Occupational Health and Safety
Advantest Group Health and Safety Policy
Advantest Group recognizes that Health and Safety (H&S) is one of the important aspects of our business operation. This policy is set forth to ensure every Advantest employee's Health and Safety.
- Health and Safety First
We will make H&S as the first priority for employees in all Advantest operation groups.
- Compliance with Laws and Regulations
Aim to achieve compliance with legal requirements through good occupational health and safety performance.
- Regular Review of Health and Safety Compliance
To support this policy we will provide employees with an annual activity plan which will address every business location’s H&S regulations through management support.
- Education and Training
Ensure that employees receive appropriate training, and are competent to carry out their designated responsibilities.
- Disclosure of Health and Safety
To raise awareness, we will announce our H&S information to all employees publicly.
Promotion System
At Advantest, every year we convene the “Health and Safety Committee Meeting” which decides the health and safety direction and policy for the whole group. The approach to health and safety is based on the main activity themes decided at this meeting, upon which the health and safety committees at each location set their annual targets and plans.
We also regularly hold horizontal health and safety committee secretariat meetings, and strengthen each location’s health and safety activities through this sharing of information on activities.
Promotion of Labor Health and Safety Activities
In fiscal 2014, we deployed health and safety activities on the themes of "Serious injury accidents activities" and "Basic safety education". Specifically, we increased the scope of foreman education to enable safe operation of irregular joint work, and in addition performed basic education in order to prevent industrial accidents. As a result, although loss time accidents were equal to last fiscal year, we were able to reduce the total number of labor accidents.
In fiscal 2015 we plan to entrench risk management with “zero serious accidents activity” as a continuing theme and further education of foremen. Additionally, with the new theme of “exhaustive basic safety countermeasures” we will recommit to organization, tidiness and full compliance with work rules in the workplace and the importance of “really doing the basics” for safety.
Domestic labor accident rate (frequency rate *)
* Frequency rate = [(Number of injuries or deaths/hours worked) x 1,000,000] indicates
number of injuries or deaths from accidents per 1 million hours of work.
* Scope: Japan Advantest only
Mental Health
At Advantest we believe that vigorous employees make for a vigorous workplace. Accordingly, our Health Promotion Office supports efforts to ensure both the mental and physical health of our employees so that we can provide a safe and comfortable workplace environment for them.
In fiscal 2012, we shifted our focus to prevention-oriented wellness and introduced testing of stress levels. By quantifying stress (thus making it visible), we promote stress awareness among all employees, which is useful in self-care. The fiscal 2014 stress diagnosis test, which was accessible through the corporate intranet, drew an 85.5% response rate. The 5% of employees with the highest diagnosed stress level were invited to attend counseling (and 10% did). With the introduction of an e-learning program, we reinforced self-care (96% participation).
At the mental health training for managers we explained how to make use of the stress diagnosis test results and through groupwork learning aimed to create a workplace that prevents people from developing mental health problems.
We will continue to analyze through surveys.
And in light of the many types of stress, we will set up and make rules for support for return to work so that even if employees suffer mental health issues they can be sure they can take the appropriate leave and return to work.
Health care
Health examination results for fiscal 2012 revealed that high rates of blood lipids were a problem in our workforce. To improve the situation, we launched a three-year plan to address lipid abnormalities, with a special focus on hyper-LDL cholesterolemia. Based on the results we created guidance criteria and made models and pamphlets in order to explain the illness simply and gave guidance on countermeasures based on exercise and good diet.
We were able to achieve our goal as the fiscal 2012 lipid abnormality health check result of 43.6% decreased to 41.8% in 2014. However the observed rate is almost 10% higher than the national average and so we will continue to plan further countermeasures to improve health.
Relations with labor unions
Labor unions currently representing our employees include company union JEIU, in which over 99% of our labor union membership is enrolled, and industrial union JMIU. Advantest negotiates in good faith with each of these labor unions.
Additionally, the labor agreement with JEIU includes health and safety and claims management, and we will work cooperatively together to respond to issues regarding operation, Code of Conduct and HR claims management in health and safety committees in each location.
