Formulation of Brother Group Health & Productivity Management Philosophy and the Promotion Structure
Brother Group Health & Productivity Management Philosophy
The Brother Group aims to create superior value through manufacturing and deliver products and services to customers around the world. With this purpose in mind, all group employees are working every day on a global stage.
As stipulated in the Brother Group Global Charter, the basis of such activities, the Brother Group values taking care of the health of every employee so that they can strive to achieve their goals, and ultimately, contribute to the group's success.
In September 2016, Brother Industries, Ltd. (BIL) formulated the Brother Group Health & Productivity Management Philosophy. Under this philosophy and the leadership of the Chief Health Officer (CHO), the Brother Group has been strategically undertaking various activities.
After formulating the philosophy, the experience of the global pandemic of COVID-19 reminded BIL of the importance of being able to work in good health, leading to a revision of the Health & Productivity Management Philosophy in FY2024.
Brother Group Global Health & Productivity Management Philosophy
The Brother Group will strategically pursue health management that places emphasis on well-being, which is a state of being in good health both physically and mentally and filled with joy and fulfillment in work.
The well-being of each employee is a vital management asset, and we believe that when employees vigorously work while fully utilizing their diverse abilities, it leads to the growth and transformation of the entire group.
The Brother Group will continue to pursue health management with the spirit of "At your side." and strive to contribute to customers, local communities, and the sustainable development of society from a global perspective.
Brother Industries, Ltd.
Representative Director & President
Chief Health Officer
Kazufumi Ikeda
Health & productivity management promotion structure
BIL has established the Health Management Center to manage the health of Brother Group employees, develop mental health measures, and promote good health. The center offers effective and efficient approaches to maintaining and promoting employee health by implementing the PDCA cycle and collaborating with the Health Promotion Center of Brother Health Insurance Society. Meanwhile, the Brother Group's manufacturing facilities outside Japan have been employing doctors or partnering with medical institutions to maintain and improve the physical and mental health of employees.
Brother Group health & productivity management promotion structure
Brother Group Health & Productivity Management Promotion Council
Health and safety managers at BIL and the Group companies in Japan meet once a year* to identify issues about employee health and decide on action policies and targets for the next fiscal year and beyond. In addition, the Brother Health Insurance Society and Group companies that have developed excellent activities present case examples of their activities and share information on effective and efficient initiatives.
Since FY2018, the Council has performed a comprehensive evaluation of efforts in health and productivity management and honor companies that have achieved excellence in such efforts as "healthy companies" with the CHO awards.
- In FY2020 and FY2021, except for certain participants, the meetings were held online to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Since FY2022, the meeting has been conducted in person.
Health support meeting
The Health Support Meeting is jointly organized by BIL's Health Management Center, the Health Promotion Center of the Brother Health Insurance Society, and Brother Memorial Hospital. It decides specific activities to achieve targets, discusses implementation methods, and evaluates the results based on the policies set by the Brother Group Health & Productivity Management Promotion Council, and also organizes collaborative events with the Brother Industries Labor Union. The participants of this meeting include the Director of the Health Management Center, an industrial physician, a public nurse, the Managing Director of the Brother Health Insurance Society, and the Director of the Health Promotion Center.
Data Related to Health
"Healthy Brother 2025" -a set of long-term targets for employee health
The Brother Group Health & Productivity Management Promotion Council formulated the "Healthy Brother 2025," a set of long-term targets to be achieved by FY2025, based on the Health & Productivity Management Philosophy.
To achieve the "Healthy Brother 2025," the Brother Group is promoting activities in compliance with safety and health laws and regulations, focused on enabling employees to live every day positively, pleasantly and powerfully, to engage in self-directed health promotion, and to balance work and health.
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Employee health management data
Main Efforts
Creation of the health & productivity management strategy map
BIL has created a strategy map to visualize continuous flow including issues to be solved through health & productivity management and efforts to solve them.
