Sustainability in numbers
Progress in our sustainability work and strategy
It takes more than just good intentions to establish a sustainable company. We check our strategies and our actions for success. Different KPIs help us here.
All our actions are based on the question: Is this sustainable? We developed a KPI system so that we can answer this question. We use this KPI system to measure the success of our sustainability management. KPIs help management to compare results across the Group and continuously improve them, for example. We differentiate between internal KPIs, our KPI-based management tool, and external KPIs that we publish and use for comparative measurements.
The most important KPIs
The Viessmann Group’s sustainability management system is headed by the Sustainability Steering Committee, which is overseen by Co-CEO Joachim Janssen. The committee meets every quarter to coordinate our company’s sustainability activities. The most important KPIs include modernization-related carbon savings, our diversity, our employer attractiveness, our training rate, the number of suggestions for improvement per employee, the amount of waste we generate, the amount donated by the Viessmann foundations, and our turnover.
Reduce carbon emissions
At Viessmann, we use the “Carbon savings through modernization” KPI to understand how far we and the entire industry are already contributing to the success of the energy transition. The federal government’s climate goals adopted in the “Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety’s [BMU] Climate Protection Plan 2050” stipulate reducing carbon emissions in the “Buildings” sector by 47 million by the year 2030. For the federal government’s climate targets to be achieved, the building modernization needs to substantially be ramped up.
Reduce greenhouse gases
According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, fluorocarbons, sulfur hexafluoride, and nitrogen trifluoride. In addition to CO2, greenhouse gases are converted into CO2 equivalents to simplify things. The greatest potential for savings lies in reducing our natural gas consumption. We use natural gas to generate process heat and supply locations with heat and are gradually switching over to renewable energy sources, such as wood chips or biogas.
Promote diversity
To measure how diverse our company is, we primarily look at indicators on equality between women and men in the company and the age distribution of the employees. We then use this as our basis to compare the goals we have set ourselves with the current state of our company and define measures should there be different results.
Check employer attractiveness
This KPI is based on survey results provided by the public opinion and data company YouGov, which regularly determines the representative brand performance tracker “YouGov BrandIndex”. Brands are assessed in online interviews based on six dimensions of evaluation: general impression, quality, price-performance ratio, customer satisfaction, willingness to recommend and – important for our KPI – the employer image.
Increase the training rate
The qualification and motivation of our employees have always been important success factors and have a long tradition in the family-operated company Viessmann. We believe that a vital component to ensuring our company’s future viability is to recruit young professionals for apprenticeships or cooperative education programs. This is especially true in light of the growing shortage of skilled workers. It’s therefore a must to compare one’s own training and education activities with those of other companies.
Gather ideas
Our employees know best how to avoid waste and improve processes. We therefore rely on the management of ideas. Since its introduction in 1960, our employees have submitted more than a million ideas and achieved savings of more than 50 million euros. We reward outstanding performance with bonuses. The number of ideas submitted per employee has been well above the industry average for years.
Avoid waste
We want all raw materials used to flow into the products as completely as possible. We abide by the principles “avoid before reduction, reduce before recycle, recycle before disposal” wherever it is feasible and economically viable. The consistent collection of separated waste for recycling, or the use of returnable and refillable systems, have long been a habitual part in our day-to-day activities. Our Allendorf (Eder) location, for example, is capable of separately collecting more than 100 classes of waste, almost all of which are recycled in accordance with the Closed Substance Cycle Act.
Reduce energy consumption
Since the end of 2015, Viessmann has had a ISO 50001-certified energy management system in place across all locations. The central energy management ensures the implementation of the energy policy and the improvement of energetic performance. The main objectives are to reduce energy consumption, boost energy productivity, and thus also reduce energy costs. We therefore regularly collect data from various consumers and provide a transparent description of them.
Increase the share of renewable energies
We use different renewable energy sources: Green electricity, i.e. electricity from renewable energy sources, wood in the form of wood chips, pellets, and logs, biogas, and local heating from renewable energy sources. The individual locations have very different shares of renewable energies, which all depend on availability and the potential for substitution. The share is approx. 70 percent in Allendorf (Eder), for example. We are able to cover a large share of the energy demand there with wood chips from our own short rotation forestry operations. Across many of the Viessmann Group’s businesses, we’ve already converted electricity production to green electricity supply. Adequate capacities are, however, not available at all locations outside of Germany.
Encourage projects
The three Viessmann foundations – the Viessmann Allendorf Stiftung, the Hans Viessmann Technologie Stiftung, and the Dr. Hans Vießmann Stiftung – are each committed to a different field of focus, such as science, health, education, art, culture, and sport. They make six-figure donations every year to support projects in Germany and around the world. Viessmann is committed to recognizing its social responsibilities.
Grow responsibly
Viessmann is bolstering its strategic transformation from a pure heating technology manufacturer to a provider of integrated solutions for the living spaces of future generations. Restructuring is making it possible for us continue our consistent course of growth: after a strong anniversary year in 2017, sales in 2018 rose again by around five percent to 2.5 billion euros. With annual sales of 2.65 billion euros and an increase of 6.4 percent, the 2019 financial year was even stronger. Business fared extremely well in our home market of Germany, where we were able to increase growth in our core business climate solutions by more than six percent.
