Employee Health

Our Approach

LIXIL considers the physical and mental health of our employees as one of our material issues because we believe that employee wellbeing ultimately helps create vibrant workplaces and improve corporate value. Based on that view, we promote health and productivity management based on the Health Management Declaration made by our CEO, and use such initiatives to help improve the wellbeing of our employees.

Ensuring the Wellbeing of Each and Every Employee >

We seek to enhance employee productivity and motivation by establishing an organizational culture in which good health fuels the development of employee capabilities and by building workplaces in which employees positively manage their own physical and mental health. Building environments that enable individuals to maximize their abilities through these initiatives is proving a powerful driver of value creation. Promoting health and productivity management will help build a more resilient organization that can respond quickly to changes in the business environment and help realize LIXIL’s Purpose to “make better homes a reality for everyone, everywhere.”

Health Management Declaration

LIXIL believes that the good health of all our employees is a source of the good health of our organization. We declare our commitment to promoting sustainable health management to contribute to making better homes a reality for everyone, everywhere.

In order to build a more resilient organization that can respond quickly to changing circumstances, LIXIL is working hard to foster a corporate culture in which our employees — the core of our organization — can actively realize their full potential. Changing circumstances may change employees’ workstyle, but we will continue to be committed to creating an environment in which they can work in ever healthier ways.

We ask all our employees to understand that the most important factor in realizing better homes for everyone, everywhere is the health of you and your families. So please actively participate in activities that help maintain and improve your health.

Kinya Seto
Director, Representative Executive Officer, President, and CEO
LIXIL Corporation

Our System

LIXIL announced the Health Management Declaration in FYE2021. Under the direction of the CEO, who is also Health and Productivity Management officer, departments involved in worksite environments and human resources, occupational physicians, company nurses, and Health Insurance Society work together to establish systems for maintaining and enhancing employee health. In FYE2023, we increased our number of company nurses and placed them at plants and other independent locations to strengthen our system for directly supporting employees.

Health management promotion framework

Driving Health Management

In FYE2022, we conducted a comprehensive data-driven risk analysis and evaluation to help strengthen health and productivity management. This enabled us to identify any problems with the disclosure of information to stakeholders and the promotion systems. We also identified issues relating to individual initiatives such as the degree of employee participation and implementation of health guidance as well as the need to improve awareness of women’s health issues. These issues are reflected in our strategy and key initiatives. We have determined indicators of health investment measures and changes in employee awareness and behavior as well as health targets to be achieved by FYE2025, and will publish progress once each item has been prepared.

Strategy map

Click to enlarge

Health Management Key Indicators: Results and Targets

Indicators	FYE2021	FYE2022	FYE2023	FYE2025 (target)
Percentage of employees who underwent a health check	98.0%	98.1%	100.0%	100.0%
Percentage of employees who underwent thorough examination after a regular health check	52.6%	51.6%	58.6%	80.0%
Percentage of employees with abnormal health check results (blood pressure, lipids, blood sugar, liver function)	20.5%	19.4%	18.9%	18.0%
Percentage of employees who underwent a stress check	90.6%	90.4%	96.4%	97.0%
Percentage of employees with high stress levels	11.1%	10.5%	10.4%	8.8%
Percentage of employees who received specific health guidance	11.8%	28.9%	44.6% (estimate)	55.5%
Percentage of eligible employees who continued to undergo consultation for preventing disease aggravation	83.1%	88.7%	90.0% (through December)	100.0%
Percentage of sick leave days taken (calculated based on the number of recipients of injury and sickness benefits)	0.4%	0.5%	0.5%	0.4%

Scope: LIXIL Corporation in Japan (excluding group companies)

* As of May 31, 2023

As part of our drive to achieve these FYE2025 targets, in FYE2023, we expanded and further embedded activities conducted in the previous year across the whole company through seminars and videos, and took steps to foster an organizational culture that encourages health and productivity management.

We also conducted our first health management survey of all employees, and achieved a 98.7% response rate. To the question on presenteeism, ^*1 “Supposing that the amount of work you can do when in perfect physical and mental condition is 100%, please rate the average of your performance over the past four weeks,” the average of all responses was 75.3%. To questions on understanding and opinion of health management, 78% of employees responded “Yes” to the question, “Do you think the company should be engaged in health management?” yet only 41% said the same to “Do you think the company is successfully engaged in health management?” There was a 50% positive response rate to questions on health literacy, ^*2 and the survey revealed that around 60% of female employees are aware of symptoms specific to women. Based on these results, we are investigating employee needs and the effectiveness of measures while applying the PDCA cycle to health management.

Presenteeism: 75.3%

Percentage of employees who consider LIXIL should be engaged in health management: 78%

Positive response rate on health literacy: 50%

Percentage of female employees who are aware of symptoms specific to women: Around60%

We are additionally advancing our data-driven health management and other systems that enable us to centrally manage the results of different health-related surveys with the aim of speeding up our response.

*1 Presenteeism: A state of inability to work productively despite being on the job due to physical or mental health problems

*2 Health literacy: The ability to acquire, understand, and effectively use and act on necessary information about health and medical care

Measures to Maintain and Promote Health

Mental Health Measures

We conduct annual stress checks for all employees. In FYE2023, a record high of 96% of employees underwent the test, which revealed a high stress rate of 12.3%. Employees who are confirmed to be suffering from high stress levels are referred to occupational physicians for private consultation. Any workplace with 10 or more respondents that has been assessed as being at a general health risk level^* of 120 or higher is required to create an action plan sheet to resolve the underlying causes.