Approaches for maintaining and improving health
Mental health measures
BIL has been continuously providing mental health education to its employees since 2007 with the aim of helping them become aware of their own stress and take appropriate measures against it (primary prevention), and helping supervisors identify and support their subordinates suffering from incipient mental disorders (secondary prevention). The company also helps employees who have developed mental disorders continue to work in their own ways, assisting such employees to return to work (tertiary prevention) in collaboration with their workplaces.
Regarding mental health education, we provide self-care training for all employees every five years and line-care education for those in managerial positions every three years. The self-care training which started in FY2022 introduces how to enhance resilience*1 as a self-care method to prevent illness.
In addition, as part of workplace improvement activities after stress checks, we have held workshops for department managers since FY2022. In these workshops, we give lectures and case examples on positive mental health*2 and action plans are formulated to understand the strengths of their own departments and make use of them in management. One of the department managers who participated said, "I was able to gain new insights through the exchange of opinions between department managers."
- A psychological term meaning mental "fortitude" "elasticity," and "flexibility." It refers to the ability to overcome and recover from mentally exhausting experiences, depression, and other challenges.
- A concept that aims to improve the mental and physical health of working people and lead to improved productivity. Whereas conventional "mental health" focuses on how to prevent illness and how to handle people who are sick, "positive mental health" emphasizes personal growth and happiness.
Age management measures
BIL promotes age management measures so that its employees can continue to work with vigor and enthusiasm regardless of their age. Age management involves carrying out occupational health activities tailored to the characteristics of each generation to address issues related to aging and health. In FY2022, we created the Brother Lifelong Health Promotion Model, which outlines the goals each generation should aspire to. Through activities based on this model, we aim to make our employees healthier through work.
In FY2023, we implemented the Continued Exercise Program, which aimed to address the lack of exercise among busy people in their 30s and 40s. This initiative mainly focused on 10 minutes of exercise during lunch breaks and consisted of two programs: Refreshing Yoga and Gentle Muscle Training, with a total of 112 employees participating.
Sleep Hygiene Education
BIL has been conducting sleep hygiene education since FY2018 with the aim of improving mental health measures, preventing accidents, occupational injuries, and lifestyle diseases, and improving labor productivity. In FY2023, we conducted an employee survey on sleep hygiene and found that employees did not consciously have meals containing ingredients that would lead to good sleep. Based on this result, a total of 30 health courses were held under the theme of "sleep and diet," with 1,686 employees participating.
Health Management for Women
BIL is strategically working on women's health management with the desire to support women's further advancement in the workplace through health-related measures as part of our efforts to respect diversity. For example, we hold a "Women's Seminar" every year with the goal of improving knowledge about diseases specific to women. In FY2023, we held a Cervical Cancer Seminar and PMS and Menopause Seminar with a total of 783 participants, including male employees. We also have a health consultation service exclusively for women.
Support for Balancing Medical Treatment and Work
Since 2006, when the Health Management Center was first established, BIL has been supporting the balance between medical treatment and work, and by working with the employees, their families, workplaces, the personnel department, doctors, etc., we are creating a working environment that can balance the two. In 2017, we created the "Guidelines for Support for Balancing Medical Treatment and Work" and shared it on the intranet.
Starting in FY2022, as part of our activities to support balancing medical treatment with work, we have implemented "in-house peer support activities*." These activities provide Brother Group employees who need to balance medical treatment and work with opportunities such as roundtable discussions and consultation sessions so that they can connect with others in similar positions, be at ease, and work with peace of mind. Through these activities, we aim to create a place within the company where people in the same situation can support each other, make people aware of others in the company who are balancing medical treatment and work, enable people to continue working even if they become ill, and create a supportive work environment where people can gain understanding and help from their supervisors and colleagues regarding balancing medical treatment and work. As of March 2024, approximately 34 employees within the Brother Group who were undergoing or had undergone medical treatment participated. In addition, 15 employees who have undergone training and have been certified as supporters are engaged in support activities such as sharing their own experiences.
- People who share the same goals support and help each other by sharing their own experiences, actions, and thoughts, and by talking to each other.
Quit-smoking Support
BIL proactively supports its employees in quitting smoking to reduce health hazards.
