KONE Sustainability Report 2017

KONE 2017 | SUSTAINABILITY REPORT 4 INTERVIEW WITH THE CHAIRMAN AND THE PRESIDENT AND CEO office buildings today house 30–40%more people than they were originally designed for, and the usual bottleneck you get in a building is elevator capacity. With new services and solutions launched in 2017, we have a strong role to play in making buildings more resource efficient. With our smart and connected people flow solutions we can be more effective, use energy better and predict needs in advance. For our customers, it is not the technology itself that is impor- tant – it is the outcomes that matter, such as making a building become smarter and more user friendly, or equipment perform better. How does everyone at KONE keep pace with these developments? HE: It is clear that technology is having a profound impact to KONE. Our objective is to connect our customers, our employ- ees, our equipment and the people who use our equipment. This is significantly changing the roles and expectations for our employees and we need to give them opportunities to learn new skills to master a digital world. In order to develop these new compe- tencies quickly, we have more than 3,900 training programs and online modules available for our employees. For example we have a very active e-learning platform and over 226,000 e-learning courses were completed in 2017. Many have had the chance to try out new learning methods such as virtual reality, games and mobile apps. We have built a foundation to develop new skills to better serve our cus- tomers. As part of this, we are very proud to have been recognized as one of the best employers in the world by Forbes. In 2017, KONE ranked 73rd in a list of 2,000 com- panies in the World’s Best Employers list. AH: We have been around for over a century and we have had to develop a lot over that time. Actually, 2018 marks SUSTAINABILITY FOR A RAPIDLY CHANGING WORLD Henrik Ehrnrooth (HE): When we look at urban developments around the world today, cities are getting increas- ingly crowded. More people are moving away from suburbs, to where services and opportunities are closer. In cities there are better opportunities for jobs, education, healthcare and more. The question we need to answer is how do we make cities better places to live? At KONE, our mission is to improve the flow of urban life and our strategy is to help our customers succeed, which means helping their buildings to become more functional and as user friendly as possible for their users. It is also clear that reducing the impact that cities have on the environ- ment continues to be very important for our customers, too. Sustainability plays a big role in this. Antti Herlin (AH): There is not one single issue, or one single thing which you could say is more important with sustainability. Good performance is like a chain, with everything interlinked. I believe that sus- tainability is an important prerequisite for the long-term success of our company. New technologies change the way cities function and how people behave. What are the impacts of technology development for sustainable business? HE: Technology gives us the means to serve our customers in an individual way and in the way they want to be served. With technology, predictability and intelli- gence we can significantly increase equip- ment performance and reliability. This is important, because with dense urban areas, there are many more people in buildings and a failure of an elevator, for example, can have a very significant impact. For example, in residential buildings, there are more single occupant apartments and people have completely new expecta- tions from the buildings and environments where they live. On the other hand, most 100 years since KONE started building its own elevators for the first time. The years before that, we were installing other manufacturers’ equipment. So we have always had to develop and change. One big factor however, is that I think people are increasingly look- ing for a place to work where the com- pany shares the same values as their own personal values. Sustainability and social responsibility play a very important role here. So does having a sustainable offering – we invest a lot of money in research and development to produce the most sustain- able equipment and services. In our industry, as in other fields, one of the best qualities to see is enthusiasm and commitment. If you are enthusias- tic about something, then you generally want to develop and improve. I think that these qualities are an important part and are very visible in KONE’s culture. Can you reflect on the safety aspects of our business in 2017? HE: Safety has many important aspects: the safety of our people, the equipment, and the safety of customers and equip- ment users. We have clear metrics for measuring employee safety performance and it continues to be paramount in We have a strong role to play in making buildings more resource efficient. With our smart and connected people flow solutions we can be more effective, use energy better and predict needs in advance.” - HENRIK EHRNROOTH At KONE, we want to help our customers’ businesses become more sustainable, which in turn helps the world’s cities grow in a sustainable way. KONE Chairman Antti Herlin and President and CEO Henrik Ehrnrooth talk about our sustainability performance in 2017.