Sustainability
Communicating with Employees
Approach to Communicating with Employees
We believe that an open and positive environment and lively communication are two key elements in realizing a comfortable and pleasant workplace that supports a diverse employee base. Communication, in particular, is the springboard for every possible corporate activity. With this in mind, Fuji Electric is endeavoring to invigorate workplace communication.
Implementing Employee Opinion Surveys
By continuously conducting initiatives that respect employees’ desires and remain receptive toward their comments, Fuji Electric is committed to creating a workplace environment that allows its employees to make the most of their capabilities.
As part of this effort, we conduct employee opinion surveys at our consolidated subsidiaries in Japan and overseas. We started such surveys in fiscal 2010 and held them every two years thereafter. Since fiscal 2018, however, we have conducted the surveys annually to reflect the speed of recent changes in the business environment and also to receive timely feedback from employees.In fiscal 2022, we sent questionnaires to 21,085 individuals and received 20,314 responses (response rate: 96.3%).
The survey was designed to ascertain employees’ satisfaction with the company in terms of management policies, enthusiasm toward work, workplace teamwork, work-life balance and other aspects. In the survey in FY 2022 employees gave Fuji Electric a score of 3.8(*1) when asked about their satisfaction on the job, indicating that employee morale is one our strengths. The results of the survey are reported to executive management, broke down to each organization and fed back to the heads of each division and representatives of subsidiaries so that they can be used to improve issues.
This approach contributes directly to our various human resource initiatives, such as implementing training programs for mid-level managers to enhance their management skills, strengthening goal-oriented management systems and expanding education and training programs to support employee career development, and revising benefits programs to evaluate technical employees’ efforts for improvement and streamlining of work practices.
In addition, we use the results of employee awareness surveys as indicators for our human capital initiatives. Instead of aiming to increase the indicators, we use trend analysis to identify issues and risks as quickly as possible and link the results to countermeasures.
Furthermore, Fuji Electric’s labor union conducts worksite surveys of all union members and management-level employees to gain an understanding of their perspectives on and expectations for corporate management, workplace environments, and work.
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*1
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Average score of responses to the survey item “I am satisfied with working at Fuji Electric,” indicating an employees’ overall satisfaction with the company (5-point scale from 1 to 5 points, where higher scores are better)
Labor-Management Communication
Basic Stance toward Labor-Management Relations
Fuji Electric strives to build robust labor-management relations upon a foundation of mutual trust and responsibility, with an emphasis on dialogue. This basic stance reflects our awareness of the need to realize corporate development while maintaining fair labor terms and conditions and enhancing employee living standards.
Management and the labor union conclude labor agreements on mutual respect for the rights of management and the rights of employees, the labor union’s involvement in management and other aspects of operations.
Systems of Labor Management Conferences
Fuji Electric and the labor union have established a Management Council in order to achieve mutual understanding between management and labor through sharing and discussion of management issues. The Management Council meets once every six months. Meetings serve as forums for sharing details of the Company’s performance and discussing issues arising in business operations.
Business group- and business site-level labor management conferences have been established as subordinate organizations to the Management Council to discuss specific issues that are pertinent to each division.
Furthermore, various discussions are conducted in meetings for labor-management discussions with the aim of maintaining or improving labor conditions.
[Major Matters Discussed by the Management Council and Labor Management Conferences]
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Matters related to standards for wages, work hours, retirement benefits, etc.
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Matters related to occupational health and safety and welfare policies
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Matters related to relocations, etc. accompanying business restructuring
Formation of a Labor Union
Each subsidiary’s employees are organizes the individual labor union, so that individual management issues and labor conditions relating to the individual subsidiary can be discussed between its management and labor. These unions, in Japan, are joined together in the Fuji Electric Group Union.
The Fuji Electric Group Union has a membership of 13,484 people as of March 31, 2023 and is a member of the Japanese Electrical Electronic & Information Union.
Solutions Moving Forward through Labor-Management Discussions
Based on labor agreements, when there are actions such as a business restructure or change in labor conditions or some other case that is likely to have a significant impact on employees’ remuneration, or matters important to both labor and management, issues are discussed in advance to reach agreements that reflect the opinions and requests of both sides.
In fiscal 2022, we aimed to expand our support system for balancing work and childcare by establishing a “Childcare Leave at Birth” system that enables employees to take two leaves of absence up to four weeks in total within eight weeks of giving birth, and also revised the system to allow employees to take two separate leaves of absence up to 24 months as the period of childcare leave.
Furthermore, as an initiative to comply with our legal obligations, we are also working to create an environment in which the system is easier to use by conducting in-house promotional activities and education.
In addition, We have also confirmed that labor and management will continue to promote discussions and initiatives to reduce overtime work, improve acquisition rate of paid leave, and propel "workstyle reform" that continuous discussions are under way.