Excellent organisations comprehensively measure and achieve outstanding results with respect to society. Measures describe the perceptions of the society on the organisation or internal performance of the organisation.
The project contract is limited to society results related to environmental issues only.
Corporate social responsibility is one of the fundamental concepts of the EFQM-model. Excellent organisations strive to understand and respond to the expectations of their stakeholders in the society. Organisations adopt highly ethical approach by being transparent and accountable for their performance. They give consideration to, and actively promote, social responsibility and ecological sustainability. Social responsibility is expressed in its values and it is integrated within the organisation’s policies, objectives and processes. Through open and inclusive stakeholder engagement, they meet and exceed the expectations of local, national and, where appropriate, global community. In order to manage future risks, they seek out and promote opportunities for mutually beneficial projects within society and at the same time inspiring and maintaining high level of confidence with stakeholders. Organisation is aware of the impact of its own activities on both current and future society and make effort to minimize any adverse impact.
Society results are not directly linked to key objectives of the organisation. Yet, they promote the overall success of the organisation. Excellent organisations set concrete and measurable targets related to society results and measure the perceptions of the society. VET-schools have, by nature, extensive links with the surrounding society and the working life both nationally and internationally.
Society results/environmental results are measured by perceptions of the relevant stakeholders of the society. Also the perceptions of students (6a) and the staff (7a) on the operations of the institution can be measured as internal results. This project has developed perception measures (6a and 7a) and performance indicators (8b) describing only internal performance of the organisation which is one requirement of the EFQM-model. Excellent organisations review, measure and analyze the results and improve operations based on results.
Environmental issues in an educational institution
Sustainable development and environmental issues are one component of society results and social responsibility of the organisation. Measures related to environmental results can deal with relevant stakeholder engagement, active promotion of social responsibility and promotion of principles of ecological and sustainable development both internally and in the society. Sustainable development, by definition, includes ecological, economic, social and cultural aspects. This project is mainly limited to measures related to environmental results and ecological perspective. Certain products, such as the questionnaires, measure to some extent also other aspects of sustainable development.
Environmental results relate to support services of the organisation. In educational organisations they relate also to the core activities, such as teaching and learning. Environmental education should be integrated into curricula and be taken into account in operations accordingly. In VET-schools the principle of sustainable development is embedded in most of the subject areas and teaching modules with field-specific objectives and contents.
Environmental education emphasizes community participation, fairness and personal responsibility which promote sustainable development. The promotion of ecological and sustainable use of resources and environmentally-safe production is also economically sustainable. By promoting environmental-friendly attitudes and behaviour of students and by providing quality field-specific environmental education the institutions can educate responsible citizens and professionals.
There are numerous commercial quality management systems in the market, such as ISO 14001 and EMAS. In Finland educational institutions have statutory obligation to include environmental issues into the curricula and to monitor and evaluate operations. In addition, environmental criteria and a non-commercial accreditation system have been developed for educational institutions in 2004. Environmental criteria have been taken into account when developing the questionnaires for students (6a) and for staff (7a) on management of environmental issues in education and support services.
Read more about environmental criteria