TEPCO executes and enforces business practices that comply with corporate ethics by making sure each and every employee abide by the code of conduct, and by creating a corporate culture that discourages incompliance, a mechanism that prevents incompliance, and a framework that encourages speaking out.
Following the spirit of the TEPCO Group Charter of Corporate Conduct, TEPCO has formulated a Corporate Code of Conduct, as guiding principles of corporate behavior. It defines priority values and standards to be observed by all employees, including complying with rules, behaving honestly and communicating openly. All employees share and abide by the Code of Conduct as they daily engage in their work.
Summary of initiatives for ensuring corporate ethics compliance
TEPCO has set up a Corporate Ethics Committee composed of members from top management, and an Ethics Line, to widely collect information on corporate ethics compliance from the entire Group and take specific action against matters that need to be addressed. Each office has a corporate ethics officer, who works closely with the Ethics Line, while making independent efforts to promote corporate ethics compliance. Around 50 TEPCO Group companies have so far established a similar framework.
The Corporate Ethics Committee meets every other month to formulate and promote action plans for corporate ethics compliance, and to investigate and discuss actions to be taken against any violation of corporate ethics.
| Members : | Committee chair: Chairman |
| Committee vice chair: President | |
| Committee members: Outside experts (1 attorney, 2 professors, and 1 labor union chairman) |
The Ethics Line receives reports and consultations on legal and ethical violations from TEPCO employees and other stakeholders, including members of TEPCO Group companies and business partners. All calls are referred to the Corporate Ethics Committee, which, when necessary, discloses individual incidents and proposes measures to prevent recurrence. The Ethics Line has received 144 calls in FY2009.
Corporate ethics promotion framework
We are making active efforts to enforce strict observance of corporate ethics. For instance, we are working to create a corporate culture that discourages incompliance and motivates all employees to cooperate in creating an open workplace based on strong awareness of the significance of corporate ethics. We have also developed a mechanism that prevents incompliance by improving and reinforcing proper work rules. Since FY2007, we are also promoting a framework that encourages employees to speak out about potential issues and problems and urges management to respond with sincerity.
To promote awareness about corporate ethics, we invite outside lecturers to give seminars to TEPCO and Group company management personnel, and provide corporate ethic officers in each business unit regular opportunities for exchanges of views with the top management, as well as regular training programs. We also actively visit and provide training at various business units and Group companies (117 occasions in FY2009).
TEPCO's business units also make independent efforts to ensure compliance with corporate ethics. They actively utilize "codes of conduct FAQs" that describe proper conduct in specific situations and case study materials that promote moral thinking skills as tools for facilitating and ensuring understanding of TEPCO's code of conduct by each and every employee, as well as implement original initiatives appropriate to their respective business environment.
In FY2009, we held an employee slogan contest on the theme, "Applying corporate ethics rules to daily operations." The winning slogan was made into a poster to raise employee awareness about corporate ethics.
Additionally, to more widely emphasize TEPCO's most valued ethical principle of placing the highest priority on safety, we distributed towels bearing safety messages to TEPCO employees and business partners.
Corporate ethics poster
Every year, we conduct an employee awareness survey and a questionnaire survey on people outside of TEPCO who interact with TEPCO employees, to assess the degree of corporate compliance, and use that result to formulate activity plans for the following fiscal year.
Similar initiatives are also implemented by TEPCO Group companies.
TEPCO takes utmost care in handling customers' personal information and business information, and makes ongoing efforts to maintain and enhance information security.
As a company that retains some 32.5 million items of personal data from our customers and others, TEPCO is responsible for proper control and handling of this information. Based on Japan's Law Concerning the Protection of Personal Information, which came into full force in April 2005, we have established the basic policy on handling personal information, and publicly announce our purposes for using personal information and the procedures for its disclosures upon legitimate requests.
Basic policy on handling personal information
We employ the following measures to maintain and enhance information security.
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