Basic Policy

Sumitomo Forestry Group believes that maintaining and promoting employee health contributes not only to the well-being of each and every employee, but also to improvement of productivity and efficiency at work. Sumitomo Forestry Group Declaration on Health Management was formulated based on this policy on Oct. 1, 2021.

Initiatives to Maintain and Improve Employee Health

Sumitomo Forestry Group is committed to health management in order to create an environment in which workers can thrive, and to prevent employees from being absent from work due to injury or illness, and from losing labor productivity due to presenteeism.

Sumitomo Forestry maintains a 100% medical examination rate for regular health checkup which are vital to preventing illness. In addition, the system that we use can offer regular health checkup, stress check aftercare, and consultations with industrial physicians during overwork and other stressful situations. These measures are also available to employees working at sites with a small number of staff through the appointment of industrial physicians even at locations with less than 50 employees. Furthermore, a clinical psychologist and public health nurse are assigned to the Health Care Promotion Team in the Workstyle Diversification Department run by the Personnel Department to implement a variety of health measures and provide employees who are forced to take leave for health reasons with a system that allows them to focus on their treatment and return to work without worry.

Organizing Walking Event

Sumitomo Forestry has been holding regular walking events since fiscal 2021 as part of its "health management" efforts to maintain and promote the health of each and every employee so that they can work vigorously and in good health. In the fall of 2022, an event was held in a new attempt to "increase greenery throughout Japan by the number of steps taken by all participants." The idea is that for every step a participant takes, a tree is planted on a virtual map of Japan. The number of participating Group companies doubled from the previous year, and the event is becoming established throughout the Group companies and will continue to be held in the future.

Conducting Health Live Seminars

Sumitomo Forestry designated the first Monday of the month as "Health Day" and continued to hold health-related live seminars during lunch breaks with the aim of improving lifestyle habits and productivity in terms of sleep, diet, and exercise. From August to December 2022, a total of five "Presenteeism Dissolution Seminars" were held to raise health awareness and provide tips and ideas for better ways to work and act to help eliminate presenteeism. The online seminar provided an excellent chance for Group employees to interact with each other. We will continue to hold Health Live Seminars in the future.

Seminars for Health Supervisors

Sumitomo Forestry conducted two online practical seminars for health supervisors in June and December 2022. In June, 167 people participated voluntarily on the topic of dealing with long-term sickness and injury, and in December, 179 people participated voluntarily on the topic of health committee meetings. This seminar, including lectures on relevant laws and regulations, as well as internal company rules, was designed to educate administrative officers, persons in charge of health management practices, and other persons in charge of group companies nationwide. Participants shared their own initiatives and innovations with each other via chat rooms during the seminar, making it a valuable opportunity to learn together. We will continue to offer seminars for health supervisors in the future.

Elimination of Presenteeism*

As a result of these efforts, presenteeism (as measured by the WHO-HPQ method) in fiscal 2022 was 62.8, an improvement from 62.2 in the previous year.

* The state in which a person goes to work while suffering from some disease or symptom, and their ability to perform work or productivity is impaired

Practical Mental Health Care

Based on the Guidelines for Maintaining and Improving Workers' Mental Health formulated by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Sumitomo Forestry implements four types of care for mental health: self-care; care provided by line managers; care provided by occupational health staff within the workplace; and care using resources from outside the business.

Collaboration with External EAP Agency

Employees who are certified as clinical physiologists have striven to assist mentally ill individuals with follow-up support and help them in returning to work in close cooperation with external provider of the employee assistance program (EAP)*.

In fiscal 2019, Sumitomo Forestry changed the external EAP agency alliance and established a new management consultation desk to further a system to better support line care. This help desk is not only available to employees but also their families and can support in English and Chinese, which offers better care for a wider range of employees.

All domestic Group companies have an external consultation service for EAP as of the end of fiscal 2022.

* A workplace mental health care service for employees

Support during Absence and upon Returning to Work

Sumitomo Forestry distributes a Mental Absentee Guidebook to employees who are absent from work due to mental illness, which includes information on how to spend time during leave and company rules regarding leave, etc., to the employees to reduce anxiety during their absence. We also distribute a Guidebook for Managers to supervisors, providing them with information on how to respond to the situation at hand.

We adjust stratified working hours and the work load to suit the circumstances of each individual by adopting an occupational rehabilitation system to help employees return to work to create and execute rehabilitation plans so that each person can both physically and mentally get used to the work environment.

Use of stress checks

Sumitomo Forestry has offered stress checks since fiscal 2013, ahead of becoming mandatory after amendments to the Industrial Safety and Health Law in December 2015. All of our employees (excluding employees who are on long-term leave due to pregnancy, medical treatment for illness or other such reasons) use the information provided on websites and in other media to help prevent mental disorders.

As part of care following stress checks, we distributed results of individual organizational analysis to each site and provided "Stress Check Feedback Training" to a total of 358 employees in all departments, including general managers (mandatory) and supervisors (voluntary) in order to raise awareness about building an even more vibrant workplace environment in 2022. We are strengthening line care to enable early detection and improvement of mental illness among subordinates, and are planning and implementing measures to improve the workplace environment at each site. Individual consulting services were also provided to departments with high psychological burdens. In addition, in order to help each employee cultivate a healthier mind and body, we continue to raise awareness by offering various courses such as "Sleep," "Health Management for Workers," and "How to Deal with Stress" in the category of "Health Care" in our e-learning program.