From April 2023, we completely banned smoking on the company's premises in order to encourage smokers to quit and to reduce the negative health effects of passive smoking on non-smokers. In addition to banning smoking on the premises, we support employees seeking to quit smoking. In FY2023, 18 employees received support for quitting smoking using an app.
Other health related efforts
To support the wellbeing of our employees, we are also implementing a variety of other efforts.
| FY2023 Efforts | Details |
|---|---|
| Cancer measures | E-learning conducted to improve cancer literacy |
| Preventive measures against diabetes becoming severe | Individual guidance using a continuous glucose monitor for 24 hours (for employees with HbA1c*1 7.5 or higher) |
| Measures to prevent lifestyle diseases | Three-month group weight-loss program (for employees with a BMI of 30 or higher) |
| Improving of health literacy | Spread information and introduced applications with the aim of practicing "Breslow's seven health habits*2" |
| Various studies | Implemented employee satisfaction surveys and WFun*3 surveys in addition to stress checks |
- An index that indicates the average blood sugar level over the past 1-2 months. If it is 6.5 or higher, diabetes is suspected.
- Based on the research results of Professor Lester Breslow, the following seven healthy habits: "1. do not smoke, 2. exercise regularly, 3. drink moderately or do not drink, 4. get 7 to 8 hours of sleep a day, 5. maintain a proper weight, 6. eat breakfast, and 7. avoid snacking" are key. Whether or not they are practiced will affect subsequent lifespan.
- Short for Work Functioning Impairment Scale. A questionnaire developed at University of Occupational and Environmental Health to measure the degree of work function impairment caused by health problems.
Global development of health and productivity management activities
The Brother Group operates globally with offices in more than 40 countries and regions. To ensure globally providing health support to expatriates and employees outside Japan, industrial physicians and public health nurses from the BIL's Health Management Center visit Brother Group sites outside Japan to assess local medical conditions and the work and living conditions of employees. Although the Group suspended visits to the sites from FY2020 to FY2022 due to COVID-19, it used online tools to manage the status of health checkups and conduct web-based consultations, providing health support in the same way as for employees working in Japan. Then, with travel restrictions eased, we visited manufacturing facilities in the Philippines in April 2023 and Vietnam in March 2024 to provide on-site health support, including interviews about the health management situation. In addition, we provide support to help expatriates stay healthy in the countries they are posted to, which includes providing information on medical institutions outside Japan on our intranet and reviewing the status of health checkups.
At BIL, for employees who are going to travel from Japan to other countries, the industrial physicians implement health education based on health and infectious disease information of each region of the world that helps such employees prevent and raise their awareness of HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, and other infections by providing their transmission routes, incubation periods, and symptoms. For employees on temporary assignments, the company provides the "leaflet on health management abroad," which covers information and cautions necessary for living outside Japan, and posts information about infection epidemics on the intranet to inform our employees.
When the risk of a global epidemic of infectious diseases increases, a countermeasures committee is established as a subordinate organization of the Risk Management Committee, which is comprised of Management, the Human Resources Dept., industrial physicians, etc. to gather the latest information, study countermeasures based on that information, and respond.
Contribution to the community and society
BIL cooperates in local practical training programs for medical and nursing students at universities, with the aim of nurturing people who will be responsible for the field of occupational health in the future. In addition to providing training on Brother's health and productivity management and the duties and roles of industrial physicians and public health nurses, the training also includes time to visit manufacturing sites and to learn the basics of health and safety management.
Furthermore, BIL also contributes to the community and society through the promotional activities of health and productivity management by having industrial physicians and public health nurses give lectures at seminars on health and productivity management at the request of external organizations, and by holding meetings to exchange opinions with local companies on the regional promotion of health and productivity management.
Evaluation by External Entities
The Brother Group's proactive initiatives for health and productivity management are also highly recognized by external entities, receiving various certifications and awards.
For more details, please refer to the link: "Management with an Emphasis on Sustainability-Evaluation by External Entities- Evaluation Related to Health and Productivity Management."
