Occupational health and safety

Occupational safety and health is one of the most important themes in DOWA’s efforts to leverage its business toward sustainability. Therefore, the Company conducts safety-related activities based on the basic philosophy of “safety takes priority over everything” grounded on annual plans formulated from risk management planning for all businesses domestic and overseas. The DOWA Group’s safety and health activities cover all workers involved, including subcontractors and contractors.

Under the Group’s system for promoting safety management, a director of DOWA Holdings serves as the person responsible for environment and safety for the Group, and the Environment & Safety Department selects safety and environment personnel from each operating company who work together to conduct safety management activities. The director in charge of human resources at DOWA Holdings is responsible for the safety and health management activities. They promote these activities throughout the Group while developing and building a system to promote them in the human resources departments, safety departments, occupational health physicians, and health insurance associations of each Group company. The Sustainability Subcommittee holds Groupwide discussions on occupational safety and health. Matters flagged as important by the Sustainability Subcommittee are reported to the Sustainability Committee, which is above the Sustainability Subcommittee, and further important matters are reported to the Board of Directors. The Board of Directors provides oversight on safety and health.

The Safety & Environment Personnel Council comprises a representative from the Environment & Safety Department and a representative from each operating and technical support company. It convenes every month for discussing the promotion of Companywide safety activities, sharing the activities of each Group company, and providing mutual support. In the event of an accident, the council confirms the facts surrounding the situation, investigates the causes, discusses emergency and permanent measures to deal with it, and then provides feedback. For matters such as agenda items or measures decided by the council, instructions are delivered by those in charge to each operating subsidiary,with a mechanism in place for prompt information sharing.

The Regional Safety Council has been set up as a place for communication, allowing members from each region to share examples of safety-related activities and ideas and consult with one another. The council is endeavoring to boost the level of safety-related activities by helping establish cooperative ties among different business fields.

The Environment, Health, and Safety Management System (EHS-MS) is defined as the integration of our environmental management system (ISO 14001) and occupational health and safety management system (ISO 45001). We aim to cooperate in compliance with these ISO standards. Under the Midterm Plan 2024, we aim to build and operate this EHS-MS at all business sites and to have internal control over the Environment (E) and health and safety (HS) for the entire Group. To achieve our goals, we will strive to prevent accidents by improving the management level of each of our two management systems, the environment and health and safety, while utilizing them. In addition, in FY 2022, we prepared the EHS-MS Manual, which clarifies roles, responsibilities, and authorities between DOWA Holdings and operating companies. We structured the manual in line with ISO standards to realize an occupational health and safety management system based on risk management that can operate, be maintained, and undergo improvement. We are expanding this manual to the entire Group, referring to examples of prior sites that have already implemented this manual.

Although the number of accidents for the Group as a whole has been declining over the long term, due to the occurrence of a serious industrial accident in February 2023, the frequency rate was 1.19 compared to 1.25, with an intensity rate of 0.87 compared to 0.08, in comparison with the figures for establishments of the same size in the accident statistics by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. We will continue to implement various safety measures and strengthen our safety management system.
In FY2022, 82 (82 persons) lost-workday accidents and 22 (24 persons) lost-workday accidents (including fatalities) occurred. Each time an accident occurs, we analyze the causes of the accident and implement measures to prevent recurrence in accordance with the Industrial Accident Reporting Standards. 11 (13 persons) lost-workday accidents (including fatalities) were caused by ‘chemical equipment’ and ‘power transporters’ and were due to inadequate equipment, inadequate work procedures, or non-observance of procedures. Therefore, we are taking measures to prevent recurrence through ‘equipment improvement’ and ‘risk assessment’.

We have established a unique system to strongly support improvement by designating business sites with serious accidents and business sites with a high frequency of occupational accidents as designated business sites and semidesignated business sites, respectively. The Safety and Environment Personnel Council, consisting of safety personnel from DOWA Holdings and all operating companies, provides support and guidance to the designated and semi-designated sites to improve their safety systems. We are working to improve the safety level of the entire Group by holding discussions based on diverse perspectives and addressing our issues.

The Safety & Environment Personnel Council provides support and guidance to business locations with a high frequency of work-related accidents to help improve their safety systems. The committee incorporates the objective perspectives of outside consultants as it carries out safety audits, performs diagnostics on health and safety, promotes improvements, and strives to raise safety levels.

We provide training on health and safety at each of the Group’s production sites. To this end, DOWA Holdings provides training to promote knowledge and understanding of health and safety issues common to the entire Group. In FY 2022, per the Group’s policy on the establishment and operation of the Environment, Health, and Safety Management System (EHS-MS), we conducted an e-learning program to promote understanding of the EHS-MS. We also worked to promote understanding and penetration of the management system that the Group aims to follow. In addition, we conducted risk assessment assessor training, occupational health and safety compliance evaluator training, seminars aimed at understanding occupational health and safety, and compliance seminars, with a total of 412 employees participating.

The DOWA Group’s measures to prevent work-related accidents include efforts to enhance risk assessment activities and safety risk assessments for existing and new businesses. For new businesses we conduct safety audits and, since FY 2019, we have performed design and construction for new businesses based on the DOWA Technical Manufacturing Standard, a series of standardized rules for each stage of the process, including construction conceptualization and both basic and detailed design. We use a checklist to evaluate the status of necessary systems to ensure any anticipated environmental and occupational health and safety risks have been dealt with and to ascertain whether there is a proper understanding of residual risks, with proper countermeasures in place. After this process, confirmation and guidance are provided.

The entire Group has been implementing risk assessment initiatives Groupwide for many years. We have established Risk Assessment Guidelines to further improve our risk assessment practices. The guidelines clarify management’s responsibilities and set key points for conducting risk assessments starting from the source of the hazard.

●Key Points of Review in the Risk Assessment Guidelines

The DOWA Group has formulated the DOWA Group Health Management Declaration and promotes a variety of health-related measures.

The Group takes health management measures for employees and their families beyond those required by law, such as gynecological and family checkups and subsidies for immunizations. We have also set up a special hotline for telephone and in-person consultations with a professional counselor (clinical psychologist). Furthermore, we take seriously the health challenges posed by global infectious diseases (including pulmonary tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and malaria), and our Group is proactively responding to these challenges. We alert our employees to these global health issues by educating those posted overseas about infection prevention. For early detection of tuberculosis, in particular, regular health checkups, including chest x-rays, are conducted.

The DOWA Group companies were recognized as a Certified Health & Productivity Management Outstanding Organization (Large Enterprise Category) / Certified Health & Productivity Management Outstanding Organization (Small and Medium-sized Enterprise Category) under the Certified Health & Productivity Management Outstanding Organization system by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Nippon Kenko Kaigi.