Opinions from Stakeholders

CSR in Casual Dress

Companies are obligated to have a workforce of at least 1.8% disabled. Although many companies do not abide by this, Daikin Industries has an outstanding record and the Daikin Group established a subsidiary, Daikin Sunrise Settsu, that is making a major contribution in this area.

Recently, Noriyuki Inoue, Chairman of the Board and CEO, gave a talk titled Company Management and Social Responsibility to people working in the field of employment for the disabled. He talked about the Daikin group philosophy and the spirit of employees, how Daikin Sunrise was established, and how the expertise from Daikin in Japan was used to promote hiring of people with disabilities in China and other countries. As stated in the CSR Report, Daikin is already taking action and is implementing its plans to double the number of workers at Daikin Sunrise. This is indeed a hiring plan that is thoroughly backed up by corporate governance.

CSR means not only living up to one's manufacturing responsibilities, but also living up to responsibilities to stakeholders inside and outside the company, be them responsibilities to the local communities and society, the environment, customers, or employees. The importance of this must never be forgotten. But while CSR contains a lot of formal wording, at Daikin Sunrise Settsu I caught a glimpse of �gCSR in casual dress.�h The veteran management personnel bearing responsibility for operations advocate the hiring of people with disabilities in every region of the country, and there is free, ample communication between employees at the corporate headquarters and the employees with disabilities at Daikin Sunrise regardless of gender. Here too you can see the Daikin Group's people-oriented management in action, and this could be further backed up by taking opinions from the workplace to use as feedback for this report.

Incidentally, CSR generally portrays the people with disabilities as society's dependents. However, the workers at Daikin Sunrise Settsu are anything but dependents and are instead highly valuable, full-fledged employees. CSR should be based on the social view of including those citizens who have been excluded from society.