SAFE - Sustainability Assessment For Enterprises: Die Methodik. Ein Instrument zur Unterstützung einer zukunftsfähigen Unternehmens- und Organisationsentwicklung

In practice, questions of ecological company policy deal much more with technical questions than with organisational ones. In many guides for the implementation of an Environmental Management System the development of the organisation that first has to grow into this new task has not yet been fully planned, as has the participation of the employees. The deciding factors for this implementationinclude the improvement of information and communication within the company, the increase in employee motivation and the optimisation of the interfaces between economics, ecology and social aspects.Companies often show a great need for analysis and management instrumentswhich they themselves can organise and which, with the participation of the employees, help to find and to translate solutions quickly into action which show theway. Together with small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) of different branches, the SAFE - Sustainability Assessment For Enterprises instrument has been developed and tested.The instrument SAFE is used as a dialogue instrument in companies and serves as a lasting method of controlling success and of deriving new measures. The aimof the instrument is to motivate employees to become involved in change proc-esses and to cooperate in the shaping of the development of the enterprise in astreamlined procedure. They should know their participation possibilities as wellas learn how to use them. Altogether the viewpoint should be changed from anecological enterprise development to a lasting one and in doing this the develop-ment of ideas and strategies for the implementation of sustainability in the com-pany is to be supported.In a clear procedure the companies determine independently the ecological, economic and social aspects which are relevant for their enterprise's development and deduce potential for improvements and options for action for those aspects.The environmental control agents and/or quality control agents - and often alsothe managers - become qualified to use the instrument on their own. The imple-mentation of SAFE takes place together with employees from different levels inthe company who go through the procedure of several working phases in twodays. In these working phases a profile of the company's strengths/weaknesses will be drawn up as well as a list of organisational and technical suggestions forimprovement and qualification requirements. Afterwards, a plan of measures willbe deduced from those lists and suggestions. All these proceedings are based on the questionnaire Is your company fit for the future. The measures will be putinto action within a defined period of time by the persons who are responsible forthis implementation. The process will be repeated at regular intervals.In a test phase SAFE has until now been applied in approximately 40 companies for the first time and has been developed further. Its successful use shows that theinstrument can be applied to companies in all branches.