Employees
The Nippon Chemiphar Group believes employee diversity in terms of gender, gender orientation, nationality, workstyle, and values to be the cornerstone of corporate vitality and growth that leads to the enhancement of corporate value. The Group is striving to create a corporate culture that enlivens the individuality and talents of each employee.
1. Mechanisms, Training Systems That Use Employee Abilities
We provide employees with training and support systems, tailored to different ages and types of work, in order to expand their capabilities and develop next-generation managers. We support our employees by conducting performance-based evaluations; applying rating standards that assess managerial ability; encouraging the acceptance of challenges; establishing personnel systems that accommodate a variety of workstyles to fit each employee’s life stage; and promoting diversity.
And to develop human resources that can play an active role on the global stage, we send researchers to university overseas, support employees studying to earn an MBA, and subsidize the TOEIC test.
2. Employee Questionnaires; Factory Mentoring Programs
To supply high-quality pharmaceuticals, it is essential to foster a workplace culture that places top priority on quality. We cannot strengthen our work system and foster a culture of quality without there being a mutually beneficial relationship between personal and organizational growth.
To this end and to judge awareness of important issues, NPI’s Tsukuba Factory regularly distributes questionnaires to employees. A cloud-based system has been introduced to simplify responding to questionnaires, as well as the collection of completed documents and their analysis.
In FY2022, we put in place a mentor system in each department. It uses mid-career employees, who are well positioned to provide employee guidance while at the same time doing their work. To date, we have had a degree of success with having directors act as mentors, holding regular interviews and providing advice. Since last fiscal year, we have been introducing a system of mentoring to several generations of factory employees.
As the voices of our employees are heard and their issues made clear, we will continue to implement initiatives to improve our organization.
3. Harassment Prevention and Mental Health
In order to prevent our employees from being perpetrators or victims either within or outside of the Company, all employees learn about sexual, power, and maternity harassment. Company regulations prohibit sexual harassment and we have a sexual harassment prevention manual. In addition, we have in place internal and third-party hotlines for preventing and improving responses to various types of harassment.
Finally, we strive to maintain and improve employee mental health by conducting yearly stress checks on all employees, and offering interviews and guidance conducted by physicians to interested parties.
4. Supporting Work–Life Balance
In recent years, we have promoted work–life balance by eliminating long working hours, having overtime-free days, in principle prohibiting overtime after 8:00 p.m., and facilitating morning overtime, should additional work be necessary.
In FY2019, we made it easier for employees to use paid leave, as well as reduce and manage overtime. In addition, we raised employee awareness regarding workstyles and implemented ongoing follow-up efforts in support of work–life balance. We have a variety of systems that enable all staff to demonstrate their skills and, at the same time, work in a comfortable environment. These systems include a flextime system that allows employees to adjust their start and end times according to operational circumstances; a discretionary work system; a comeback registration system that promotes the reinstatement of employees who have left their workplaces for reasons such as childcare, nursing care, or changes in the workplaces of their respective spouses; and a reemployment system that allows senior employees to continue working after retirement.
We have adopted various systems that take into consideration each employee’s personal circumstances and preferences. When we select a work environment for our staff, we ensure that they can make full use of their experience and expertise.
We introduced a number of work-related measures that involve recommending teleworking and staggered working hours and implementing online conferencing. We will continue to strive to prevent interruptions to our stable supply of pharmaceutical products while protecting the safety of our employees.
5. Promoting the Use of Paid Leave
As part of our efforts to promote work–life balance, we implemented a pre-registration system for 10 days of annual paid leave that started in FY2021. The system is based on the idea that employees should be lively, energetic, and focused not only in their work, but at home and when pursuing their hobbies.
We believe that ensuring happiness in the private lives of our employees will ultimately enable us to provide better products and services. Accordingly, we recommend that employees who make use of this pre-registration system take consecutive days of paid leave whenever possible.
