Health Management
Our Approach
SUBARU believes that the happiness of its employees and their families are the driving force to achieve its vision of becoming a company “delivering happiness to all,” and that a workplace where each employee can enjoy ample opportunities for challenge and growth, in good health, is the foundation of all its business activities. This is the underlying concept behind SUBARU’s health management initiatives. SUBARU works with units within the Human Resources Department to support the physical and mental health of its employees as well as to build a healthy organization and promote flexible working styles, and more. By doing this, it creates the underpinnings of a more comfortable working environment necessary for greater employee engagement.
Subaru Health Declaration
In pursuit of becoming a company “delivering happiness to all” and based on our Global Sustainability Policy of “striving to maintain and advance the workplace environment so that employees can work safely in peace, and with a sense of satisfaction,” SUBARU CORPORATION, the Subaru Labor Union, and the Subaru Health Insurance Association jointly released the Health Declaration in October 2020 with the intent that the three parties work in unison toward health.
Health Declaration
To build happiness for our employees and their families, we need a foundation of mental and physical health.
SUBARU works with its employees to promote health and preventive care, taking on the challenge of building workplaces full of smiles and enabling growth.
Representative Director, President and CEO, SUBARU CORPORATION
Executive Chairman, Subaru Labor Union
President, Subaru Health Insurance Association
Established in October 2020
Management System
SUBARU considers health promotion activities to be a management issue, and as of FYE March 2021, SUBARU has discussed and operated a PDCA cycle regarding its health management issues and measures at the Executive Meeting, Executive Management Board Meeting, and at the Board of Directors. SUBARU is also advancing collaborative health with partnership from its labor union and its health association. On the operational side, the Health Promotion Group has served as a core driver of our unified SUBARU- health promotion measures since FYE March 2022. This dedicated organization within the Human Resources Department coordinates weekly regular meetings with stakeholders such as the health association, health promotion managers at our sites, industrial physicians, and other staff in charge of industrial health.
Health Promotion Framework Diagram
Targets and Metrics
In addition to important physical and mental health measurements and surveys, such as health checkups and stress checks, we also set goals for smoking habits, exercise, and mental health, aiming to improve employee health literacy, increase long-term productivity, and create a workplace where employees can work with vigor and enthusiasm through a variety of initiatives. In particular, the four initiatives listed in the table below are positioned as major challenges because of their significant impact on maintaining and improving productivity and on the fulfilling personal lives of each and every employee.
[Major Challenges and Targets]
| Major challenges | Details | Targets |
|---|---|---|
| Measuring physical fitness | Supporting the cultivation of a physique to help employees work with vigor for many years to come | To be set from FYE March 2025's measurements |
| Reducing the percentage of smokers | Helping employees to quit smoking and preventing unwanted secondhand smoke. Smoking to be prohibited from all SUBARU premises from 2025 |
No more than 25% |
| Reducing the number of persons taking leave / days of absence from work due to mental illness | Preventing absence from work due to mental health problems, and detecting and treating those experiencing mental health issues as early as possible | Number of health-related leave days 0.8 |
Initiatives
SUBARU is engaged in activities under three categories: physical health, mental health, and organizational health. In particular, we will place a high priority on creating a vibrant workplace, and will implement and verify the effectiveness of each measure to eliminate performance losses caused by health problems.
Physical health
Physical health is the first item on the list, with the aim of enabling our employees to lead active and vibrant lives in good health for many years to come.
By encouraging employees to undergo regular health checkups, and by determining the rate of employees with checkup findings and supporting them in better dietary and exercise habits, we are striving to promote better habits and prevention of lifestyle-related diseases among employees.
Initiatives for regular health checkups and reexaminations
In addition to regular health checkups, we recommend 100% of employees who are subject to reexamination to undergo medical checkups and share a portion of the cost for those who need to take reexaminations. In this way, we support our employees in receiving appropriate medical treatment. We use the high-risk approach to provide those determined to be at high health risk with advice from public health nurses and provide guidance to raise their health awareness, including via seminars for health maintenance and promotion.
Activities for better physical fitness and dietary habits
We use the population approach* in our preventive activities, and have introduced body composition analyzers at all sites to visualize not only BMI but also muscle mass and fat mass. We are also expanding activities throughout SUBARU to make people aware of the importance of balanced physical fitness. In addition, we have implemented a total health promotion plan (THP), visualizing physical fitness and proposing a variety of physical exercise programs for employees derived from this information, while also holding seminars to help them improve their dietary habits.
(Separately listed due to becoming a full-scale action)
- *
- The act of working to promote health and prevent disease to reduce the health risks to the population as a whole
Measures against smoking
As of FYE March 2022, we have launched a series of measures against smoking at SUBARU. One such measure is completely separating smoking areas from non-smoking areas at our sites, and we are taking action to reduce the ratio of smokers to below 25% and prohibit smoking on our premises by 2025. As of FYE March 2024, this ratio was 35.6%. We have set up a no smoking day, conducted lung age measurements by industrial physicians, promoted a non-smoking challenge in cooperation with the health insurance association, and provided financial support to employees for visits to outside smoking cessation clinics.
