We have placed sustainability at the heart of our Purpose and made a promise to advance a sustainable energy future for all.
Under the People strand for action of our sustainability strategy, we are supporting a safe, inclusive, equitable, and just energy transition by focusing on three areas: health and safety; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); and human rights and social contributions.
Our top targets
Within our sustainability strategy’s People strand of action – and in alignment with relevant SDGs, our high-impact commitments, and Hitachi Energy’s guiding principles – are the following top targets:
Health and safety
We are committed to minimizing harm and to eradicating fatalities, life-changing injuries, and major environmental incidents. We are determined to provide positive health and wellbeing work environments that require us to create safe working conditions, seeking continual improvement through learning from successes and failures.
We promote a strong HSE culture through training and recognition as well as communication of our Life Saving Rules and our health saving actions.
Our stance is that health, safety, and environment must always come first in the decisions we make, and we take a robust risk-based approach and encourage proactive management of hazards and risk. We encourage all working for us to speak up if they have a concern as we believe that we all have a responsibility to protect ourselves, others, and the environment. We openly report our performance and seek to both learn and build trust in our approach through external validation.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion
Our global team of over 40,000 employees represents 136 nationalities across 90 countries and six continents. We integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion into all our practices and policies. This means including, accepting, and respecting all areas of diversity. Together, we are creating an inclusive culture where all are welcome and empowered to contribute and unique strengths are embraced, respected, and used to drive us forward. Living Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is a daily commitment while continuously implementing interventions.
Our Diversity 360 approach seeks to support all aspects of this topic which is fundamental to our plans to grow the business by supporting attraction and retention.
Human rights and social contribution
Securing a just energy transition is a critical aspect of our sustainability strategy: we strive to respect and uphold human rights in our value chain, realize social innovation, create a positive impact on worldwide communities, fostering sustainable human development, whilst contributing to the wellbeing of people. Our responsibilities are fully reflected in our Human Rights Policy, Social Policy, and due diligence processes. Alongside, we strive to proactively, meaningfully engage with a wide range of stakeholders and social actors. As part of our license to operate and thanks to our global presence, we are thus able to implement distinctive activities and contribute to the development of the local communities where we live and work, particularly investing in education and human development.
Discover more about our people
We put significant effort and resources into learning and development which, for many of our colleagues, starts as part of their induction. Our support extends throughout the various stages of employment within our organization and embraces ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ skills and competencies as part of an integrated approach to talent and learning.
We provide a broad range of optional on-demand training in addition to mandatory courses such as our Life Saving Rules, an introduction to Six Sigma, and ethics and business conduct training – these all support the three key element of our license to operate: safety, quality, integrity.
We engage with a wide range of external stakeholders to understand various expectations of us as a sustainable business.
We consulted with external stakeholders in the development of the Hitachi Energy Sustainability 2030 strategic plan and in 2023 for our Material Impact Assessment report which contributed to the latest iteration of our business sustainability strategy.
External stakeholders include customers, investors, suppliers, partners, non-governmental and governmental organizations, regulators, and independent assessors. Internally, we also seek input from Hitachi Ltd. and colleagues at all levels within Hitachi Energy.
Customers, for example, often request information on such topics as our health and safety record, sourcing policies, and compliance processes. Socially responsible investors and, increasingly, mainstream investors ask about risk management, and social and environmental issues.
We view social interaction as promoting mutual understanding and the common good. This contributes to our social license to operate and our reputation as a welcoming organization based on a track record of responsible corporate behavior.
We are convinced that positive, inclusive, and place/location-sensitive inter-relationships are critical to deliver our purpose of advancing a sustainable energy future for all.
As set out in our Social Policy we seek to contribute to the development and progress in communities where we live and work. We promote inclusive societies for sustainable development, and we work with partners, customers suppliers, and authorities to achieve this.
As fundamentals of a thriving society, our focus is on:
- education
- diversity and inclusion programs
- health and environmental projects