Workstyle during the COVID-19 Pandemic

As COVID-19 infections began to spread in early 2020, INPEX took measures to protect the lives and health of employees throughout the world via HSE alerts from the Corporate Crisis Management Team designed to draw attention to the pandemic while devising ways to keep critical operations running.

Specific measures included: the institution of work from home and “super flextime” arrangements; tighter anti-infection and sanitation policies, including avoidance of ‘the three Cs’—closed/poorly ventilated spaces, crowded places, and close-contact settings—in addition to disinfection, daily temperature checks, stay-at-home rules for persons feeling unwell, heightened awareness of infection control, and workplace vaccination of employees; and reviews of business continuity plans during the pandemic.

We also upgraded the IT environment to facilitate flexible working arrangements while providing online training to improve the skills of employees working remotely. At operation sites, we maintained efforts to bolster infection-prevention measures by clearly separating operator workspaces from that of other employees in order to prevent workplace clusters.

Other actions included: the drafting of work-from-home guidelines covering work management, subordinate staff management and health management; and the scheduling of mental health training and well-being workshops to help address the types of mental issues and communication stress that can arise when working remotely.