Initiatives for Occupational Health and Safety and for Health Management
Basic Principles of Occupational Health and Safety Activities
Energy is the core business of the Toho Gas Group. It is only with the support of our employees that we are able to ensure safety and security, as well as a steady supply of city gas, to customers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It is also our employees who support work in front lines of disaster recovery in the event of a disaster. Therefore, ensuring the safety and health of our employees is the foundation for fulfilling our social responsibility as a corporation.
Based on the principles, we work to prevent work-related injuries, traffic injuries, and diseases to ensure the safety and health of employees and create a comfortable working environment.
With grounding on these basic principles, we regard occupational health and safety as one of the most important issues of business operations, and are devoting effort to it throughout the Group's activities.
Occupational Health and Safety Management System
Twice a year, we hold a Central Safety and Health Committee meeting chaired by the president, with committee members comprising management-level personnel, department heads, industrial physicians, and labor-union representatives. Organized under the Central Safety and Health Committee are the business-location safety and health committees and worksite safety and health meetings, and through mutual cooperation, the entire company is uniting to roll out health and safety activities.
Occupational Health and Safety Management System
Overview of the 2020 Company-wide Safety and Health Promotion Plan (Policy and Goals)
Policy
For traffic injuries, although the numbers of rear-end collisions where our people are wholly at fault have declined, single-car collisions and other two-car collisions are tending to remain high. To bring about a declining trends in injuries amid a variety of environmental changes, such as falling levels of driving experience among new hires and young employees, we will advance effective safety activities with emphasis on high-risk groups.
With respect to health, the ratio of employees subject to work restrictions during recovery activities after a large-scale disaster shows a declining trend, but to fulfill our mission as a gas operator, improvement of health status is a key issue. Going forward, to support the mental and physical health promotion among every one of our employees, we will be advancing measures addressing such matters as cancer, smoking, metabolic syndrome, and mental health.
Goals
1) Inhibiting the number of work-related injury incidents
Zero lost time from work injuries, zero traffic accidents in which the other party suffers injury, etc.
2) Entrenchment of promotion of mental and physical health
1. Suppression of mental-health risks
In stress checks- Reducing the percentage of high-stress persons
- Reducing the number of business sites where overall health risks are high
- Improved workplace support (superiors and colleagues)
2. Improvement of physical health risks
- Preventing taking up smoking among nonsmoking men under age 30
- Reducing the smoking rate among men
- Reducing the obesity rate among men
Prevention of Work-related Injuries and Traffic Injuries
Aiming towards zero accident injuries, we conduct a wide range of activities including dissemination of accident information, ensuring prevention of recurrence, and offering education of different kinds.
Experiential Safety Training System
To increase risk sensitivity, we have established a training facility in the Head Office that showcases past cases of injury related to gas construction work and where risk can be experienced up close using dummies and the like, and we have those who need it undergo training here. In an environment where safety is ensured, persons can actually experience for themselves such hazardous conditions as falls, fire, electrostatic discharge, and landslides.
Driver Certification System
To prevent traffic injuries, we have established an in-house driving-license system for employees who drive company-owned vehicles, and have those who need it obtain it. Under our rules, drivers obtaining one for the first time start with entry-level training, and at the time of renewal every five years, ride-along testing and suitability testing must be conducted. Driving recorders are installed in all vehicles, with superiors and others conducting sampling reviews of recorded video and providing guidance.
Numbers of trainees – This appears in the ESG Data（Social data）.
Strengthening Hygiene Measures (Infection-prevention Measures)
For measures to counter COVID-19 infection, we are implementing infection-prevention measures based on the "Action Plan for Measures Against Novel Influenza." We are monitoring physical health, such as by taking the temperatures of employees every day, and spread information to all by issuing frequently updated "vigilance alerts" that encourage methods of action to prevent infection.