We also created a support system by allocating company nurses in multiple Japanese bases to facilitate a more targeted specialist approach.

* The risk level determined from the workload-related risks and workplace-related risks. The reference value is 100. Workplaces assessed as being at a risk level of 120 or higher can be considered as prone to illnesses.

Health Education Programs

In FYE2023, we offered comprehensive e-learning programs for all employees to learn primarily about our health management policy, mental health, disease prevention, and specific ways to improve daily habits, with a 97% participation rate. For managers, we also conducted education specifically on team health management, with a 99.2% participation rate.

Health education programs conducted in FYE2023

Program	Participants
Comprehensive health-related e-learning	20,803
Training for managers: Health management of team members	2,341
Training for new employees: Basic knowledge on physical and mental health	147
Training for new managers: Basic knowledge and workplace mental health for managers	124
Mental health training for specific departments	15

Scope: Directly (including part-time) and indirectly employed workers in Japan at LIXIL Corporation and its group companies. New employee and new manager trainings were only conducted to directly employed workers (including part-time).

We also share information and videos on health maintenance from company nurses every two months, and make other efforts to create workplaces where each employee can be proactive in improving and maintaining their own health.

Health Promotion Events

Given the importance of daily efforts to maintain health, we work with the LIXIL Health Insurance Society to actively encourage exercise. Since 2016, we have held biannual LIXIL Walking Rally events to encourage employees to develop their own exercise routines. A total of over 5,000 employees joined the rally in FYE2023. We also hold health improvement campaigns twice per year on themes such as smoking and exercise habits, and welcomed 4,800 participants in FYE2023. With continual encouragement to take part in these events, the number of participants has been increasing significantly in recent years.

The Walking Rally 2023 website

Setting Up Helplines

In Japan, LIXIL has established a helpline offering mental and physical health advice through which employees can receive specific individual advice and specialist support from company nurses via email or telephone.
The LIXIL Health Insurance Society has set up its own mental and physical health support line where employees can seek advice via telephone, web, or face-to-face interview from external doctors and public health nurses not only about health and medical treatment, but also about child-raising and nursing care.

Supporting Return to Work

We provide support to employees who take sick leave based on our Return to Work Program. From during their absence to after returning to work, we support them both physically and mentally in conjunction with human resources department, supervisors of the department they belong to, occupational physicians, and company nurses.

Addressing health issues unique to women

We included questions on women’s health issues in our survey on health management, and are developing measures based on the results. In FYE2023, we focused on expanding our support systems and structures, such as by setting up a special hotline for concerns related to women’s health, and added hospital visits for menopausal issues to the available reasons for using Self-Care Leave. To also promote greater knowledge and understanding of health issues unique to women, we have been sharing information from company nurses and holding online seminars led by external instructors, which were attended by over 500 participants of all genders in FYE2023.

Healthcare Letter for employees

Promoting Smoking Cessation

In April 2020, we banned smoking throughout the day in all our offices and facilities across Japan. To help lower the smoking rate among our employees, we provide free nicotine gum, subsidize the costs of outpatient treatments to stop smoking, and conduct surveys of employees who do smoke. Smoking rates have been decreasing over the past several years across LIXIL in Japan, with 21. 3% as of the end of March 2023.

Smoking Rates

COVID-19 Countermeasures

We transmit information on infection prevention, online communication, and mental health care linked to increased work-from-home practices through internal social media and bulletin boards as a preventive measure against COVID-19. In FYE2023, we revised our response guidelines as needed to match the overall social climate.

External Evaluations and Memberships

METI Health and Productivity Certification

LIXIL was recognized under the Certified Health & Productivity Management Outstanding Organizations Recognition Program run by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) in 2023 and also selected as the White 500 enterprise. (Certified as the Health and Productivity Management Outstanding Organization for the seventh consecutive year)
Our decision to implement activities based on a strategy map and, in particular, our healthcare training for all employees and all managers and our initiatives designed to address women’s health issues earned high praise.

Sports Yell Company

LIXIL has been recognized as a Sports Yell Company for the fifth consecutive year. We continue to promote initiatives that encourage employees to keep exercising to maintain and improve their health.

Participation in Kenko Kigyo Kai

Maintaining and enhancing workers’ health is a challenge not only for a company but also for all working people themselves. LIXIL takes part in Kenko Kigyo Kai, an organization that shares health management best practices with an aim to enhance active and effective health promotion activities. We hope this organization will become a group of leading companies in the health promotion sphere, and ultimately, set a strong example for promoting health management in our society at large.

Initiatives outside Japan

In the EMENA region, we introduced the Employee Assistance Programme OPTUM with the goal to help our employees and their families to cope with their professional and personal life challenges and to create working environments where people can work vigorously with a healthy body and mind.
We also set up an internal helpline that is anonymous and available to our employees and their family members at no cost. People can seek 24/7 specialist support through the helpline.

Our employees in Germany are also working to improve health literacy by establishing an internal community that enables employees to communicate and share initiatives designed to help maintain and improve their own health. One such initiative encourages employees to use the newly introduced healthcare app to input any action they have taken to maintain and improve their health to accumulate points, which can then be exchanged for cash depending on the number of points collected. We support the health of our employees through these initiatives and strive to improve wellbeing.

Global