Occupational Safety and Health

The TOTO Group aims to achieve zero industrial accidents and zero cases of occupational illness, and to create a comfortable work environment.The TOTO Group takes measures to prevent fire, storm and flood damage, and other disasters, and to minimize damage from disasters.

To smoothly advance health and safety activities and to raise the standards, TOTO Group has established a Health, Safety and Security Committee , chaired by the director in charge of TOTO's General Affairs, and meets once every six months. Representatives of divisions and labor unions attend the meeting to formulate group policies and basic measures for the year in an effort to promote transparency at each division.
In addition, corporate and labor representatives participate in the Health and Safety Committee held monthly at each division to report and deliberate safety and sanitation activities, and determine measures to improve them, to promote penetration of activities in the workplace via personnel in charge of safety and health in the workplace.
In addition, once at the end of the fiscal year, the Board of Directors will hear a report of the deliberations of the Health, Safety and Security Committee to review promotion of safety and health activities.

The entire TOTO Group developed a system for checking safety, and has operated it since fiscal 2006. This is to curb "unsafe movements" or avoid a risky situation in a plant of a Group production company where a human error leads to a disaster. We have investigated at all the production bases of the Group the status of safety management system, unsafe movements of workers in a plant, or risks of unstable equipment. It resulted in significant improvement of safety in our Group, and helped build a safer environment. Safety and health check was conducted at 9 sites in FY 2020, and all countermeasures for locations indicted in the Safety Check are now complete as well as we continue to resolve safety issues.
We also develope disaster prevention activities that conduct safety inspections such as "pre-operation inspection of factory equipment", "daily inspection", "fixed point observation of work", "risk assessment during new product development, new equipment and work", etc. We strive to achieve zero industrial accidents by eliminating and reducing identified potential risks.

To eradicate unsafe situations in the workplace 5S, fixed point control, work methods, the persons in charge of safety and hygiene have conducted fixed point observation at each business site since FY 2020.
In their activities, they shoot a video of the situations in the workplaces and work, extract unsafe situations by checking the video, and try to improve such situations. By multiple business sites mutually checking the same video, we enhance the perspectives of the persons in charge of safety and health and further improve their improvement ability.

TOTO Group endeavors to maintain and improve a comfortable workplace environment for employees to prevent occupational illnesses. Using measurements from the work environment to identify current conditions, we take actions to counter the source of issues, improve working methods, conduct training in order to establish a management system common to the Business Group and expand our efforts.

To avoid irreversible occupational disease (hearing loss),we provide thorough training in use of equipment to contain the source, shortening exposure time, and correct use of ear plugs and other protective wear in locations where countermeasures are difficult to implement.

We make knowledge of SDS common, measure the work environment for organic solvents and specific chemical substances, and implement measures for locations where problems are identified. In addition,risk assessments for chemical substances are advanced in alignment with TOTO Group.

TOTO Group conducts regular in-house safety and health training in a continuous effort to improve safety for site workers and the knowledge of safety personnel.

TOTO Group strives to assess the conditions of work-related disasters which occured to prevent similar accidents.
TOTO Group aims at zero employment injuries every year as a health and safety goal.
The TOTO group's lost time injury frequency rate in FY 2020 was below the national average for manufacturing.
To achieve the goal of zero injuries in the future, the TOTO Group will extensively make efforts to prevent employment injuries. The number of deaths (employee and contractors) from employment injuries in the TOTO Group was zero over the past four years. In the event of any accident or event that may cause an employment injury, we will investigate the causes and report the information on labor related risks to all worksites every month. Thus, we thoroughly implement the prevention measures to prevent recurrences.

The TOTO Group Corporate Philosophy states the idea of "creating an employee friendly work environment that respects the individuality of each employee", and we are promoting mental and physical health with the goal of realizing work environments that facilitate work. In order to achieve that, we are developing health-conscious initiatives on the three pillars of health care, mental health measures and health promotion.

TOTO Group (in Japan) regularly conducts health examinations and follow-up measures to prevent physical illness and promote health maintenance, We implemented COVID-19 infection prevention measures thoroughly implement at the Regular Health Checkup Examination in fiscal year 2020. In providing health guidance, we employed different communication channel according to seriousness, such as direct interviews, emails, letters, and telephones. As a result, we succeeded as before in reaching 100% in three rates: the Regular Health Checkup Examination Rate, the Secondary Screening Participation Rate (Retest and/or Detailed Test), and Rate of Health Guidance Implementation (Industrial Physician and/or Public Health Nurse). The positive-finding rate rose because of the change in living habits influenced heavily by the spread of COVID-19, including insufficient exercise, unbalanced diet, and lower consultation rate. In fiscal year 2021, we will develop and implement measures to further improve health literacy (the ability to self-manage and improve health). Although the average age of the medical checkup anomaly observation has become older, we maintain a low rate by continuously analyzing medical checkup data and implementing measures based on the analysis.
To support the health maintenance of employees, the Labor Management promotes work-life balance and places more effort on working hours optimization.
We also arrange for employees working long hours to have consultations with industry physicians to check their health statuses and provide guidance, advice, and prompt countermeasures by collaborating with the supervisors in the workplace.

For maintenance of mental health, TOTO Group (in Japan) promotes the three types of care :(1)self-care and　(2) care from the line (care from a supervisor) ,(3)care such as that provided by workplace public health care.

• Lectures on mental and physical self-care for new employees
  In the new employee general training, we give a lecture from a dedicated industrial physician to deepen our understanding of mental and physical self-care. We also inform them about the health consultation counter by distributing a small card like a business card with the information.
  


• Stress check
  We conduct stress checks every year, and 90% of the employees take this test. We recommend those with high stress levels to take consultation and arrange one for them if they wish.
  

For early detection and response, we made it mandatory for relevant employees to receive Managers and Supervisors Training, and we expanded its audience target to worksite leaders/supervisors to reinforce our measures. In fiscal year 2020, in order to prevent the COVID-19 infection, the training will be switched to the format of our training from in-class to e-learning. Along with this change, we provided a total of 11,000 managers and supervisors with training for related matters, including the key points of self-care in the time of COVID-19, how to communicate with subordinates while working from home, and how to help mentally unwell employees by showing some actual cases.

For employees on leave due to mental health issues, we provide continuous consultation and follow-up, collaborating with industrial health staff, workplace supervisors and HR Division staff. We also renewed the Health Management Site on the company Intranet, placed Body and Mind Consultation Service on the top page and notified employees of the consultation contact of each office.

The TOTO Group (Japan) provides various health programs, with the Healthcare Center and TOTO Health Insurance Association taking the leading part. In fiscal year 2020, despite the challenges posed by COVID-19, events, such as the RIZAP Online Seminar and the Walking Event, were held successfully by carefully and thoroughly avoiding the Three Cs (closed spaces, crowded places, close contacts). At the Kokura No. 1 Plant of the TOTO headquarters, although the total number of events held decreased, one-third of the employees working at the premises participated in the events. In addition, we put posters presenting a do's and don'ts list regarding diet and in taking medical checkups are put on the bathroom wall, as a health information provision to raise employees' health awareness. Through these health promotion activities, we are supporting lifestyle-related disease prevention, health enhancement, as well as health awareness advocation.