5 / 50
KONE 2013 | CORPOR ATE RESPONSIBILIT Y REPORT
LET TER FROM THE CEO
5
I am very pleased with our progress in 2013.
Once more, we achieved our objective of
making KONE a stronger company, and moved
towards our vision “KONE delivers the best
People Flow experience”. Our global sales grew
at a higher rate than the market. Our financial
performance was strong. Both customer loyalty
and employee satisfaction improved and our
good progress in the area of sustainability
continued.
KONE was ranked among the top 50 most
innovative companies in the world by Forbes
Magazine for the third consecutive year. In
2013, we launched two new innovations:
KONE UltraRope, which enables future elevator
ride up to 1 km, and KONE People Flow
Intelligence solutions, which make people flow
in buildings increasingly smooth.
Good progress through development
programs
Our achievements are the result of the
intense work we are doing in improving our
competitiveness through our development
programs. Our three-year development
programs have proven to be a very effective
way to develop KONE. We completed our
Strong overall progress
third set of these programs at the end of
2013. In 2011–2013, the satisfaction of our
customers and employees grew, the quality
and competitiveness of our products advanced
further, we made good progress in enhancing
our service business, and we clearly improved
the quality of the whole delivery chain.
Engaged employees
Employee satisfaction is an important measure
of our progress. In 2013, the improvement
in our overall employee satisfaction was
substantial. Also the participation rate in the
survey improved further to a very high level.
This means that our people want to contribute
to the development of KONE. I am very pleased
with this. These developments are outcomes of
our focus in fostering a leadership culture that
engages, empowers and inspires people. We
have continuously increased our investments in
developing our people.
We made good progress in safety. In addition
to the systematic work in the sharing of best
practices, we organized KONE’s Global Safety
week around the theme “Little things matter in
safety”. The global People Flow Day event also
focused on safety.
Leader in eco-efficiency
In the area of sustainability our biggest
opportunity is to contribute to the positive
development by minimizing the energy
consumption of our products. In this respect we
are a clear leader in our industry. In addition, we
succeeded to decrease the carbon footprint of
our operations relative to net sales by 3.5%.
“Both customer loyalty
and employee
satisfaction improved
and our good
progress in the area of
sustainability
continued.”
Matti Alahuhta
President & CEO
KONE corporation