Employees

• Basic Policy and Personnel Strategy
• Health and Productivity Management Initiatives
• Respect for Human Rights and the Development of Diversity
• Effective Placement and Human Resource Development
• Relationship between Employers and Employees

Basic Policy and Personnel Strategy

Mitsubishi Chemical (MCC) is implementing a range of initiatives aimed at enabling employees—upon whom realizing KAITEKI depends—to exercise their abilities to the fullest as well as at achieving sustainable corporate development based on a relationship of trust between employees and management.

Basic Policy

Mitsubishi Chemical (MCC) and its Group companies will practice health and productivity management and conduct business by empowering all Group members to engage in their work with enthusiasm, self-motivation and initiative and to demonstrate their individual capabilities to the fullest as we promote diversity in human resources as a positive force.

Personnel Strategy for Sustainable Corporate Development

MCC is mainly implementing the following initiatives.

• Health and Productivity Management
• Respect for Human Rights and the Development of Diversity
• Effective Placement and Human Resource Development

In implementing initiatives related to the first of these, Health and Productivity Management, we are focusing on both health support and workstyle reforms, aiming to improve health at the individual and workplace levels. That is, we are working to realize workstyles that facilitate health and job satisfaction for every employee as well as workplace environments that allow each individual to thrive and utilize their abilities to the fullest. MCC is working strategically—investing and building frameworks—to make this happen. We are encouraging every employee to proactively examine their own health, work and workplace, ask what they can do to enhance their own health and vigor at work, and take action accordingly. We believe that this approach will help each employee achieve a greater sense of satisfaction and achievement both at work and in their everyday lives. Furthermore, individuals and organizations backed up by health exert a positive influence in their families and communities. In this way, we are confident that we can contribute to society through our businesses and thus contribute to realizing KAITEKI.

As for the second issue, respect for human rights and promoting diversity, we want the MCC Group to be an organization in which all employees respect one other’s diverse individuality and values, including nationality, race, religion, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation and disability or lack thereof, and together fulfill the Group’s corporate social responsibility while enabling every individual in the Group to exercise their abilities to the fullest. Aiming to lay the foundations and create support to enable diverse human resources to thrive, we are further developing our existing initiatives related to respect for human rights, hiring people with disabilities, enabling women to succeed, and providing support for child care and nursing care. At the same time, we are working to create environments that are accommodating of all employees, regardless of nationality, and to foster understanding and provide support for LGBT individuals and other sexual minorities.

The third issue is effective placement and human resource development, an area in which we aim to enable every employee to work with enthusiasm, motivation and initiative and to exercise their abilities to the fullest. To be more specific, we will continue to encourage employees to pursue self-directed growth while also implementing optimal personnel placement on a Group-wide basis to meet the demands of globalization.

Aiming for “Sustainable Engagement”: The MCC & me Survey

In fiscal 2019, MCC and its group companies launched the MCG & me Survey, an engagement survey replacing the Employee Perception Surveys implemented in years past, on a global basis. In fiscal 2023, approximately 57,000 Group employees answered the survey, for a response rate of 84%.

We aim to use the survey to understand the state of “sustainable engagement”—a term we use to refer to the intensity of employees’ connection to their organization, marked by committed effort to achieve goals (being engaged) in environments that support productivity (being enabled) and maintain personal well-being (feeling energized). We believe that understanding and bolstering sustainable engagement will help enhance employee performance and thereby improve customer satisfaction and business performance.

Personnel System Aimed at the Growth of Both the Company and Employees

We believe that, even in an environment changing as rapidly as the one we find ourselves in today, if each employee takes up new challenges and demonstrates creativity, it will lead to corporate growth. To that end, we must ensure that the Company and employees build relationships in which they both choose to engage with and energize each other and develop a corporate culture through which they can grow together. As the foundation for such relationships, MCC has built a personnel system focused on the three key themes of self-directed career development; transparent working conditions and compensation structures; and promoting and supporting workforce diversity. We will bolster a shared value of mutual respect and thereby develop a culture that will help realize KAITEKI through career development support that includes a combination of internal open recruitment and company- as the main means of employee transfer, consideration for employee preferences in location transfers and more frequent meetings; more frequent meetings; a compensation system that is better linked to responsibilities and results and not dependent on age, years of service or family structure; and welfare and benefits that accommodate diversity and the differing circumstances of each individual.

