Today, January 25, is "Compliance Review Day".

Everybody, today, January 25, is the tenth annual Compliance Review Day.

What is Compliance Review Day?

As I wrote in last year's blog, on January 25, 2012, the company and employees of our Matsusaka Plant were referred to prosecutors for violating the notification requirements of the Industrial Safety and Health Law.

The problems were that the construction was carried out without the necessary notification for the renovation of the facility, that production was prioritized over the law, and that even after the violation of the law was recognized, there was a delay in reporting and responding.

In order to prevent this lesson from fading away, the Group has designated January 25 of every year as "Compliance Review Day" to reaffirm and reemphasize the importance of Safety, Environment, Compliance, and Quality (S.E.C.Q.) and to improve the organizational culture to one where "Bad News First & Thanks" is actively implemented.

This year's "Compliance Review Day" will feature a lecture on compliance-related risk management from Mr. Hyakushima, an external auditor, via video streaming.

Mr.Hyakushima will talk about what he has learned and gained from his own experience in risk management, using concrete examples in an easy-to-understand manner and with a touch of humor.

This is a rare opportunity for you to hear about this topic, so please make it your own matter and learn from it.

After watching the lecture, please make efforts to prevent problems and reduce damage when they occur through risk management, such as by identifying risks that may occur in your own department.

Always act in accordance with stakeholders’expectations

Compliance means not only complying with laws, regulations, and internal rules, but also acting in a manner that meets the expectations of all stakeholders of the company.

This year's slogan is "Creating a corporate culture that responds flexibly to change without being bound by past concepts," which is the same as last year’s. However, society's expectations to our company change from time to time.

Even if something was not a problem in the past, it can be sometimes considered a problem now.

In an environment where the world's standards and ways of thinking are changing drastically, the work that we continue to do out of the inertia from being stuck in past practices, can be dangerous. Therefore, I would like to ask you all to check once again whether your work methods and operations are in line with the current standards and common sense.

In particular, quality compliance has become an important issue for manufacturers, as the issue of fraud related to quality and inspection has been widely discussed in recent years.

I would like to remind all employees that “in manufacturing, it is essential not only to satisfy quality and performance requirements, but also to comply with contracts and agreements with customers”. And if you are aware of a quality compliance issue, please report it with the policy of "Bad News First".

I also would like bosses to accept Bad News with the spirit of "Bad News Thanks".

To grow day by day

For early detection and prevention of problems, it is important to create a workplace culture where people can talk openly.

I strongly hope that each and every one of you will keep in mind the "active communication" that I have been telling you about, and work on your daily work while fostering and strengthening trust among yourselves.

In order for the Sumitomo Riko Group to continue to grow as a company that is trusted and respected by society, I would like to ask you all again to act in accordance with the Sumitomo Business Spirit and “S.E.C.Q”, and to always meet the expectations of society.