Employees, the environment and the company benefit.
To achieve this, the company is relying on the support and commitment of the employees at its locations in Germany and abroad with the “wejot” project. “wejot”, founded in autumn 2022, consists of an ideas competition for CO2 reduction and an employee capital participation scheme that is directly linked to the annually defined climate targets. The results are positive: “The project has fulfilled our expectations,” emphasises Wolfgang Bach, EJOT CFO and initiator of the project.
The success can be impressively demonstrated in figures. Since autumn 2022, the ideas competition has received around 800 entries from Germany and abroad from the different work areas of the EJOT workforce. The implementation will save hundreds
of tonnes of CO2 . The best three ideas are awarded monthly with a prize of 250 euros.
At the 2023 annual awards ceremony for the ideas competition, which took place at the New CAPITOL in Bad Berleburg, employees were awarded 17,500 euros in prize money in six categories. The top prize in each category is worth 2,500 euros and the second and third place each receive 250 euros. The award-winning ideas cover a broad spectrum from the most diverse areas: Reusing tonnes of cardboard, using a heat pump
dryer in electroplating, using existing thermal energy to operate a biofilter and even using adhesive tape made from recycled material. The ideas from the annual award alone will save 315 tonnes of CO2 per year. Thanks to the implemented ideas, EJOT has saved more than 180,000 euros in heating costs at its German locations in the short time since autumn 2022.
Another success story is the capital participation for employees launched in autumn 2022, which is initially set to run for five years. Employees can acquire shares of 250 or 500 euros per year via participation certificates. If EJOT achieves the annual CO2 savings target, the investment will be doubled by the company and will also earn an attractive interest rate. In 2022 and 2023, EJOT was able to significantly exceed its savings targets of 5,000 tonnes of CO2 in each year – the employees’ contributions were doubled. “We assume that EJOT will also achieve the climate targets set this year and that we will therefore also double the employees’ contributions in the third tranche,” emphasises Wolfgang Bach. After five years, the total amount will be paid out tax-free.
The climate also benefits from this model: EJOT has also doubled the employee contributions of around 1 million euros for 2022 and 2023 and has thus been able to invest around 2 million euros exclusively in projects to reduce CO2 emissions in the company through the “wejot” project alone.
EJOT also has a considerable benefit: The investments in climate protection are opposed to the savings in energy costs totalling 661,000 euros for 2023 alone. “We can use these savings to refinance the attractive conditions for employee capital participation,” explains Wolfgang Bach. “The uniqueness of the ’wejot‘ project lies in the fact that everyone benefits. The employees, the company EJOT and climate protection.”
“The figures are impressive,” emphasises the well-known weather and climate expert Karsten Schwanke, patron of the “wejot” project and member of the jury for the EJOT ideas competition. Impressive because the EJOT company and its employees are doing exemplary work in the field of climate protection: “I talk about EJOT during my presentations and the audience's eyes are filled with amazement.” The EJOT company is an example of what is possible with a joint effort for climate protection.
