CEO Review
2011 was a challenging year for the world economy and many of the countries where we operate. Despite these challenges, I am pleased with the overall progress made in all key areas of the business. Our orders received grew in all geographic regions. What makes us a strong player in the global marketplace is a balanced business mix: our new equipment and service businesses are about equal in size. KONE is now the second biggest company globally in the new equipment business.
At the beginning of 2011, we set ourselves five new development programs to support us in achieving our strategic goals. All in all, our development programs have shown their strong positive impact on the KONE business, and they will continue to drive us in the right direction in the years to come. All the progress made creates value to our stakeholders, and sets a solid and sustainable platform from which we can win the future challenges.
Strong employee engagement
One of our development programs is Employee Engagement, with a focus on further improving our leadership capabilities, providing growth and development opportunities for all KONE employees, and ensuring their well-being and safety at work.
It has given me great pleasure to see the progress made, especially in raising employee engagement. KONE’s success is the result of our employees’ dedication and passion for what they do. It is therefore pleasing to see the record-high response rate in our employee survey 2011 that shows this dedication.
We have also succeeded in improving workplace safety, as indicated by the continued decline of the Industrial Injury Frequency Rate. Improved safety awareness was confirmed by “KONE’s commitment to employee safety” again being the highest single score registered when asked about KONE’s workplace safety in the 2011 annual employee survey.
Excellence in eco-efficiency
Our aim is to be the eco-efficiency leader within our industry. In 2011, we continued the previous years’ excellent development by further improving the energy efficiency of our elevators and escalators. This follows on area of 2008 – 2010 when we reached our ambitious target of a 50 percent reduction in the energy consumption of our new elevators. In addition, a wide range of KONE elevators have been awarded the A-class energy rating according to the VDI (Verein Deutscher Ingenieure) energy classification guideline. We have also taken steps to further reduce our own carbon footprint.
Even when faced with challenging markets, we continuously look for new opportunities to develop our people, operations and solutions. Corporate responsibility is no exception to this – it is embedded in all we do. The valuable work we have done in all areas of corporate responsibility, from economic and social to environmental responsibility, in itself strengthens KONE.
Matti Alahuhta
President & CEO
KONE Corporation