気ままなリライト４０

日立物流、全運転手に心拍計　疲労可視化し残業も抑制

How a management policy is reinforced to protect the overall safety, health and well-being of self-employed workers and company employees is being put to the test in the logistics sector suffering from a labor shortage. Under pressure to meet increased consumer demand due to an online retail shopping and delivery boom, the logistics industry is bending over backward to enhance efficiency and productivity through a safer and healthier working environment by reducing various risks workers are exposed to before the overtime cap is imposed.
 
A safety integrated system backed by the artificial intelligence is being introduced in Hitachi Transport System as a major group of logistics businesses to place more strict controls over their employees’ health care. In the system, the biological information about how much each truck driver suffers from fatigue is visualized through a wearable healthcare device for risk assessment. Through monitoring the heartbeats of an employee in the driver’s seat by remote control, real-time online supervision enables pro-active risk assessment to be undertaken by giving the driver customized alert to help identify what is wrong with him or her and minimize human errors. Hitachi Transport System is targeting about 1,500 truck drivers of its group companies for heartbeat monitoring through a wrist-bound device.
 
In a pursuit of a healthier corporate culture based on technology-assisted safety management in the wake of a series of serious accidents reported in 2016, Hitachi has been putting great importance on technology as a means not only to control the risks arising from careless driving, but also to improve the well-being of each employee. Hitachi has resisted the temptation to compel their employees to comply with what the company asked them to do by respecting their own free will to act on their belief. While wearing a heart rate meter is making many truck drivers realize how thankful it is to raise awareness of healthcare management on a daily basis, some truck drivers considering the device as a fetter to hamper inner freedom are allowed not to wear it.
 
When the tendency to tilt employees toward overtime work in logistics businesses is increasing the possibility of making truck drivers exposed to various risks, the reduction of overtime is a challenge the logistics industry has to meet as a grace period for applying the legal overtime cap of 960 hours a year to the trucking industry expires at the end of March 2024. With more than 4.9 billion packages handled by door-to-door delivery services in fiscal 2021, marking a record breaking high for seven years in a row, understaffed logistics businesses are overextending their capabilities. 27 % of all truck drivers are working beyond the overtime cap of 960 hours a year. The legal cap on overtime hours scheduled to be imposed in April 2024 is a far-fetched goal for one in four logistic businesses across the country.
 
Overtime-related problems are emphasized in self-employed truck drivers accustomed to working long hours to finish tasks. Going the extra mile with too much workload to shoulder is increasing a chance of getting involved with an accident on the road on the way to delivery as being forced to work long hours is more likely to cause fatigue and stress. Many self-employed truck drivers are working through outsourcing agreements with subcontractors for Amazon Japan without a clear safety management policy to enable them to fulfill their workload in a healthy and sustainable way. Two groups of self-employed truck drivers in Kanagawa and Nagasaki prefectures are resisting pressure to succumb to a servile attitude to the subcontractors by forming a labor union in June and September for the better well-being of themselves and the better quality of delivery services.