As Japan’s birthrate declines and its society ages, securing an adequate workforce to enable our company to stay in business has become a major issue.
Keeping working employees healthy is essential not only to improve the quality of life (QOL) of the employees themselves but also to realize the MS&AD Insurance Group’s Corporate Philosophy. Our Group provides venues for diverse personnel with a wide range of values to work together and pursue work style reform that will increase productivity while making their workplaces more comfortable and their work more satisfying, and creates health- and safety-conscious workplace environments to maintain and improve the physical and mental health of all employees.

 

Promoting Work Style Reform

Work style reform is being implemented across the board by diversifying work locations and hours, restructuring employee roles, and adopting creative approaches to prevent long working hours. Our Group has been promoting work style reform since fiscal 2016. We are working to reduce working hours through measures such as leaving work before 19:00 as a general rule, encouraging employees to take leave and streamlining operations. We are also seeking to improve productivity by improving the level of expertise of each employee and implementing management practices that make use of the employees’ diverse abilities. As response to COVID-19 pandemic in fiscal 2020, many employees worked from home and worked shifts that allowed them to change their hours as necessary. Employees also took paid half-day or hourly leave. Going forward, we will continue to promote flexible working styles that make efficient use of time and place.

Diversification of work locations/hours

We are diversifying previously fixed work locations and pursuing more diverse work styles for our employees.
Example initiatives:
・Promoting remote work (use of thin client computers, phones and smartphones for business use, and use of web conferencing tools)
・Implementing work from home programs and utilizing satellite offices
・Introducing shift work and short-term work systems

Restructuring of roles

We are seeking to reform employees’ thinking and behavior to ensure that they perform their work even better, further improving their productivity and strengthening their competitiveness.

Prevention of long-term working hours

We are maintaining the health of individual employees and supporting work-life balance by preventing long working hours.
Example initiatives:
・As a rule, employees must leave work before 19:00
・Finishing times are shared within workplaces using finish time declaration cards to foster awareness of differences in working hours
・Industrial physicians provide one-to-one guidance to employees who work on their computers beyond a certain number of hours

Encouraging employees to take paid leave

We encourage employees to take paid leave by formulating plans for regular leave in advance, and periodically confirming that employees are in fact taking leave

 

Targets and Results (the number of annual paid holidays taken)

ESG Data/Reference Material (rate/days of paid leave taken)

Maintaining and Improving Employee Health

We are working to maintain and improve the physical and mental health of employees and to create better working environments.

Support to improve health

We conduct campaigns that encourage and support employees to carry out behaviors and lifestyle habits that improve health (self-care).
Example initiatives:
・Revamping day-to-day lifestyle habits by encouraging use of the Koko Kara Diary, our proprietary app
・Planning health promotion and other campaigns, providing support to employees quitting smoking (subsidies to cover teletherapy expenses), etc.
・Encouraging employees to come to work in sneakers, stair climbing (the 2-Up/3-Down campaign, displaying stickers on staircases showing calories burned), etc.
・COVID-19 vaccination at workplace. Work for vaccination

Improving health literacy

Creating an environment that promotes lifestyle habits needed to improve health and which prompts employees to acquire greater knowledge and skills on mental health, etc.
Example initiatives:
E-learning, videos featuring top athletes promoting exercise, providing information on lifestyle habits that include physical and mental well-being, diet, exercise, sleep, smoking, and providing health education as part of health consultations and tier-specific training

Mental health care

We have set up a health and productivity management center and an employee consultation office to provide care for the mental health of employees. In addition to carrying out stress checks uniformly across the Group and bolstering mechanisms to prevent mental disorders, we are using the findings of group analysis to establish better workplace environments
Example initiatives:
Preventive activities: training, e-learning, stress checks, health consultations at workplaces
Support for afflicted persons: consultations during rehabilitation
Return-to-work support: preparations for returning to work during recovery periods, etc.

Support systems for balancing medical treatment and recuperation

Establishing a system to support the balance between work and treatment of illness or injury*
[Leave system]
・Paid leave (up to 32 days) is granted every year. Up to 20 unused days can be carried over, and employees can take consecutive leave for medical treatment and recuperation
・Up to a total of 65 remaining days of carried over leave can be accumulated, and can be taken as consecutive leave for treatment of personal injury or illness
[Support system]
If an employee faces limitation due to injury or illness, s/he is allowed to work from home, work shorter hours, commute by personal vehicle, etc.
(*) The support system and number of days of leave that can be taken or saved varies depending on the group company and employee classification

Creating Safety-conscious Workplaces (Compliance with Occupational Health and Safety Act)

We are striving to ensure safety-conscious workplaces with the Group insurance companies in Japan setting up industrial health committees in accordance with the Occupational Health and Safety Act. The committees investigate/deliberate on matters pertinent to preventing health hazards and maintaining/improving health each month.

Uniform Group-wide medical checkup system

MS&AD Holdings operates a uniform Group-wide medical checkup system so that employees can undergo standardized medical exams and analyses. For employees whose exam results require follow-up measures, we provide health guidance and encourage them to undergo further examinations by industrial physicians/nurses.

 

ESG Data/Reference Material (Consultation rate of medical checkup)

Establishment of a suitable working environment

To improve operational efficiency among employees while ensuring their physical and mental health, we are establishing comfortable working environments with due consideration for lighting, circulation, temperature, humidity, noise, and ergonomics.

Prevention of workplace accidents

We conduct monitoring and risk assessments at workplaces in order to put in place the workplace environments needed to prevent falls and other accidents. Group insurance companies that use company-owned vehicles are managing accident rates and ensuring that employees engage in safe driving practices in keeping with the safe driving management rules for company-owned vehicles.

 

ESG data and reference material (number of workplace accidents)

Communicating with Employees

We think it is vital that all employees understand the direction in which the company wishes to proceed and that working environments are created in such a way that the employees can maximally apply their enthusiasm and skills to helping the company along its course, and we are arranging various opportunities for communication among employees to this end. We also incorporate opinions expressed by employees in to our efforts to improve corporate management and upgrade the quality of our products/services.

Employee satisfaction surveys Employee Satisfaction

We periodically conduct opinion surveys of all Group employees. These surveys are used to instill the concepts of the Group’s Corporate Philosophy, Corporate Vision, and Code of Conduct, to confirm whether a sense of Group solidarity is being fostered, and to check whether employees feel satisfaction and a genuine sense of growth with their work.

 

Targets and results (employee satisfaction)

Mechanisms to make use of employee opinions in improving operations

We have set up a bulletin board on the in-house system where employees can post improvement proposals and other messages. The posted content is then examined by the various head office divisions, who then provide feedback on the proposals.

Dialogue with executives

We periodically arrange opportunities for employees and top-level executives to exchange views so that the employees’ views can be incorporated into company management.