Health promotion as a matter of course

Only employees who are healthy and feel well can fully perform their services. As an outdoor brand, VAUDE wants to create appropriate compensation for deskwork, and this applies to all employees.

Our health management system focuses on prevention and our employees’ active involvement in their own health.

At VAUDE, we aim to pursue a holistic health management approach, including healthy food, prevention, exercise and sports, as well as office equipment based on ergonomic principles.

Since 2014, we have been working on the establishment of a resource-oriented Occupational Health Management system based on self-determination and self-efficacy.

We are supported by Stefanie Raaf from EmBODI in the field of occupational health management. A standardized reporting system based on quantitative and qualitative characteristic figures is being developed to help us specifically manage our Occupational Health Management system.

The following measures were implemented in 2015:

• Raising awareness and a 6-week sports program for all managers
• Preventative stress test (heart rate variability)
• Health screening with nutrition advice
• Training of 14 VAUDE Health Coaches who developed a sport program, which includes approx. 8-10 events per week and is open to all coworkers
• Several lectures by our expert Stefanie Raaf on topics such as healthy nutrition and self-regulated health management
• Coordination, management and evaluation of all measures by a company health management team, which consists employees and managers of several divisions at VAUDE.
• Unification and coordinated management by the Federal Ministry of Health and by Industrial Safety

Integrating the Occupational Health Management system into the management system is of central importance to directing further interventions and makes the system measurable and lasting for VAUDE.

Since 2015, company buildings have appeared in new splendor. After three years of remodeling, a whole new array of health-relevant updates has been made available.

• The in-house VAUDE organic cafeteria provides healthy and delicious meals
• Our impressive climbing area offers all employees the opportunity for athletics challenges
• Our sports area provides the perfect ambience for over 400 sports activities per year in the context of our Company Health Management Program, as well as for self-organized employee activities
• During the remodeling, all computer workspaces were ergonomically designed with height-adjustable desks and ergonomic chairs

More about it Future-oriented Work Environment

VAUDE has long provided intensive support of the issue of bike commuting with eight E-bikes, decentralized showers, sheltered bike parking, Jobrad and more. See Commuting

In addition, the VAUDE Academy program normally offers ten to 15 sports and/or outdoor events per year, aimed at both beginners and advanced participants. Our employees can, for example, choose between mountain bike training and climbing courses, snowshoeing and trekking tours.

We offer swimming classes on an as-needed basis at our outdoor pool or encourage our employees to participate in a weekly yoga class that’s free of charge.

Overtime and how to avoid it is also an issue at VAUDE. In order to act preventively against the accumulation of overtime, we follow an approach that is not just focused on employees’ presence at work but that includes goal achievement. See Culture of Trust
 

Our absenteeism** (= all absences caused by illness, including accidents at work or occupational illnesses) was 6.65% in 2015. Thus absenteeism rose slightly compared to 2014. (absence ratio 2014: 5.57%).

Therefore, we did not achieve our goal of lowering absenteeism. Nevertheless, with 11.47 sick days per employee, we are still significantly under the national average of 15.4 days. (For data of the Techniker Krankenkasse see http://www.tk.de/tk/grafiken/gesundheitsreport/fehlzeiten/215980).

Added to this is the fact that we use an extremely strict computation for absenteeism. In contrast to most other statistics, we count every absentee day and not only after the third day in a row.

We will continue to try to lower our illness absenteeism rate. For this we rely on the above described measures in our company health management programs and the issue of company safety (see Company Safety).

*Calculation: Sick days 2015/full time employees * working days 2015 (without holidays=30, without national holidays =9)) in figures: 5.625/(383*221) = 6.65%