| Front page | | Contents | | Previous | | Next |

Cleaner Technology Projects in Denmark 1996

Employee Participation in the Implementation of Cleaner Technology at Kompan A/S

This company report for Kompan A/S has been written in the light of the company’s participation in the MIRT project (Employee Participation in the Implementation of Cleaner Technology) in which five companies took part. The general aim of the MIRT project was to document the employees’ resources in the implementation of environmental management. One of the participating companies was Kompan A/S. For Kompan A/S the MIRT project was part of a larger project, whose aim was a certified environmental management system according to British Standard 7750. The present report describes and analyses the course of the project at Kompan A/S.

Through many years Kompan A/S had been working on creating a high and strong profile as regards to environmental issues. As an example, new employees were employed at the end of the eighties to make life-cycle assessment for the products. The company’s use of resources and consumption of environmentally dangerous substances and materials were minimised, and a waste sorting system was established. In 1992 the company decided to expand its certified quality management system (ISO 9002) to an integrated system for management of quality, environment and work environment. This task was initiated in the summer of 1993, when Kompan A/S joined the MIRT project.

Kompan A/S is a company with almost ideal conditions for employee participation in the preventive environmental work. The company had a culture which was based on and improved the employee participation, a management which felt obliged to make preventive environmental efforts and to involve employees in the planning, and well-educated employees, who were committed to their company and motivated to participate in the environmental work.

In general, the employees found it natural to have environmental management. They did not fear that it would result in a loss of jobs, as the company was considered to be at the leading edge of environmental issues. Instead the employees expected that the environmental efforts would help to ensure the survival of Kompan A/S in the long term.

As a consequence of the company’s traditions, both the management and the employees felt, from the beginning, that it was only natural to involve the employees in the environmental work. Accordingly, the preventive environmental work was started in a way that completely lived up to the expectations, which were expected of a company with so sound conditions.

The preventive environmental efforts were organised by a safety committee and an environmental committee that acted as the co-ordination group with reference to for the purpose established environmental management committee at management level. The management declared that 2000 man-hours had been dedicated to the employee participation in the implementation of the environmental management system. All employees were informed that the company had decided to implement environmental management and that all employees were to participate. All employees gave their viewpoints on problems and solutions and they were involved in the initial mapping out of the situation.

Later on, all employees were sent on a two-day environment course and 20 cross-organisational environmental groups, which represented all groups at Kompan, were established. Subsequently, these groups solved a number of problems in connection with the environmental management system.

There is no doubt that the employees have played an important role in the company’s implementation of the environmental management system. More specifically, they have contributed with "hard facts" about the company’s environmental and work environmental conditions and have given suggestions to a general environmental policy, to procedures to "The Guide to Environmental Management", and to how to reduce the requirements of materials, etc.

However, perhaps the employees’ most important contribution is not to be found at this concrete level, but rather in their role in the process, which was launched by the company’s great commitment to employee participation. The employee participation has ensured the efforts a dynamism, which supported the environment project when other competing projects claimed resources and management capacity. Subsequently, such an effort, other things being equal, will probably mean that the employees will contribute to using, maintaining and further developing the environmental management system in a more constructive and active way than they would have done, if the dedication to employee participation had been smaller.

On the other hand, the process of employee participation in the implementation of environmental management at Kompan A/S was not trouble-free. Some of the cross-organisational environmental groups could have functioned better if they had been prepared for the fact that such an organisational change requires a certain attention and if they had been more aware of the problems of making some of the groups function properly. Moreover, some of the employees experienced that the competition between the different projects in the company caused a certain doubt about the resources that were dedicated to the employee participation in the environmental work. Finally, some incidents, which had nothing to do with the environmental project, had a negative influence on the employees’ motivation to perform an active environmental role.

The changes and their effects contributed to making the implementation of the environmental management system more slow. But in March 1996 Kompan A/S could announce to the public that Dansk Standard (Danish Standard) had approved the environmental management system of Kompan and that the company had been granted a certificate, which guarantees that the system is in accordance with the British Standard 7750.

Author/ institution

Per Tybjerg Aldrich, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet. Institut for Teknologi og Samfund

This report is subsidised by the National Council for Recycling and Cleaner Technology

ISSN no. 0908-9195
ISBN no. 87-7810-715-6

| Front page | | Contents | | Previous | | Next | | Top |