◆Q&A on stress check-up

“The Revised Industrial Safety and Health Law Q & A Collection” has been published by the Ministry of Health, Labour & Welfare with regard to the “Revised Industrial Safety and Health Law” (promulgated on June 25th) that was passed in the previous ordinary Diet session.
(About 60% of workers have intense stress, according to the Survey on State of Employees’ Health by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare as a background.)

Let us look at some of the following Q&A (excerpts).

【Are all workplaces eligible for this check-up?】
→The implementation of stress check-ups is only made compulsory in businesses with more than 50 employees. At the time being, businesses with fewer than 50 employees do not have such an obligation.

【Are all workers eligible for this check-up?】
→Just like workers who are eligible for general health diagnosis, the stress check-up will be applied to all workers at all times. For temporary workers, this will be implemented by the respective dispatch offices.

【How often should these stress check-ups be performed?】
→The Ministry will officially determine the frequency after hearing opinions from labor unions and experts, but we believe that it will be more than once per year, just like the general health diagnosis.

【Just like the health diagnosis, will there be no issues if implementation is left to external agencies? 】
→There is no problem with this. When these agents carry out the stress check-ups, implementers have to directly inform the results to workers, and without the workers’consents, they cannot divulge these results to businesses.

【Will the stress check-ups be done in an interview format?】
→In order to grasp the psychological burden of workers, the workers themselves will select the checking methods. These will not be limited to just interview formats.

【Just like the health diagnosis, will it be necessary to provide a report for the Inspection Office after conducting a stress check-up?】
→In order to accurately grasp the situation of stress check-up implementation, we are currently coming up with a mechanism for businesses to report their implementation status to the Labor Standards Inspection Office.

◆Will it be implemented in December next year?

The ordinance, guidelines, etc. are expected to be formulated in around February ~ March of 2015, with the Amendment Act (the part on stress check-ups) expected to be enforced by December 2015.