Valco's Pontifex maximus has approved the company's general corporate social responsibility principles, which we're now presenting.
Social responsibility
Corporate social responsibility. Not only is it an excellent way to fool customers, it’s also a fixed part of Valco’s values, operating strategies, management and everyday work.
The goal is to improve customer satisfaction, job satisfaction, competitiveness and profitability, standardize practices that promote responsibility, manage reputation risks and make sure Valco remains an attractive place to work.
Valco’s own responsibility is immediate, but when it comes to partners in the purchasing and sales chain, it gets a bit fuzzier. Valco monitors the results of its responsible operations using its own carefully selected metrics and reports on them occasionally. The reporting is, naturally, completely biased.
International connections of corporate social responsibility
Valco operates in Finland itself, but buys goods from the Far East. This means that, in addition to national laws and agreements, the company must also skillfully work around international agreements and recommendations.
These include, among other things, the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, and the International Chamber of Commerce Business Charter for Sustainable Development and anti-bribery and anti-corruption guidelines.
In practice, Valco is mainly committed to following the Code of Hammurabi and Murphy’s Law. Valco cannot take responsibility for the fact that subcontractors may also happen to follow other laws and regulations.
Three bland areas of corporate social responsibility
Valco’s corporate social responsibility framework and performance metrics are based on the so-called three-pillar model (Triple Bottom Line Management), where economic, social, and environmental responsibility are developed in a balanced, aligned way straight into the woods.
Financial responsibility and a healthy business result make it possible to keep developing our performative environmental responsibility and social responsibility in a continuous, long-term way, which in turn creates new opportunities to grow sales and improve profitability.
Financial responsibility
Valco interprets financial responsibility as creative bookkeeping and generating short-term financial gain for the owners, by any means necessary. Good governance, transparency and taking stakeholders into account are secondary, and environmental and social responsibility barely interest us at all. Valco evaluates the financial benefit it creates mainly from the perspective of its owners. Valco could not care less about the well-being of different stakeholders in its own markets, let alone outside them, for example in developing countries.
Environmental responsibility
Valco’s biggest environmental impacts are the methane emissions caused by the entrepreneurs eating rye bread, the emissions from an old diesel car, and fast food waste. Valco focuses on covering up its environmental impacts efficiently, and hazardous waste is quietly disposed of in cooperation with Lokapojat. The products are made as far away from Finland as possible so the authorities won’t notice the negligence. Customers are conned with an extensive greenwashing program.
Social responsibility
Valco’s only social responsibility concerns the well-being of its owners. The goal is that in the future the company founders do absolutely nothing, and the work gets done by free labor in cooperation with the employment offices. In the supply chain, the aim is unpaid labor abroad as well, and subcontractors do offer jobs to children in developing countries, although they’re not doing a very good job even at that.
These goals cannot be achieved in a short time, but every improvement is a step toward socially sustainable development.
Communication
Valco presents the results of its responsible operations to its stakeholders through both internal and external communications, with a healthy amount of distortion. The foundation of our communications is a sporadically appearing email, personally verified by hand. Valco actively participates in the activities of national and international trade and business organizations in order to get its share of the national corruption system, old boys' networks, and public tenders fixed in advance.
Coverage of the principles
These principles were approved by Valco’s pontifex college on 30 February 2024. Their implementation is monitored and coordinated by the corporate social responsibility management team, which reports the results to the oracle every year in connection with the review of the prophecies.
Valco’s board has reviewed these principles and recommends throwing them in the trash.
Are you actually serious?
Well, yeah, we actually do operate by these principles.
Okay, maybe you saw our corporate social responsibility principles, or lack of them, and didn’t find them funny. Even though we take the company’s social and environmental responsibility seriously, we also believe our communication has to feel real and natural. Usually every corporate responsibility text is packed with so-called bullshit, and we’re allergic to that.
We take our responsibility toward the environment and the communities we operate in seriously, and our commitment to doing the right thing is solid. But we also believe in openness and authenticity, and we think a straightforward, honest approach to corporate responsibility, without the extra horseshit, is the best way to make a positive impact.
We’re committed to doing the right thing, and we’re not interested in corporate “greenwashing” (apart from our own satirical greenwashing campaign) or any other misleading advertising. Our approach is built on openness and authenticity, and we believe that a straightforward approach to corporate social responsibility is the best way to make a positive impact in the communities where we operate.
Openness
At Valco, we’re committed to being transparent and responsible in what we do.
We regularly publish information about our company and how we operate in customer updates, on our website, and on our social media channels. We aim to provide honest and up-to-date information about what we do and why we do it.
We openly talk about our efforts to promote sustainable development, ethical business practices, and transparency. That means we’re not afraid to admit where we still have room to improve.
We believe that dialogue and honest feedback help us grow and improve what we do.
We work with external auditors and certification bodies to make sure we comply with accepted standards.
In the end, we aim to keep our operations as open and honest as possible so we can build and maintain trust with all our stakeholders.
Environmental responsibility
At Valco, we’re committed to shrinking our environmental footprint.
Our goal is that every product we sell will be repairable in the future, and we’re already trying to minimize electronic waste by repairing faulty headphones instead of swapping them for new ones and throwing the broken ones away.
On top of that, we take part in Finnish and European battery recycling programs, and we use as little packaging material as possible, because we ship our headphones in a practical transport package.
We also encourage our factory to use renewable energy sources, and we keep an eye on our sourcing practices to make sure materials and components have been sourced in an environmentally responsible way. We aim to significantly reduce the carbon dioxide emissions caused by transport already in 2024.
We plant a tree for every pair of headphones sold. For us, this is mostly a humorous way of pointing at the childish and transparent greenwashing companies do. We really do plant the trees, but at the same time we want to show how ridiculously easy greenwashing is.
In the future, we plan to have more products made in Finland and keep a closer watch on the entire supply chain, and our goal is to be a carbon-neutral company.
Unofficially, we probably already are, since our own electricity use is very largely based on renewable energy sources, and of course nuclear power, assuming we use enough electricity for that to even matter.
Social responsibility
At Valco, we’re committed to our stakeholders, like customers and employees, to understand their concerns and gather feedback on what we do.
We try, within our resources, to support the communities where we have an impact, whether that means a reform school, an association for homeless cats, or a Polish music festival.
We aim to work together with different stakeholders. We’re committed to being genuine and personal in our communication, and we’re not afraid to take serious matters a bit lightly.
Third-party consultants have audited our factories for corporate social responsibility, and they have, among other things, Amfori BSCI certification. In addition to our own employees, we also take social responsibility for our suppliers and business partners.
Summary
Valco is committed to social responsibility in many different ways. We repair all faulty headphones instead of replacing them with new ones, we reduce waste by using minimal packaging, we keep our carbon footprint as small as possible, and we take part in battery recycling programs. That’s how we set a positive example for others in our industry.
Our commitment to sustainable development, ethical business practices, and transparency helps us make a positive impact on the communities where we operate.
Valco is the nicest evil corporation in the world.