Director, WHS Japan, Workplace Health and Safety

Overview Director, WHS Japan, Workplace Health and Safety. As we strive to be Earth's Safest Place to Work, we are expanding the Japan Workplace Health and Safety (WHS) organization and looking for Director of WHS for Japan. This mission-driven role will have direct impact on ensuring thousands of employees return home safely every day, while leading the successful implementation of a comprehensive safety strategy to enable and promote safe and efficient workplace practices for thousands of employees from first to last mile. The Director of WHS determines the strategic direction for their network programs, initiatives and the resources that are required to deliver the compliance assurance and life safety goals. This position also regulates organization design to provide better service to operations and meet the ever-increasing demands of growth and corporate-wide initiatives. Given Japan's unique environmental challenges, this role is also critical in developing and maintaining resilient safety protocols for natural disaster scenarios.
The right candidate earns trust through outstanding performance, effective communication skills, and a strong record of delivering timely and effective results. You will be able to demonstrate a true passion for problem solving with the ability to conceptualize novel applications using new and emerging technology. You will be a strong leader of others and will be responsible for leading global team and work collaboratively across a matrixed organization.
Responsibilities Using technical WHS expertise and unique life safety knowledge, operates with total autonomy and discretion to develop Japan operational compliance and injury prevention strategies, plans objectives to achieve WHS goals.
Develop and innovate new methods for associate safety and injury prevention to deliver year over year performance in overall life safety and injury prevention, to include Serious Incident Rate (SIR), Recordable Injury Rate (RIR), Lost Time Incident Rates (LTI), Safety Leadership Index (SLI), and Compliance Assurance performance and drive the safety culture to meet our leadership competency.
Assess effectiveness of the deployed tools and revise to ensure continual improvement in the implementation of best practices in safety and environmental compliance.
Develop and lead a large team of Sr. Manager, Workplace Health and Safety that can deliver WHS compliance assurance at all levels.
Define and deliver all aspects of site-level WHS organizational structure and talent management. Implements and executes the daily WHS Recruiting, Staffing and Talent Management of the field safety teams; managing the career development of their safety professionals.
Drive consistent communication, training, and execution of the WHS programs throughout the WHS network.
Develop and maintain comprehensive natural disaster response protocols across all Japan facilities to ensure business continuity and employee safety.
Basic Qualifications Bilingual (Japanese/English) - critical for site communication
Scale of organization/team managed
Strong leadership and influence capabilities across multiple teams prioritized over safety background
Willingness to travel 30-40% within Japan
A Bachelor's degree or equivalent level of qualification
Preferred Qualifications Knowledge and experience of Japan operations/business environment
Environment, Health and Safety leadership
Experience implementing lean principles and process improvements
Strong analytical and statistical skills, including data analysis
Project and program management in delivering key business outcomes
Experience in multinational and complex corporate contexts
Innovation/automation project leadership
Advanced degree (Master's or MBA)
Leadership Competencies Drives Change & Innovation: Proven track record of leading transformational initiatives with builder mindset, comfortable navigating ambiguity in fast-paced environments
Influences Through Relationships: Demonstrated ability to build strong partnerships across all levels, particularly with executive stakeholders, while operating with autonomy
People-Centric Leadership: Shows genuine passion for developing teams and prioritizing safety, with natural ability to connect and inspire others
Data-Driven Decision Making: Uses analytics and systematic approach to problem-solving, while maintaining agility in rapidly changing situations
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