Occupational Safety and Health

Basic philosophy and promotion system

Hitachi Construction Machinery promotes a variety of safety and health activities to prevent occupational accidents, based on the basic philosophy that "safety and health are all priorities."

Since fiscal 2024, we have divided the priority items for zero occupational accidents into the following four categories, highlighting individual priority items, making it easier to understand the direction of concrete organizational efforts, and making improvements so that safety and health activities can penetrate and take root to each employee.

(1)      Rebuilding a Culture of Safety

・With the aim of building a safety culture based on mutual enlightenment, we will analyze the current situation and promote initiatives to ensure that our employees wish to be safe and healthy in the future and act accordingly.

・In accordance with the Occupational Health and Safety Management system (ISO45001), PDCA will function autonomously and proactively, as well as thorough preventive action of similar accidents and failure through ongoing improvements.

・Through the establishment of failure research system, we will pursue the root causes and root cause and build a Substrate to eliminate the fundamental measures. At the same time, we will strive to make full use of accidents and failure cases and to comply with occupational health and safety laws and regulations.

・We will redouble our efforts to eradicate failure related to vehicles, such as construction machinery and forklifts, and strive to preventive action critical near-miss failure.

(2) Intrinsically safe and Strengthening Safety Investments

・We will promote automation and visualization through thorough Inherently Safe of machinery and equipments, and work on load reduction, labor saving, and appropriate automation to ensure the safety of workers at the manufacturing work process. We will also conduct risk assessment from the planning stage of the introduction of machinery to its commercialization to thoroughly eliminate danger sources.

・With regard to risk assessment, we will further promote the qualitative improvement of danger sources, take measures to ensure that they are realized, and establish a system for managing them according to risk level, and thoroughly implement the basic stance that "all work-related accidents can be prevented."

(3) By strong leadership Health and Safety Activities

・By systematically implementing and firmly establishing safety training for line managers, we will realize a safe workplace based on mutual trust between managers and worker by clarifying the responsibility of line managers and agreeing to safety observations and actions.

・We will carry out safety and health activities involving all employees under a strong leadership of preventing accidents and failure and create a culture that encourages interactive communications and rewards in the workplace.

(4) Strengthening global health and safety activities

・We will continue to incorporate global perspectives in every aspect of our activities, such as the promotion of retention for health and safety, and promote initiatives to share and improve problems on the ground. In FY2023, the Global Safety and Health Conference was established as an opportunity for safety and health officials around the world to share information on policies and priority items and to introduce their outstanding activities. We will continue to actively utilize meetings to improve level of safety and health activities through mutual activities.

In fiscal 2024, system established Safety/Health & Compliance Group to further strengthen our health and safety management under the direct control of the president.

We believe that reviewing and strengthening the overall organization's functions is an important first step in solving global common issues related to safety and health. We will step up our communication with the management and aim to speed up our decision-making and implementation of improvement measures in the field of safety and health. Set goal to achieve zero occupational accidents, we aim to further increase our corporate value through concerted efforts by the entire corporate organization.

Establish and utilize occupational health and safety management system

Hitachi Construction Machinery Group has established an Occupational Safety and Health Management system and promotes and supports activities aimed at acquiring international standard certification. We continue to systematically promote the acquisition of international certification as a common Sec. theme.

Occupational Safety and Health Management system is a key mechanism for preventing accidents by actualizing danger sources based on risk assessment, and we are committed to further strengthening Substrate of our business through effective risk control.

We will also appropriately operate performance reviews to clarify the responsibility for improving the field of occupational safety and health in management and for implementing countermeasures.

ISO 45001 certification acquired

Since fiscal 2012, Hitachi Construction Machinery's domestic Sec. companies have promoted certification and renewal of occupational health and safety management system based on Occupational Health & Safety Assessment Series 18001 standard, but all domestic Sec. companies shifted to ISO45001 during fiscal 2021. We have also been promoting Occupational Health & Safety Assessment Series 18001 certification and renewal in other countries. Since fiscal 2019, we have been promoting activities to acquire ISO45001 certification.

ISO45001 certification is also being actively registered globally. In May 2024, Hitachi Construction Machinery Europe (Netherlands) completed the transition from Occupational Health & Safety Assessment Series 18001 to ISO45001 certification.