Health and Productivity Management Initiatives

Concrete Initiatives

• Well-being Report 2024 Mitsubishi Chemical Group Our Health（in Japanese only）
  
• Well-being Report 2023 Mitsubishi Chemical Group Our Health（in Japanese only）
  

Workstyle reforms

Work Reform

By achieving radical innovations at the workplace level under the leadership of on-site managers, we are eliminating inefficiencies and freeing up time. Through these efforts, we aim to pursue more value-creating work and improve work-life balance. The corporate function domains, such as human resources and administration, publish guidelines for running meetings and preparing documents and e-mails. At the same time, we are supporting such work reforms by providing enhanced IT communication tools. We are advancing work reforms in coordination with various projects.

Proper Management of Working Hours

As part of workstyle reforms under KAITEKI Health and Productivity Management and to prevent excessive working hours and ensure compliance, MCC is striving to appropriately manage working hours.

Eliminating Excessive Working Hours and Increasing the Paid Vacation Usage Rate

To accurately track actual working hours, our attendance system records when employees log on and off the computers they use. This helps prevent discrepancies between actual and reported working hours. Implementing measures that help solve different issues at different sites is leading to shorter total working hours.
Furthermore, we are working to make it easier for employees to take time off using such programs as the refresh leave system^*1 and by setting planned annual days off.^*2 Also, to support employees’ self-directed social contribution efforts, we have established a volunteer leave system (up to five days per year) and donor leave system (as many days as needed).

*1 Employees who take two or more consecutive annual paid vacation days can receive one additional day off on the following business day once a year (up to three days a year for employees who are 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, or 55 years old as of April 1 of said year).
*2 A system that makes it easier for daytime employees to use their annual paid vacation by designating certain days for everyone in the company to take off at once. Up to three days per year.

Between-Shift Intervals

To help ensure that employees get adequate rest and do not begin a new day before recovering from the fatigue of the previous, and to avoid health risks stemming from overwork as a result of long working hours, we have established the Between-Shift Interval Guidelines. These guidelines recommend that employees try to secure an interval of at least 11 hours between the time they finish work one day and begin work the next. We have also made it easy to check if employees have secured this interval on their attendance charts.

Promoting Flexible Workstyles

Remote Work System

This system is designed to boost employee productivity and many employees use it effectively.
We allow employees to work the entire week remotely to enable more flexible workstyles. Employees can use satellite office spaces contracted by the company in addition to working at home.

Overview of Leave Systems

MCC has established the following leave systems to enable employees to balance their work and private lives.

Respect for Human Rights and the Development of Diversity

Mitsubishi Chemical (MCC) regards respect for human rights as the basis of its management and the development of diversity as part of its management strategy and focuses efforts on these issues.

Respecting Human Rights

MCC established the Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation and its group companies Human Rights Policy as its paramount policy on human rights to complement its mission and basic management policy and to guide initiatives related to respect for human rights in business activities. This policy was published in February 2021. Building on an understanding of human rights as defined in the International Bill of Human Rights and the International Labor Organization’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, we uphold and conduct business activities based on the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the ten principles of the United Nations Global Compact. In addition to providing the necessary employee education to ensure respect for individual dignity and rights, MCC forbids child labor and forced labor and strives to maintain proper working conditions. Through these efforts, MCC seeks to fulfill its corporate social responsibility to ensure that the rights of all its stakeholders are respected.

Our core initiatives in this area comprise the promotion of human rights due diligence in line with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. In addition to providing education on business and human rights based on the Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation and its group companies Human Rights Policy, we monitor internal human rights risks and ensure preparedness to remediate any issues that may arise.

Human Rights Due Diligence Initiatives

Furthermore, to enhance its understanding of initiatives to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for negative human rights impacts arising from business activities, MCC participates in human rights initiatives through its parent company, Mitsubishi Chemical Group Corporation. In fiscal 2020, we participated in the Human Rights Due Diligence working group organized by Global Compact Network Japan as well as the Caux Round Table Japan’s Stakeholder Engagement Program.

Within the company, we maintain systems for appropriately dealing with human rights issues in order to create environments in which employees can exercise their abilities with peace of mind. Specifically, we are implementing a variety of educational and other initiatives, including rank-specific training and e-learning, aimed at deepening awareness and knowledge of human rights. In addition, we are promulgating a clear message of zero tolerance for harassment and are working to improve awareness and mindsets. At each plant, we have appointed harassment counselors that employees seeking help or guidance related to harassment or human rights issues can consult.

Enabling Women to Succeed

MCC is working to nurture female managers, provide career development support for female employees, implement workstyle reforms and develop its workplace culture through a range of initiatives.

