For Employees

A company cannot succeed in business if it doesn’t take care of its employees. With this in mind, we are constantly upgrading our systems for supporting the child-rearing activities of employees in a unique Pigeon-like manner.

Pigeon defines corporate value as the summation of social value and economic value. In order to deliver high-quality products to the world, we must create an environment that motivates employees to work. If we don’t take care of our employees, we cannot succeed in business. For this reason, we are upgrading various frameworks and systems to create an appropriate working environment, while building a corporate culture that helps employees perform their tasks more easily.

As a matter of course, we comply with domestic regulations on worker protection and work hours established by legislation and labor agreements. We are also implementing various measures to increase labor productivity by discouraging excessively long working hours and fostering a good work-life balance. These include establishing a rule to leave the workplace by 7:00pm and setting one day per week as a “no overtime day.”

We have broadly entrenched “Pigeon Way” throughout the entire Group. In Japan, Singapore, Thailand (Pigeon Industries (Thailand) Co., Ltd.), and Lansinoh Laboratories, we have incorporated behavior evaluation benchmarks based on “Pigeon Way” into the goal management systems for individual employees. We will incorporate this into goal management systems at other operations going forward.

One of our Corporate Ethics Policies is that “Pigeon shall respect its employees’ human rights and personalities at all times, ensuring them discrimination-free, equal job opportunities and rewarding work environments, and offering them fair merit ratings to help their self-fulfillment.” By welcoming and utilizing the fundamental differences in employee backgrounds―in such areas as gender, nationality, age, employment status, and income―we aim to strengthen our entire organization, and for this reason we undertake a variety of activities to promote diversity.

Pigeon gives all employees opportunities to participate in technology development, education, and practical training. Even before the enactment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law, we had eliminated differences between men and women with respect to career paths and training courses. In line with recent globalization of our operations, we have worked hard to foster personnel who can excel on the global stage by introducing in-house English language classes (42 students as of January 31, 2017). At our overseas bases, the employee turnover rate has remained low level thanks to our speedy career advancement policies. With a view to the future, we are also conducting a Global Leadership Program, a multinational training program for participation by selected employees.

Now, more than ever, creating an environment enabling women to excel is a particularly important priority for the Pigeon Group in its constant pursuit of “world-class business excellence.”

Back in 2007, Pigeon received “Kurumin” accreditation as a “Child-rearing Support Company.” We have also established and upgraded various child-care frameworks aimed at promoting advancement of women and encouraging men to participate in child-care.

With respect to promoting women’s advancement, we have cited three core initiatives: “expansion of compatibility support system,” “workplace mindset reforms,” and “backup for women’s feelings and skills.”

We have also set five key objectives for the period from April 2016 to the end ofJanuary 2018: (1) Increase number of men using the compatibility support system to 10 or more; (2) Increase awareness about parental leave among male employees; (3) Grasp and improve status and outcomes of work-at-home system; (4) Establish framework enabling women to give birth, raise children, and return to work with peace of mind; and (5) Open a breastfeeding room in the Central Laboratory (following one already opened in the head office) that breastfeeding employees can use.

We are also concentrating on fostering female managerial staff, with the aim of raising the female manager ratio.

As a company involved in child rearing, Pigeon has sought to expand and upgrade its support systems for child-rearing employees. For example, we implemented a 12-month parental leave system before Japan’s Child Care and Family Care Leave Act was enacted in 1990. In 1999, we received a work-life balance award from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government acknowledging this initiative. In 2006, we adopted a new parental leave scheme, called “One Month Together,” offering one month’s paid leave for male employees as a means of encouraging more men to take parental leave. This underscores the major changes we have made to provide workplace environments where both men and women can take parental leave as a matter of course. For two consecutive years since 2015, the uptake of “One Month Together” has been 100%.

In 2015, we set up a breastfeeding/pumping room called Lactation Lounge in our head office to create a comfortable working environment for employees with small babies. In addition to employees, the room is available for use by mothers working in the vicinity of head office, as well as mothers and babies living nearby, reflecting our local and social contribution efforts.

In other nations, as well, we provide support to establish breastfeeding/pumping rooms in various locations, including within general corporations, with the aim of helping female employees return to work after giving birth. As of May 2017, we had provided such support for approximately 5,000 rooms in 15 countries around the world.

In addition to this, we launched a system enabling employees to take time off for fertility treatment, and we have since expanded the system to include employees going through the adoption process. We also focus on assisting female employees to smoothly return to work after childbirth, through programs for early reinstatement of women workers, monetary support for children waiting for admission to daycare, and the like. Going forward, we will continue creating work environments aimed at fostering employees who are well-versed in the subject of raising children.

Pigeon is extremely meticulous with respect to managing the health and safety of workers. In addition to Japan, we have factories overseas, including in China, Thailand, and India, and we conform to the Pigeon Group’s workplace health and safety standards uniformly at all those facilities.

We have also obtained certification under the OHSAS 18001 standard for occupational safety and health, widely adopted around the world, for systems we have established at PHP Hyogo Corporation, Thai Pigeon Co., Ltd., Pigeon Industries (Thailand) Co., Ltd. Pigeon Manufacturing (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., and Pigeon Industries (Changzhou) Co., Ltd.