*1 Obtained OHSAS18001 certification at the former KCM 2 factory, and integrated it into ISO 45001 in FY2021.
*2 Hitachi Construction Machinery Safety and Health Department audits and certifies with OHSAS compliant management system

Health and Safety Training

We implement safety and health education systematically. The main education is as follows.

Training for new people

・In view of the current situation in which employees with little experience in work are damaged by an industrial accident in recent years, we have strengthened employment training to employees who have newly joined the company or have been transferred according to the Industrial Safety and Health Law. The curriculum includes training in danger hazardous operations and promotes the use of P in Hitachi Construction Machinery. The curriculum is designed to enhance danger sensitivity by incorporating hands-on training, as well as basic knowledge of safety and health, emergency-response methods, etc.

VR caravan

・As a training program to improve danger sensitivity, we have introduced a training program that uses VR system to simulate virtual images. VR system is now portable, and caravan-based travel training service are being deployed in every plant to make effective use of it.

Safety and health education using video

・It incorporates a curriculum using motion picture animation. This is an education to reproduce realistic events that are especially desired to be appealed and to enhance imagination power by converting images into a comic image. Since subtitles are suitable for multi-lingual applications, we will expand the lineup of content as appropriate and actively utilize the content in a ongoing manner.

Occurrence of occupational accidents

The number of occupational accidents at Hitachi Construction Machinery in fiscal 2023 was 70, an increase of 25 from the previous fiscal year. Based on our awareness that "zero occupational accidents" has not yet been achieved and that it is more critical than ever before, we believe that it is essential to investigate the root causes of accidents, implement truly effective measures, and implement Horizontal deployment.

In addition, 222 occupational accidents occurred globally, including 108 in domestic group. and 114 in overseas group. We will continue to pursue activities aimed at achieving zero work-related injuries, taking serious account of the current status of work-related injuries.

Number of deaths from workplace accidents

Efforts to Prevent Industrial Accidents-Holding Safety and Health Presentation Meeting

Hitachi Construction Machinery Group holds an annual HCM Group Safety and Health Presentation Meeting with the purpose of sharing the results of safety and health activities at Hitachi Construction Machinery and its domestic Sec. companies and utilizing them in their own activities. The presentation meetings cover a wide range of themes, including improvements, innovations, and technological research in daily safety and health activities.

Health management and wellbeing

Hitachi Construction Machinery Group believes that it is necessary to create an environment in which everyone working in the world can feel satisfied with everyday work and feel happiness in "physical, mental, and social status" because of changes in business activities and the business environment. We believe that our efforts to Welveeing will continue to be an activity that will contribute to society. We would like to promote our "Health Management" initiatives and indicate the significance of our company presence in the future.

We will steadily spread the importance of welveying one step at a time to base and aim to achieve another stage of level by steadily gaining certification as a large-scale healthy management corporation. In the future, we will proactively work to achieve the following goals: within the upper 1000 of our superior companies, acquiring white 500 certification, etc. As a concrete starting point for these activities, in fiscal 2024 we revised the Health Management Declaration by President and Executive Officer to further clarify our stance on protecting the health of our employees. Because our environment is changing significantly, we will promote our activities based on our awareness that our health is Substrate of our daily lives under the new declaration, and that our employees' health is the corporate value itself.

※Health management is a registered trademark of the Health Management Research Association of NPO.

Mental health measures

Recognizing the importance of "mental health care," HCM Group has been conducting activities centered on four types of care based on the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare guidelines on an ongoing basis for decades. Stress checks have been conducted every year prior to the enactment of the law and have led to the awareness of stress by employees, the creation of a comfortable working environment, and PR and promotion of the use of consultation desks by specialized counsellors. In mental health training, we pay particular attention to the content related to preventing harassment, stress scoping in COVID-19 problems, and other aspects that take the background of the times into account.

In addition, in order to gain the awareness of each employee every year and take a step toward improvement in stress checking, we aim to have all employees undergo inspections. In fiscal 2023, the factory division achieved an experienced rate of 100%. In FY2024, we began regular interviews with employees who have lost their jobs due to poor mental health and added and improved new support menus. Through self-care training for all employees, line-care training for managers, support for employees who have lost their jobs, and EAP(Employee Assistance Program, we are engaged in health-related consultation support for employees and their families.

Going forward, we will continue to improve the quality of our overall industrial health, aiming to become a company where the indispensable human resources of a company can fully demonstrate their abilities and work in a healthier and more comfortable manner.