#0005 Developing a global occupational health and safety management system model for Japanese companies
Moving Towards a Global Occupational Health and Safety Management System Model for Japanese Companies
The phenomenon of globalization has resulted in the expansion of economic activities of Japanese companies into other countries, with as many as 24,959 subsidiaries of Japanese companies being placed overseas. Unfortunately, while this has boosted the economy significantly, it has also led to complications with respect to standardization of occupational health and safety (OHS) management systems.
Sites within Japan provide the necessary OHS services in accordance with local laws and regulations. However, overseas, some first-world countries have stricter occupational health and safety standards as compared with the local ones, while other places have standards at a lower bar than the local ones.
To address and overcome this discrepancy, our research team engaged with a company which has offices in nine countries abroad and gathered necessary information in an attempt to come up with a model global occupational health and safety management system for Japanese companies.
After thorough discussion, a hypothetical model was generated, which was then sent out for implementation to local factories in Thailand and Indonesia. The evaluation process of the model included the role of company headquarters, the implementation process, and any improvement that introduction of this model caused in the occupational health safety system in these trial sites. The headquarters and site roles in the model were found to function well, and the OHS was found to have improved as a result. However, we did identify two issues concerning the functioning of the headquarters, namely the need to establish a reporting system, and the need to support the improvement of specialized human resources. After improving the hypothetical model to overcome these issues, the model was officially ready for global introduction.
Despite the issues noted, the model was found to function very smoothly, which gives hope for its use worldwide. For now, we plan to further evaluate the effectiveness of the model by introducing it to all of the major manufacturing sites of the company, and by extending it to other companies in the near future.
Link to the original journal article:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/1348-9585.12081
Title of the paper:
Developing a global occupational health and safety management system model for Japanese companies
Authors:
Shigeyuki Kajiki, Koji Mori, Yuichi Kobayashi, Kou Hiraoka, Nanae Fukai, Masamichi Uehara, Nuri Purwito Adi, Shigemoto Nakanishi
