The SOFTBANK Group has established a Wellness Center with medical and mental health expert staff stationed on a full-time basis, helping to ensure the mental and physical health of all employees is maintained so they can remain fully motivated and work to the best of their ability. The Health Support Room, operated by the center, has industrial physicians and nurses who provide employees with consultation on physical and mental health issues, run medical checkups and work to support employee health. In an effort to address underlying health problems at the earliest possible stage, industrial physicians also conduct interviews with employees whose overtime work hours exceed a certain level. In addition, email newsletters from industrial physicians and essays by nurses are distributed on a regular basis, covering various health-related topics such as dry eye syndrome, backache, sleeping disorder and mental health, and their symptoms, causes, preventive measures and treatment.

At the Massage Room, employees can get a massage to refresh and to prevent general fatigue, eyestrain, and backache caused by extended computer-use or physical exertion.

The Employee Support Room of the Wellness Center is a place where employees can seek consultation on a range of issues such as career goals, office politics, work-life balance, job responsibility and childcare issues. Full-time certified counselors stationed at the Employee Support Room provide counseling and coaching to employees through interactive communications, helping to alleviate work-related stress. The dialogue also helps employees to maintain balance between career success and their personal lives, which in turn helps them to achieve their career objectives.

In an effort to prevent stress-induced health problems and to enhance health levels, the SOFTBANK Group has also introduced a simple self-checking system on the intranet to allow employees to measure and be aware of their own stress levels.

Besides, counselors at the Employee Support Room provide seminars on various topics including basic knowledge about mental heath, stress management and workplace communications with a view to prevent or educate on health program. In particular, the seminar for supervisors, who welcome their subordinates returning to workplace after a long leave, plays a part in facilitating such returners to settle in again.

Peer Supporters are selected from those employees who applied for the role with qualifications as an industrial counselor or a career consultant certificate, or with equivalent knowledge and experience. They are trained and certified and work as a volunteer. In addition to their regular jobs, Peer Supporters offer consultation to their colleagues about jobs, careers, work environment, and work-life balance, as well as keep reminding of their role as a help at hand at the workplace. When they feel necessary, they refer certain cases to industrial physicians or counselors at the Employee Support Room.

SOFTBANK and some companies of the SOFTBANK Group such as the three telecommunications companies maintain this Peer Supporter system. Over 50^*1 employees work as Peer Supporters, wearing a pink-colored ID strap as a symbol of the services they provide. Employees often encounter problems that they are reluctant to discuss with their bosses, or about which are unwilling to go to the Wellness Center for counseling. The friendly advice that Peer Supporters provide in these circumstances helps to ensure that physical and mental problems are addressed at an early stage and to improve the workplace.

From fiscal 2004 Peer Supporters who are raising children run Oya-oya Club program two terms a year, aiming to provide communication training to childrearing employees to enhance their parent-child bonds. During the lunch break the club holds total 9 workshops based on knowledge of counseling and coaching. Every term sees around 30 employees enrolled in the program.