occupational health and safety initiatives

Health and safety committees

Committees on health and safety at our logistics centers, Higashiosaka Building, and head office meet on a monthly basis to discuss health and safety topics with the participation of industrial physicians.

Eliminating traffic accidents

Because Nichiden uses vehicles in its sales operations, we host safe driving seminars for employees to raise their awareness of traffic safety and help eliminate accidents. The courses, which consist of classroom learning and videos, incorporate a variety of content, including information about accidents occurring at the company, training on how to anticipate hazards, updates on traffic laws and regulations, and what to do in the event of an accident. Four seminars were held in fiscal 2023. Although the number of traffic accidents has been trending down with each passing year, we will continue to work to eliminate accidents by raising safety awareness.

Stress checks

We offer stress checks for all employees. Employees whose results indicate a high stress level can meet with an industrial physician if they so desire.

Employee benefits

Asset-building program

At a time when the human lifespan is said to extend into the 100s, Nichiden has introduced an asset-building program so that employees can enjoy better lives. We’re helping employees build assets over the medium and long term with a shareholding association that offers a 10% incentive.
In addition, our defined-contribution pension program includes a matching contribution scheme in which employees can choose to make contributions to augment the company’s contribution.

Other benefits

We’re helping employees enjoy more fulfilling lifestyles with a variety of programs including leave that they can take to mark anniversaries and other life events as well as monthly lunch subsidies and other offerings.

Human resource development

Human resource policy and vision

First and foremost, we want our employees to reflect our company motto, “Sincerity.” This means they can do what is expected of upstanding people, such as properly greet others and keep promises.
In order to present a compelling case to customers, employees need to be able to “think in digital,” meaning thinking about things logically at all times while searching for answers. At the same time, when it comes to interpersonal relationships, employees also need to be able to “relate in analog” by valuing how people feel and engaging in face-to-face communication instead of doing everything by email or phone. We’re looking for people who can think in digital and relate in analog. We also look for the following four skills when hiring.

Educational programs

We offer training to help employees of all ranks and workplaces develop their careers effectively.

Helping employees acquire new skills

To boost employees’ appetite for learning and engagement, we offer subsidies to offset the cost of taking qualification exams for credentials that can streamline workflows and to defray the cost of distance learning by employees.

Mentor system

We have a mentor system that assigns older colleagues to serve as mentors to newly hired employees to help them overcome concerns and doubts. We also offer mentor training for employees seeking to become mentors.

Boosting employee engagement

We believe that a high level of employee engagement serves to fuel the company’s ongoing growth and value creation. We thus conducted an engagement survey in February 2023 to assess the current situation towards boosting engagement across our organization. We plan to take steps as appropriate to boost engagement based on the survey’s results.

Human resource system

We’ve introduced a human resource system that evaluates performance along the two axes of goal management and conduct evaluation. Goal management seeks to apply our medium-term business plan at the individual level to link employees’ achievement of their goals with the company’s growth. Conduct evaluation gauges employees’ performance in connection with the four skills of which Nichiden employees are expected of: emotional intelligence, information-gathering, logical thought, and patience.

Orange Club employee association

Nichiden has a voluntary employee association dedicated to fostering friendship among members, prosperity on the part of the company, members’ welfare and mutual aid, and the creation of a rewarding workplace. The group hosts an annual meeting attended by representatives from different teams around Japan, and local offices organize recreational activities. In addition to cultivating communication among employees, the group’s activities include offering proposals to management.
Employee association discussions also played a part in the formulation of Nichiden’s purpose statement. The group’s annual meeting in fiscal 2023 yielded a community service proposal from employees, and we’ve begun studying specific activities in line with that suggestion.