The Fujikura Group is working on the issue of work-life balance based on the following two sets of principles and guidelines. One is the "Fujikura Group Activity Guidelines", the other is the "Criteria for the management of employees' health and safety and for ethical considerations".

The Fujikura Group is committed to providing employees with comfortable workplaces based on the Fujikura Group CSR Activity Guidelines, which states, "Secure the safety of all people involved in Fujikura Group's corporate activities, while maintaining a comfortable work environment and striving to improve it."

Fujikura Ltd. works to ensure appropriate working hours as one of its extremely important management issues that will help improve the value of the company and its human capital. The entire Group is making a concerted effort to this end. In June 2014 we documented the Group's policies on appropriate working hours and have been conducting related activities regarding the following as the three pillars of these policies.

Fujikura is working on environmental improvements to make work-life balance a reality; in doing so, we hope that each of our employees can choose a flexible method of working appropriate to their stage in life at the time. For example, we expanded our childcare leave system in January 2010, ahead of regulatory requirements due to enforcement of the revised Act on the Welfare of Workers Who Take Care of Children or Other Family Members Including Child Care and Family Care Leave. Our expansions included abolition of the exclusion on housewives (or husbands) and enabling reacquisition of secondary childcare leave for fathers. In doing so, we have continued our steady progress toward harmonizing work and life, according to each employee's current stage in life.

This progress is not bound by gender, and we currently have five male employees on childcare leave. Fujikura has compiled details on our childcare and family care system alongside related regulations in our "Childcare and Family Care Support Handbook" in January 2010, and then distributed the handbook to system users, their superiors, and numerous others. This is another part of our efforts to deepen understanding of the system among all employees. We have achieved our third General Employer's Action Plan through these efforts, according to the Act on Advancement of Measures to Support Raising Next-Generation Children.

Furthermore, we also received Kurumin recognition from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare as a "Business That Supports Childcare" in June 2011. We similarly obtained the highest level of "Eruboshi" certification (3 stars) in recognition of our efforts to support the advancement of women. In other fields, we are working to make environmental improvements, and efforts include the introduction of a telecommuting system.

The systems supporting work-life balance in our Company are indicated in the 6th version of the General Business Owners Action Plan.
The key points are listed below.

In addition, we have tools to educate on and disseminate the systems and supports mentioned above.

In February 2016, the Company received a Notification Certifying a General Employer’s Conformity to Standards based on the Law for Measures to Support the Development of the Next Generation from the director of the Tokyo Labor Bureau. With this, we have transformed our current certification into a Next Generation Certification Mark (common called a “Kurumin” mark), which is given to enterprises that support childcare. The Company has begun to use this mark on things like brochures, on its business cards.

The Kurumin certification system allows companies to be certified by the Minister of Labor (delegated to prefectural labor bureau directors) and be defined as an “enterprise supporting parenting” through the accomplishment of certain objectives, such as those set out in relevant action plans. A certified employer can then use the Next Generation Mark (nickname: Kurumin) to promote itself as a company that supports parenting and childcare.

In order to create an environment in which diverse human resources can fully exercise their abilities and realize enhanced corporate value, the Group has in place activities to enhance employee incentives as well as systems to support those activities. Among them is a proposal system established by our first President, Tomekichi Matsumoto; even now, his system is in active application.

Fujikura Ltd. has a system to allow employees to use their paid holidays for which the two-year entitlement period has expired up to 100 days if they become ill or need to take leave for their family in need of nursing care. In April 2015, the company added local community/social contribution (volunteer) activities to the activities for which employees can use such holidays.

The activities for which employees can use the aforementioned holidays now include volunteer activities for disaster victims, organ donor-related activities (registration and actual donation), welfare activities for people with disabilities and the elderly, contributions to local disaster and crime control, and youth training and education.