Ensure Appropriate Working Hours and Work-Life Balance

Key Initiatives

Initiatives to Reform Work Styles

Commitment to Reducing Working Hours

• As compliance requirements for reducing long working hours, we stipulate adherence to labor laws and the Article 36 Agreement, while ensuring that statutory overtime does not exceed 80 hours per month for two consecutive months. Talent Planning & Management Department, Industrial Physicians, and the health insurance association work in unison, collaborating with business divisions to advance these initiatives.

Holding Semi-Annual "Council on Working Hours" Meetings

• Since maintaining a comfortable working environment is necessary for creating a vibrant workplace, we hold semi-annual "Council on Working Hours" meetings at each workplace, where workplace managers and employee representatives discuss ways to reduce total working hours.
  The meeting also discusses measures to encourage leaving work on time and taking annual paid leave.

Annual Paid Leave

• We encourage our employees to take at least 70% of their annual paid vacation days, creating a work environment that makes it easy to take leave.

Ensuring Work-Life Balance

Promoting Telework

• From the 2017 fiscal year, we introduced teleworking as part of our efforts to respond to changes in employees' values and lifestyles, and to enhance productivity. We have created an environment enabling flexible working without restrictions on location or time, while establishing guidelines for communication and meeting protocols during teleworking. This forms part of our ongoing efforts to develop systems that contribute to improved operational efficiency.

Optional Flextime ("Slide Work")

• We do not impose restrictions on the number of times employees may choose their working hours, allowing them to freely select their working hours from seven patterns specified by the company. This allows each individual to work flexibly according to their work situation and availability, which improves work efficiency and productivity as well as work-life balance.

Three-Day Weekend System

• To enable working styles aligned with employees' values and lifestyles, we have introduced a Three-Day Weekend System—a variable working hours system on a monthly basis—at some offices, where three days per week are designated as holidays.

Prime Leave Scheme—Three Days of Special Leave

• We have introduced a Prime Leave Scheme that allows employees to take three days of special leave between 1 April and 31 March each year.
  We also encourage taking nine consecutive days off by combining two days of annual paid leave with weekends.

Sabbatical Leave System

• To motivate long-term employees and achieve work-life balance, we have established a new Sabbatical leave system. This system flexibly responds to events not covered by the current leave system, such as childcare, nursing care, fertility treatment, career advancement such as overseas study and qualification acquisition, and social contribution such as volunteer work.

Continuous Work Support System

• This system allows employees who are unable to work at their current location due to marriage or relocation of a spouse/family member to request a transfer to the branch nearest to their new location, so that they can continue working for the company.

Other initiatives

Preventing Burden Shifting onto Business Partners

• In the "Declaration of Partnership Building" published in April 2023, we declared that we would refrain from placing orders with short lead times or making sudden specification changes without appropriate cost sharing, thereby preventing the burden being shifted onto subcontractors due to work-style reforms and similar factors.

Measures to Address Hay Fever

• Approximately 60% of our employees reported experiencing "illnesses caused by allergies such as hay fever" in a survey. We provide free treatment medication annually to Orico Group employees suffering from hay fever symptoms, which constitute a significant proportion of these allergies. Considering hay fever a significant health challenge, we implemented this initiative as part of our efforts to improve presenteeism, a state where work efficiency and performance decline due to physical or mental health issues. In fiscal year 2024, 1,465 employees participated in this scheme.