Active dialogue on key issues

Together we can accomplish more. Therefore, we enter into dialog about major issues and concerns with our stakeholders. In 2014 the Partnership of Sustainable Textiles of the federal government was a major topic. We have also continued to work on the issues of Greenpeace, Four Paws and our employees. From our dialogue with these stakeholders, we drew insights into how we could improve our business. In the future, we will expand our stakeholder dialogue even further (see also "Dialog important for development").

In this “textile partnership”, the federal government, the textile and apparel industry, business, trade unions and civil society consolidate their energies and join forces with the goal of better putting into practice internationally recognized environmental and social standards (including health and safety) in the entire value chain of textile production than previously. 

This is intended to prevent disasters like the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh in 2013 in the future.

The textile partnership helps us strengthen our view on the supply chain. On one hand Environmental Management gets added weight, and on the other hand, more attention shifts to social issues such as "payment of a living wage".

Greenpeace is continuing its Detox Campaign, fighting against the use of chemicals in clothing, in order to provide clean drinking water in China. The campaign is directed against eleven groups of chemical substances. Particularly relevant for the outdoor industry in this context is the use of fluorocarbons in the production of water-repellent clothing (see also "Water repellent materials").

VAUDE has internally established a project group to systematically develop alternatives to the use of fluorocarbons. In addition, we are working with the ZDHC, although we are not a member. We have posted a position statement on how we are dealing with fluorocarbons on our website.

Four Paws campaigns against the use of down from live-plucked or forced fed animals. VAUDE has a clear commitment: We only use down of slaughtered animals.

The down campaign helped us discover that we still have no absolute control over the conditions under which animals that our down comes from are kept and treated. Therefore, we will retain an independent organization in order to audit the entire supply chain of our down (see also "Heat storage as light as a feather – one of nature’s marvels").

In a 2011 Employee Survey, VAUDE’s compensation system had the worst rating. To counteract this, we have started the project "Introduction of a Salary System" in 2013.

The aim of the project is to introduce a more objective and more performance-based compensation system to reward employees in comparable positions with comparable pay (see also "Employee satisfaction"). The new compensation system began to be implemented at the beginning of 2014.

Compared to other companies, we only achieved a below-average rating for the statement “Much is done for the health of employees” in the 2013 Employee Survey. Therefore, since the autumn of 2014, we have been working on building a systematic health management program.
One important step: the opening of the organic canteen in the newly renovated administrative building in April 2015.