Personnel Appraisal System

Unitika's personnel appraisal system emphasizes employees' effort, and is designed to increase the organization's vitality. It is a results-driven system that awards greater benefits to employees who achieve greater success or tackle more difficult challenges. A biannual goal management system and annual competency evaluation system are used along with our human resources development program. They impartially evaluate how well each employee is meeting their goals, and help them set new goals to develop their abilities. Supervisors meet with each employee to discuss their evaluation results, ensuring that everyone receives proper feedback, for better transparency and communication.

Self-Reporting System (Career Plan)

Once a year, at the time of the annual personnel appraisal employees submit a 'Career Plan Sheet' to self-report how much aptitude they feel they have for their position. The Career Plan Sheet covers five main areas: (1) the employee's thoughts on their current position, (2) their own medium- to long-term career plan, (3) what they want to achieve next in their career (such as whether they want to be reassigned), (4) their strengths and how they have been working on achieving their career plan, and (5) comments on their current job position (such as their concerns) and improvement suggestions in the workplace. These comments are used to clearly identify skill development goals and expectations regarding roles. Furthermore, we also confirm whether employees of a certain age would like to use a reemployment system.
Unitika is aware of the importance of job rotation in fostering outstanding human resources. Our practice of periodic job rotation (especially for young employees) helps employees improve their abilities by giving them the opportunity to work in several departments, and helps us spot candidates to fast-track.

Women Employees

Unitika's women employees are valued for their abilities and perspectives. We employ a large number of female employees and have no gender-biased employment or promotion policies. Over the past five yeas, 20.3% of Unitika employees have been women, including many in management positions.

Support System for Work and Childcare

Achieving a Work/Life Balance

In the interest of achieving an ideal balance between work and home life, and also to address Japan's aging society issues, Unitika fosters a corporate environment that allows employees to take leave for both child-raising and elder care, and in fact, Unitika offers leave durations for these, and also for care for sick children, that are longer than those stipulated by law. Also, based on Japan's "Next-Generation Child-Raising Support Measures Promotion Law," the company is also involved in promoting male participation in child-care, with child-care leave available to both male and female employees.

Reemployment System

Unitika has a senior employee system that enables employees to continue in the same job after reaching the age of 60. We welcome employees who want to continue working.

Unitika believes that raising the ability of each employee in the organization is crucial for achieving high business goals.
Human resource development is therefore an important focus for us. We approach it through two areas-our personnel system that sets forth employee work conditions and appraisal methods, and systems to encourage ability growth, such as ability development and training systems. To implement our approach, we have our own training facility called the Unitika Training Center. It is used for several different types of training taken by a large number of employees. To help employee self-improvement efforts, Unitika offers a job qualification assistance system, correspondence courses, and full-time study courses at universities in Japan. Many of our highly-motivated employees are eager to take advantage of these benefits.

Training System (Program) and Number of Students (FY 2009)
1  Training for individual levels (544 students) 1. Training for promoted employees (216 students) 2. Young employee education (328 students) New employee training, basic course, manufacturing department leader development course
2  Specialized education (122 students) 1. Competency improvement training Legal training 2. On-the-job development education Supervisor training, business leader training 3. Quality control training Experiment planning training Basics of quality control

Unitika actively pursues measures to ensure the mental well-being of employees based on the Guidelines on the Maintenance and Enhancement of Employee Mental Health issued by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. All Unitika employees undergo mental health training when they are promoted to a management position. We encourage managers to be aware of their managerial role and to take care of their own mental health as well as the mental health of employees in their charge.
Beginning 2010, Unitika introduced return-to-work support guidelines for employees who have taken extended leave due to mental illness.
We manage and promote employee health by supporting all employees at every stage from preventing illness to facilitating their return to work.

Raising Human Rights Awareness

The entire Unitika Group is an active advocate of human rights. Unitika's Standards for Behavior are distributed among employees with the goal of elucidating the company's policies on human rights. The company also has an organization for the promotion of human rights and holds an annual human rights education seminar.
To comply with Japan's revised equal opportunity law, we are also working on preventing sexual harassment, and have set up sexual harassment consultation offices at each production site to raise awareness and recognition of the problem among all employees.

Forced Labor

The Unitika Group and the Group's domestic and overseas subsidiaries and affiliates do not conduct forced labor or child labor in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, or other international treaties.

Fair Recruitment Practices

Unitika has created the Unitika Employment Interview Manual based on the spirit of the employment selection guidelines issued by The Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare. We promote fair recruitment practices by distributing the manual at meetings and training seminars for interviewers and those involved in the selection process, and ensuring that all concerned are familiar with its contents.

While the Unitika Group's medium-term safety and health plan implemented in 2008 (the 14th program running from 2008-10) sets a target of zero workplace accidents, seven such accidents occurred in fiscal 2009, an increase on fiscal 2008. The rate of lost work time also worsened to 1.17 during fiscal 2009. However, some successes were also achieved as a result of the safety and health activities promoted by our medium-term safety and health plan, with the Environmental Business Division successfully reaching 10 million hours of accident-free operation.
The increase in workplace accidents can be attributed to a variety of causes including aging equipment and facilities, increased dangers in factories, group companies, and workplaces due to generational turnover and other factors. In light of this situation, the Unitika Group is focusing on educational activities, for example by conducting safety diagnoses at plants and group companies. Moreover, the Group also conducts risk assessments to clarify latent dangers in equipment and facilities and implement measures to reduce workplace accidents.

In response to the increasing public attention being given to health problems associated with asbestos, in 2005, the Unitika Group established the Asbestos Action Committee, a groupwide body that promotes asbestos-related measures.
Exposed beams and posts containing friable asbestos have already been removed, sealed off, or enclosed as needed.
Moreover, friable and non-friable asbestos that has been sealed off or enclosed is removed using appropriate methods in conjunction with regular repair work.
To check employee health, we have offered health exams to any current or former employees who handled asbestos in the past and want to check for asbestos-related health problems. As of March 2010, there were six certified industrial accident victims (of whom five have died) and three victims certified under the Law Concerning the Relief of Health Damage Due to Asbestos (of whom three have died). No health problems have been reported from residents of areas surrounding production sites or Group companies.