Since 2021, we have been holding monthly Career Encouragement Seminars. During the initial year and fiscal 2022, women who are leaders in various fields spoke about their own careers and what they feel is important. This provided employees with opportunities to find role models inside and outside of the company and think about their careers with a positive view toward the future. From fiscal 2023 onward, top management has communicated the reasons why they promote diversity and the importance of diversity management to encourage a sense of ownership in promoting diversity and the advancement of women, particularly among men. Male and female managers also described their own careers and diversity management. In fiscal 2024, we incorporated the perspective of developing subordinates and had foreign nationals and mid-career hires speak, along with their superiors and others. This afforded an opportunity to learn how to create a comfortable working environment and devise ways for members who cannot work long hours because they provide nursing care or childcare, or are undergoing medical treatment to contribute effectively. All employees and managers, regardless of position or gender, can participate in these seminars. We have also produced a video on DE&I and distribute signage to help employees understand why they need to promote diversity.

MCC is providing support to enable its female employees to achieve greater success as part of efforts to utilize its people’s capabilities. At the same time, we continue to build a foundation to ensure that women and all employees can succeed in their own ways by providing accurate evaluations and increasing awareness of flexible workstyles.

We have formulated the action plan below based on the Act on Promotion of Women’s Participation and Advancement in the Workplace.

Career Support Initiatives

To encourage employees to proactively develop their careers, we conduct career design interviews, in which an employee discusses their career with a superior, from medium and long-term perspectives. To encourage employees to take an interest in their careers, we host lectures by external experts, participatory planning and other events, career counseling by qualified experts, and career workshops by age range for employees in the same age range to think about their careers.

Balancing Work and Home Lives

MCC not only offers support to employees who have child care and nursing care responsibilities, but considers each individual’s life plan and offers systems that enable diverse employees to remain highly motivated in their work to support employees in balancing their work and home lives.

Initiatives Related to Child Care

We have created an environment that supports employees with children from a long-term perspective to make it easier to work while raising children. To help avoid difficulties related to taking and returning from child care leave, we have made pre-child care leave (or for women, pre-maternity leave) meetings between employees and their line managers mandatory and, to facilitate an earlier return from child care leave, set up a “concierge service” to assist parents in finding and securing spots in daycare facilities.

To facilitate fathers’ active participation in child care, we have extended the period during which they can take paternity leave and allowed the use of expired annual paid vacation days for child care. We are also working to foster a corporate culture that encourages the use of child care leave by such means as providing awareness-raising videos that expecting fathers and their supervisors can watch together and handbooks on balancing work and child care.

We have formulated the action plan below based on the Act for the Promotion of Measures to Support the Nurturing of the Next Generation.

Initiatives Related to Nursing Care

Aiming to eliminate retirement due to the need to provide nursing care for a family member, MCC works to raise awareness of the importance of advance preparation for providing nursing care by offering a handbook on balancing work and nursing care and holding seminars. Through such efforts, we are creating environments that allow employees to work with confidence.

From fiscal 2020, we are working to make the information employees need readily available and accessible by, for example, publishing the handbook and a video on measures employees should take when the need to provide nursing care arises. We are also working to raise the quality of nursing care support services.

Consideration of Employee Work Location Preferences

MCC gives consideration to employees’ work location preferences in a number of ways, aiming to enhance productivity through the accommodation of diverse workstyles.

Work Location Continuation

Employee transfers that entail moving residence are carried out only after checking with the individual about such transfer and with consideration given to their life plan. For management position employees who may be ordered to accept a transfer that entails moving due to business management requirements, we have established a system by which they can register their desire remain in their current work location, guaranteeing that they will remain there for up to six years.

Preferred Work Location

Employees can register their preferred work location and job type when they would like to move from their current work location to another for such reasons as to accompany their spouse on a work transfer or to provide nursing care to a parent. Using this system, MCC does its utmost to find ways to align the needs of the individual and the company.

Working in a Remote Location

We permit employees who live outside commuting range for their workplace to work from home to avoid transferring employees away from their families or return them to their families, avoid transferring single employees, and for employees who are providing nursing care or childcare.

Main Systems to Support Employees in Balancing Their Work and Personal Lives

• Temporary retirement for child care: Until the April 30 after the child’s third birthday
• Reduced work hours/work days for child care: As long as approved by the company
• Injury/illness nursing care leave: Up to 10 days per year (can be used in half-day units)
• Temporary retirement for family care: Three years per qualifying family member
• Reduced working hours/work days for nursing care: As long as approved by the company
• Nursing care leave: Up to 20 days per year (can be used in half-day units)
• Livelihood support leave (system for accumulating expired annual paid leave): Can be used for recovery from illness or injury, child care, nursing care, etc.
• Temporary retirement for spouse’s overseas service: Allows employees to take leave of up to three years to accompany their spouse on an overseas work assignment
• Day care information service
• Nursing care allowances
• Establishment of external nursing care consultation points

Hiring People with Disabilities