Creating a Pleasant Working Environment

The goal of Kobe Steel's human resource development program is to foster employees' pride and help them find fulfillment in their work. To that end, it is important for every employee to have specific goals for personal growth and make progress toward those goals day by day. The company gives comprehensive support for this policy, with the expectation that every employee will grow and develop through constant improvement.

To ensure that individual employees share the same diverse range of values and go about their work with pride and enthusiasm on a daily basis, we have also set out our ideal vision for human resources at Kobe Steel, as outlined below, and promote human resource development initiatives accordingly.

To maintain an appealing workplace, Kobe Steel actively creates a work environment that supports both the jobs and the personal lives of employees.

Among Kobe Steel employees, around 25% of all households consist of couples raising children on their own. Childcare is also accounting for an increasingly large proportion of employees' lives.

We are committed to creating an environment in which male employees at Kobe Steel can play an active role in raising their children, as well as female employees (introducing new schemes, promoting existing schemes, etc.)

As we have been recruiting considerably more female employees in recent years, we are committed to creating an environment in which women can fully exercise their abilities. As part of our efforts to achieve this, we have introduced a mentoring system for female employees in career-track positions.

Under the mentoring system, employees have access to a mentor (advisor), in the form of an experienced general manager other than their immediate superior, who provides them with support and encouragement to help them develop their career and abilities. The system is proving popular with users, with comments including "it has enabled me to map out a clear direction for myself."

The Kobe Steel Group actively promotes the employment of disabled people by such measures as holding periodic joint seminars on employment.

In fiscal 2010, disabled people accounted for 2.17% of the work force in Kobe Steel, superseding the ratio of 1.8% required by law. The company will continue with measures designed to increase this ratio further.

Employment Ratio of Disabled People (Kobe Steel)

To maintain a working environment where human rights are respected and that is free of any sort of discrimination, the Kobe Steel Group runs educational programs on human rights, such as human rights awareness training for different management levels. We are also giving training to recruitment staff on unprejudiced recruiting.

Kobe Steel believes that health and safety are fundamental to business management and take priority over all business activities. In keeping with this principle, we strive to create a vital workplace where employees can safely pursue their careers with peace of mind.

In 1979, Kobe Steel started a drive to reduce accidents at work over the medium to long term. Since then, we have formulated and implemented medium-term health and safety management plans approximately every three years. As a result, the number and frequency of accidents have greatly declined. Unfortunately, this progress has slowed or in some cases been reversed in recent years.

We take this trend seriously and recognize that protecting the lives and health of our employees is an especially important part of our social responsibility as a corporate group. As part of our ongoing safety management activities in fiscal 2011, we intend to once again address the following priorities.

To create a working environment that promotes employee health, we are enhancing our management system in both the mental and physical realms, with an even greater emphasis on prevention.

With respect to mental health, we continue to expand our system of consultation offices, where employees can discuss any matter of concern with occupational counselors and specialized doctors, while promoting mental health education at all company levels.

In the area of physical health, we work to prevent the onset of lifestyle illnesses by ensuring that all staff have regular health check-ups and follow-ups. We also strive to prevent work-related illnesses by dealing with changes that occur in the working environment.

In response to the threat of influenza meanwhile, we continue to reinforce preventive measures and to formulate measures to combat new strains of influenza, so as to keep our employees safe and ensure peace of mind.