During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Group implemented various measures under a common Group policy to prevent important business from stopping, which prioritizes preventing employee infections and stopping the spread of infections at business sites and in the local community.
In January 2020, the Group established a task force at the head office to direct a unified COVID-19 response across the Group. The task force formulated preventative measure guidelines and group action policies according to the status of the pandemic around the world and conducted monitoring to ensure that the Group can handle changes to the situation swiftly and appropriately by centralizing information on the health of employees, the situation of various countries and regions, etc. while sharing that information with top management. In May 2023, COVID-19 was reclassified under Japan’s Infectious Disease Control Act as a Category 5 infectious disease, and the COVID-19 task force was disbanded as a result.
The Group implements various measures for ensuring the health of all employees and maintaining workplace safety in Japan and overseas, as well as preventing the spread of infection in the various regions where we conduct business.
As additional infection prevention measures, we implement various initiatives based on an annual infection prevention plan. These initiatives include vaccinations, various health subsidies, health education and support for employees assigned overseas.
In order to continue producing and supplying products and services that support society and important businesses of the Group such as the recycling business, thereby meeting the demands of our customers and society, the Group implemented various measures appropriate to the current status of the pandemic and requests from national and regional governments, based on business continuity plans for each of our business sites.
In May 2023, COVID-19 was reclassified under Japan’s Infectious Disease Control Act as a Category 5 infectious disease, but that does not mean that the risk of similar infections spreading has been completely eliminated. In addition to responding to the significant changes caused by COVID-19 in society, this business environment and business structure, the Group is taking the opportunity to implement various measures for increased competitiveness, such as further enhancing cooperation with markets and customers, migrating to new work styles such as teleworking, improving management speed via digital transformation, and rebuilding business models.