ESFHO - it's not a standard

Times seem to be changing faster than organizations do and should. The current organizational discours has still too much emphasis on maximizing profit and minimizing resources. We all know this is a very short sighted view. We all know deep inside that there's a perspective of sustainably performing organizations based on sustainable focus on the well being of all stakeholders. Let's call this the humanized approach.

Where we designed the EFQM Excellence Model, we seem to become focussing more on the Results than on the Enablers, and tend to forget the Fundamental Concepts behind the model. The SA8000 Social Accountability Standard - a honorable initiative - turns out to be a minimum demand; living up to that demand is far from being a Humanized Organization. Having a Universal Declaration of Human Rights is apparently not enough to act humanly in organizations.

What we need, is to change the discours.

For example, by introducing the ESFHO. The European Standard For Humanized Organizations sincerely invites organizational leaders to focus on the quality of their human interactions, on their leadership behavior. The ESFHO is not a standard you can live up to, it's a standard you have to develop forward to. Continuously, that is, and it involves all of the stakeholders. The ESFHO represents the way people in organizations should be interacting, at the same time enabling their organizations to perform optimally. The ESFHO is the new discours!