Our Policy and Strategy
Toys that make children and adults smile. New, exciting ideas. These are all born out of a celebration of employee individuality and special skills, as well as teamwork based on a respect for diverse perspectives. The TOMY Group pursues work style reform with reference to the human rights and occupational health and safety of our employees so that each and every one of our staff can show their full potential and continue to grow while prizing their own identity. We are also setting up a system that incorporates teleworking and various other work styles to enable employees to work safely and consistently even in times of natural disaster or viral pandemics and allow them to continue working comfortably whatever their stage of life.
Management Structure
The TOMY Group corporate guidelines, which are based on our corporate mission and show our concrete goals, stipulate that “we will strive to offer a dynamic working environment which maximizes individual initiative and creativity.”
Under the jurisdiction of our Human Resources Division, we promote a healthy work-life balance, build systems and implement measures that help create a comfortable workplace while frequently displaying information on internal bulletin boards and holding seminars to explain these systems.
In union dealings, we believe in the concept of labor-management cooperation and harmony whereby consistent improvement of working environments and conditions leads to positive development and growth for the Group as a whole. The TOMY Group labor union conveys the opinions of employees to company management and shares information with its members through monthly publications or by holding regular (one two-hour meeting a year within working hours) or ad hoc meetings. The TOMY Group labor union is a member of UA ZENSEN, the largest industrial union in Japan. Each Group company also concludes a labor-management agreement with fairly elected employee (worker) representatives that aims to encourage dialogue between management and employees to build strong, healthy relationships based on mutual understanding and respect.
Key Initiatives
Work-life Balance
Encouraging a good work-life balance is an important part of the TOMY Group’s management strategy so we focus on creating working environments that enable people at various stages of their lives to work comfortably and maximize the added value generated by individuals and the Group as a whole.
Systems
In order to support employees to balance work commitments and childcare or nursing care responsibilities, in 2014, we complemented our reduced-hour working system for employees with restricted available hours by introducing a new work-from-home system and putting measures in place to facilitate teleworking. We are now promoting those teleworking systems so that we can protect employees from viral diseases such as COVID-19 and give them the peace of mind they need to continue working comfortably.
We hold individual briefings for employees who want to take advantage of our childcare and nursing care systems. We also follow up with these employees by conducting interviews with the employee themselves, their department managers, and human resource representatives both prior to taking the leave and just before returning to work, and we have further expanded counseling for employees with in-house counselors, often with personal experience of raising children.
We are also encouraging employees to take their entitled paid vacation time. In addition to the 125 weekends and public holidays a year, we grant between ten and 20 days a year of paid leave depending on the length of service. We have systems in place that encourage employees to take planned leave such as refresh days or anniversary days to celebrate birthdays or wedding anniversaries. Under the direction of the Human Resources Division, each department seeks to promote further paid leave by gaining a clearer idea of scheduled leave and actual leave taken over the year.
Reducing Long Working Hours
The TOMY Group conducts labor seminars for managers to help reduce overtime hours. As part of our attendance system, an email alert is sent to any employees who have worked longer than 25 hours or 30 hours of overtime per month and their immediate managers to help deter long working hours. We also monitor overtime hours for each individual department and staff member. Any cases of significantly long overtime are reported to the senior executive officers’ committee or management council of the relevant Group company. We have established systems to promote improvements.
In fiscal 2019, compliance leaders appointed under the compliance leaders system introduced at Group companies in Japan formulated a one-year activity plan centered around the theme of compliance in relation to work style reform, and conducted various activities in individual workplaces to help reduce long working hours or encourage employees to take paid leave, etc. The results of these activities were then shared with all employees in Japan on Think about Compliance Day.
Fostering a New Workplace Culture: Family Day
We seek not only to build systems that promote a good work-life balance and encourage their use, but also to foster a workplace culture that makes it easier to take advantage of those systems. We hold regular Family Days when employees can bring their children and families to the office to see where they work and the type of work that they do. The Family Day aims to deepen family members’ understanding by enabling them to experience the daily work routine firsthand. It also helps build a more easygoing, family-oriented atmosphere at work by giving employees the chance to learn more about their colleagues’ personal lives.
In fiscal 2019, a total of 280 people including accompanying staff (167 children and 113 adults) took part in Family Days.
Promoting Diversity and Female Advancement
The TOMY Group believes that embracing the diverse perspectives of a diverse range of people in our business is the best way to develop and invigorate our company, so we make our hiring decisions based on comprehensive judgement and a genuine respect for a candidate’s abilities and individuality without reference to nationality, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, ability or disability.
As part of our effort to create workplaces that encourage such diverse human resources to play a more active role, we have been promoting the advancement of women more strongly since fiscal 2019.
Target (Period: April 1, 2016 – March 31, 2021)
- 1. Double the percentage of women in management positions to 15% or higher.
- 2. Maintain the ratio of female employees taking entitled childcare leave and returning to work after the leave, and remind male employees about the childcare leave system.
At the end of fiscal 2019, the ratio of women on the Board of Directors totaled 27.0% and the ratio of female managers was 9.0%. While this figure was still below the fiscal 2020 target of 15%, it represented a 1.6 point improvement compared to the 7.4% recorded at the end of fiscal 2016, and TOMY was selected for the MSCI Japan Empowering Women Index (WIN) for the first time in December 2019.
Going forward, we will continue to promote the active participation of women in the workplace primarily through in-house projects involving the Human Resources Division and female managerial staff.
Occupational Health and Safety
Protecting Employee Health
The TOMY Group fosters working conditions that enable employees to work safely and healthily from both a mental and physical perspective. In addition to enhancing the welfare benefits we offer, such as health insurance, workers’ compensation allowance, and commuting allowance for all employees, we have put various measures in place to help maintain employee health, including setting up a Group-wide healthcare system and a dedicated committee with occupational health physicians. We are also proactive in ensuring all employees attend regular health checks, administering flu shots, preventing excessive workload, offering in-house counseling and publicizing events run by the company’s health insurance association.
As part of our mental health measures, we have set up internal and external counseling desks and, in fiscal 2019, we introduced a new system that enables employees to consult with industrial physicians specializing in psychosomatic medicine and psychiatry at any time. We also conducted stress checks on the mental and physical condition of all our employees through an online system and distributed advice sheets based on the results.
■Benefits at Group companies in Japan
| Item | Coverage |
|---|---|
| Health insurance | All employees |
| Commuting allowance | |
| Stress check | |
| Healthcare check and medical checkup | |
| Welfare association | |
| Staff discounts on products, etc. | |
| Subsidized correspondence courses | |
| Employees’ saving scheme | TOMY, T-ARTS |
| Employee shareholder association | Full-time employees, contract employees |
Health and Safety Initiatives at Production Bases
At TOMY (THAILAND), our toy-producing subsidiary, safety leaders* and other employees seek to ensure factory safety and improve working environments through daily activities. In fiscal 2019, safety leaders and other safety promotion members conducted various health and safety related initiatives. Safety leaders also take the lead in promoting health and safety measures at TOMY Hong Kong, TOMY Shenzhen, and TOMY Vietnam.
*One safety leader is assigned from each department or Group company. Safety leaders are tasked with promoting quality manufacturing during their one-year tenure.