Increasing employees’ health awareness at the canteens
At all our canteens, we provide healthy dishes prepared under the supervision of registered dietitians so that employees can enjoy meals with a strong nutritional balance. We also provide low-salt, low-fat, high-protein, and low-sugar dishes alternatively from day to day, with a view to helping employees raise their health awareness by eating at the canteens.
Measuring physical fitness
Physical fitness testing is conducted at each business site to maintain and improve physical fitness so that employees can work vigorously for many years to come. By starting with new, young employees, we are working to prevent industrial accidents and to maintain and improve future productivity by quickly identifying physical fitness issues and promoting the maintenance of physical fitness.
Mental Health (Prevention of Mental Illness)
We are implementing “self-care” and “line care” measures for the prevention and early detection of mental illness among employees. We have also set up a consultation service so that employees can receive follow-ups from industrial health staff.
For employees who took leave due to mental illness, we proactively support them when they return to their workplaces.
Self-care
We utilize self-care training and stress checks so that participants can learn how to self-manage their mental health, we provide new employees with training and otherwise provide education using internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy (iCBT).
Line care
We have formulated the Line Care Guidelines and include line care training in the collective training for managers, held twice a year, and use the results from collective analysis of employees’ stress checks to take improvement actions at the workplace level for those workplaces found to have high health risk. For the departments engaging in technological development, we strive to create workplaces in which it is easy to seek advice, facilitative workplaces, and harassment-free workplaces. To achieve this, we are engaged in the "Better Workplace Builders" activity encouraging employees to voluntarily improve their workplaces. We are also expanding management systems that increase their work motivation to all of SUBARU, focused on administrative departments, and enhance bidirectional communications between managers and their subordinates, with support from staff in charge of industrial health. These measures are contributing to preventing the onset of mental illness and mitigating the lengths of these illnesses among employees.
Return to work program (for return to work on a trial basis and gradual return to full-time work)
We have implemented a program to support the smooth return to the workplace for employees who have taken leave. In this program, employees can return to work on a trial basis and gradually step up their hours as they return to full-time work.
Organizational Health (Improving Psychological Safety)
We are carrying out praise, acknowledgment, and appreciation activities to improve employees’ intrinsic motivation and psychological safety. Using IT tools, we are working to create workplaces where employees can work with greater peace of mind and where they can take on challenges in their own unique way by strengthening peer bonds between employees and visualizing the exchange of appreciation in the workplace.
Formulation of a Health Management Strategy Map and Dissemination Among Employees
In FYE March 2023, we formulated a health management strategy map and set three final health-related goals—reducing presenteeism*1, reducing absenteeism*2, and boosting engagement—visualizing the links between management issues.
In addition, particularly for items with a deep connection to individual employees’ performance, we have created SUBARU Health Six Stars to promote the health of both employees and the organization, not only by supporting employees from the company side, but also by encouraging employees to autonomously think about and act regarding their own health. In FYE March 2025, we have begun informing employees of this program.
- *1
- A state in which a person is working while suffering from some kind of illness or symptom, and their ability to perform their work or their productivity is reduced
- *2
- A state in which work becomes difficult due to tardiness, early departure, or absence from work due to physical or mental illness
Health Management Strategy Map
* Stress check conducted by outsourced provider (PEACEMIND Inc.)
| Initiatives and target indicators |
|---|
| Initiatives | Target values | Presenteeism | Absenteeism | Work engagement |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reducing the rate of employees with health findings | 55% | 〇 | ||
| Improving physical fitness challenges | New | 〇 | 〇 | |
| Increasing cafeteria satisfaction | 60% | 〇 | 〇 | |
| Improving lifestyle habits (exercise) | 40% or higher of individuals | 〇 | 〇 | |
| Improving lifestyle habits (sleep) | 70% or higher of individuals | 〇 | 〇 | |
| Reducing the smoking rate | 25% or lower | 〇 | ||
| Reducing the percentage of high-stress individuals | 12.5% | 〇 | 〇 | |
| Reducing the number of employees with long working hours | Total of 500 or fewer employees | 〇 | 〇 | 〇 |
| Improving work mentality | Negative evaluation rate of 20% or lower | 〇 | 〇 |
Measurement methods for target indicators
Presenteeism: Measured using the 80-item version of the new occupational stress check (The University of Tokyo, Single-Item Presenteeism Question)
Absenteeism: Measured by converting the number of sick leave days into a rate
Work engagement: Measured using the 80-item version of the new occupational stress check
SUBARU Health Six Stars
Recognized as a Certified Health & Productivity Management Outstanding Organization for 2024
For the fourth consecutive year, SUBARU has been recognized as a Certified Health & Productivity Management Outstanding Organization in the large enterprise category (White 500) for 2024 by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and the Nippon Kenko Kaigi (Japan Health Council).
Going forward, we will continue to accelerate a variety of health promotion activities with the purpose of improving the health of our employees—the people who bring happiness to our customers—and their families.
