HiringPersonswithDisabilities

[Chart] Employment Ratio of Persons with Disabilities

This ratio is based on calculation standards for employment ratio of persons with disabilities provided by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare.

Number of Persons with Disabilities Employed for Work Outside of the Welfare Facility Program

Since 2005, the Yumegaoka Plant (Mie Prefecture) has been collaborating with a social welfare corporation, Iga Kouiku Kai, to include people with disabilities for work outside of the Iga Kouiku Kai’s facilities. Efforts in the M.I.E Model (also known as the Mie Inclusive Employment project), including those by Milbon, to support hiring people with disabilities in Iga City, Mie Prefecture, are attracting attention from various local governments and support organizations.

Since around 1990, Milbon has been engaged in hiring people with disabilities by issuing workplaces to provide a range of tasks, including product labeling. Full-scale hiring began in 2005, when the Services and Supports for Persons with Disabilities Act was enacted to promote employment support for people with disabilities. Our current partnership with Iga Kouiku Kai began when Ms. Toshie Okunishi, representative of the organization, approached us to ask if we could bring in persons with disabilities at Milbon’s production plants for work outside of the organization's facilities. At that time, Milbon had been expanding its production of products requiring a number of manual tasks, and we began accepting people with disabilities in the form of outsourcing packaging and packing work. We have since continued to accept these workers into our facilities without interruption.

History of Establishing Extra-Facility Work Model

The request made by Iga Kouiku Kai in 2005 was for Milbon to establish a special subsidiary. However, we learned, at the time, that some special subsidiaries have the sole aim of achieving a certain employment rate for people with disabilities, with work often unrelated to the company's core business, such as shredding documents or cleaning facilities.

Our corporate posture is for our employees, regardless of ability or disability, to be able to do work that contributes to profits. The method we have chosen is to have these workers do tasks at our production plant in the hopes that they can maximize their individual ability and be able to fulfill roles within our core business. In the belief that hiring people with disabilities requires an adequate level of preparation, we have taken a new step forward in hiring people with disabilities as an alternative to establishing special subsidiaries. In our partnership with the Iga Kouiku Kai, we began accepting people to work at our plants from the welfare organization as part of vocational training program for persons with disabilities.Our corporate posture is for our employees, regardless of ability or disability, to be able to do work that contributes to profits. The method we have chosen is to have these workers do tasks at our production plant in the hopes that they can maximize their individual ability and be able to fulfill roles within our core business. In the belief that hiring people with disabilities requires an adequate level of preparation, we have taken a new step forward in hiring people with disabilities as an alternative to establishing special subsidiaries. In our partnership with the Iga Kouiku Kai, we began accepting people to work at our plants from the welfare organization as part of vocational training program for persons with disabilities.

Our aforementioned efforts to hire people with disabilities through collaboration between corporate and welfare organizations are quite rare in general, and are now being introduced to a variety of other environments in all parts of Japan as a model case study.

By having people with disabilities work in our plant alongside Milbon employees, we can see firsthand the strengths of each individual. There have been many instances where these workers have been more than capable in other tasks outside their original work scope, resulting in expanded work responsibilities.

A contributing factor behind these results is the generous support provided by Iga Kouiku Kai, as well as the assistance provided by Milbon employees in helping direct hires acclimate to the workplace and establish a career path. Furthermore, Mie Prefecture, where our plant is located, is one of the rare areas in Japan where many social welfare corporations and companies work together in an overall sense to share and disseminate information. These strong ties provide immense support to workers with disabilities.

Going forward, we at Milbon will continue to make extensive effort to bring greater career path possibilities for employees with disabilities in cooperation with local communities.