As an energy supplier (a designated public corporation), particularly at the plants and pipeline-network companies that are fundamental to continued supply, more than a month earlier than the state of emergency declared in April 2020, we implemented special infection-prevention measures, including adopting a two-team shift system (avoiding contact between the two teams) with a third-team backup system.
Maintaining and Boosting Mental and Physical Health
Comprehensive Health Checkups
At Toho Gas, to augment the health management of our employees, we have been collaborating with a health insurance society to conduct comprehensive health checkups that include more periodic health-check items than those mandated by law. We have been doing this since 1999.
Our in-house clinic provides testing for stomach and colon cancer, dental examinations and guidance, abdominal ultrasound examinations, and guidance on exercising. Based on test results that are determined the same day, including for bloodwork, public-health nurses provide same-day guidance to all employees, which can translate into behavior modification. Through these endeavors, we continue to achieve an annual rate of 100% for periodic health checkups.
In cases where thorough examination is necessary, examination recommendations are ultimately made through superiors, thus reducing incidence of failure to follow up.
Health checkup rate (non-consolidated) – This appears in the ESG Data（Social data）.
Practicing Worksite Health-promotion Activities
At Toho Gas, we annually provide every worksite with population-analysis data that takes the results of the comprehensive health checkups and compares them at the worksite level. To enable each worksite to overcome such weak points as high smoking or obesity rates or low rates of regular exercise, the safety and health promoters at the respective worksites take the lead in putting into practice measures to counter lifestyle-related diseases and other health-promoting activities.
Promotion of Mental-health Activities
As primary preventive measures, Toho Gas carries out mental-health education that includes new-employee training and new-manager training, and since FY2016 we have conducted yearly stress checks and support activities for worksite improvement based on population-analysis results.
Public-health nurses also speak with all employees at the time of their comprehensive health checkups to try to identify any mental problems at an early stage, with followup health consultations provided as needed. We have established a return-to-work support system for employees on long-term absence, with industrial physicians, public-health nurses, worksite superiors, and the Personnel Department working in concert to provide support.
Number of training participants – This appears in the ESG Data（Social data）.
Passive-smoke Measures
We completed preparation of indoor smoking rooms as well as implementing streamlining measures to separate smokers and nonsmokers in 2012, and at present we are progressing toward a transition to outdoor smoking areas. Our in-house clinic also provides smoking-cessation treatment on an outpatient bases as a support for smokers why are trying to quit.
Health Consultation Contacts
We established telephone and email contact points for health consultations with industrial physicians and public-health nurses that take a wide range of inquiries regarding mental or physical problems either from employees themselves or from their superiors, and effort is made to improve health through early action.
Group-wide Safety and Health Activities
We work to share health and safety activities with affiliated companies, and collaborate with them to conduct education for preventing work-related injuries and mental-health workshops.
We have also organized a Health and Safety Council that includes partner companies and conduct joint patrols in an effort to prevent injuries throughout the Group.
External Recognition
Certification as an Excellent Occupational Safety and Health
Toho Gas was certified as an Excellent Occupational Safety and Health Enterprise by the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare in 2018 as a company actively taking measures to ensure the safety and health of employees while maintaining and improving a high level of safety and health.
The certification was awarded in recognition of our active efforts to comply with basic items, such as having no record of serious violations of occupational safety and health-related laws for the previous three years, as well as for implementing initiatives in a wide range of fields, such as measures to maintain and improve employees' health, measures for mental health, measures for overwork, and safety management.
Recognized As a "Certified Health & Productivity Management Outstanding Organization 2020 (White 500)"
In March 2020, Toho Gas was recognized as a "Certified Health & Productivity Management Outstanding Organization 2020 (White 500)" under a program administered jointly by the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) of Japan and the Nippon Kenko Kaigi. This program recognizes corporations that practice especially excellent health management based on efforts to address regional health problems and efforts to promote health that are advocated by the Nippon Kenko Kaigi, and Toho Gas earned acclaim for the full scope of these health initiatives on the part of the company.
