Ethics and quality
OUR VALUES
Every day, our 67,000 employees across Europe care for and accompany elderly and fragile people and their loved ones, and contribute to their dignity and quality of life, whether at our care facilities or in their own homes. No matter what job they do, they all share the same values: trust, initiative, and responsibility. This shows in the way our staff assist our residents and patients on a daily basis.
These three values are inseparable: Creating a lasting relationship with stakeholders is based on building a relationship of trust, renewed through a sense of initiative and sustained by responsible decisions. To create a close bond with fragile persons, their relatives and our other stakeholders, we want our values to be reflected through the way we conduct ourselves and to be translated into exemplary attitudes:
- Trust is shown through transparency, benevolence and empathy,
- Our sense of initiative is developed through innovation, passion and courage,
- Our responsibility is exercised through our integrity, the quality of our services, and making sustainable decisions.
Trust is the very essence of:
• Our profession: the people we care for entrust us with their health and well-being. We have a duty to be worthy of their trust. Ensuring that we deserve, build and maintain that trust is an integral part of our corporate vision. Our “In Caring Hands” project requires us to be a trusted partner for all our stakeholders.
• Our promise: to provide patients, residents and their families, and our own staff, with a high level of support; means forming a strong community that helps each other out.
And as we’ve seen over recent months, trust is also what makes us so resilient. The pandemic revealed a crisis of confidence: many people were affected, and our industry in particular. At times, we have had to overcome distrust, doubt and disbelief. Yet within our organisation, with our residents and their families, trust has helped us to sail these stormy waters.
OUR ETHICS CHARTER AND ETHICAL COMMITMENTS
Korian’s three essential values (trust, initiative, responsibility), underpin the care we provide for the elderly and the most fragile, as well as our commitment to ensuring that the actions of all are carried out with integrity and ethics.
Our Ethics Charter sets out to align our Group’s practices:
• Strengthen our corporate culture,
• Open up conversations about ethically challenging situations,
• Identify and deploy practices that fit with the Group’s values.
It covers a wide range of practices and procedures, from how the Group operates its businesses, to its management methods and relations with third parties. It sets forth what the Korian group expects from its employees in terms of their day-to-day decision-making and their relations with other stakeholders.
In accordance with this Charter, we undertake to show integrity and transparency towards all the parties we interact with.
OUR QUALITY POLICY
Our quality policy is built into our DNA and defines the expected quality for all the services we provide. It aligns all practices with a Korian Standard while preserving the identities and particularities of our various entities.
Our quality process is established at European level by the Medical, Ethics and Quality of Service Department, in conjunction with the Quality Departments of each country that implements it.
Korian adheres to an ISO 9001 approach. The purpose of this is to:
• Align the quality of Korian’s services across all countries and business units,
• Obtain certification for the Korian network from an external body,
• Encourage and streamline the process for sharing best practices.
Alongside this, certification audits and quality audits are conducted by auditors reporting to Quality Departments in the various countries. They assist our care homes with continuous improvement planning.
Furthermore, the Korian group regularly surveys satisfaction among the people in its care and their families, at key points along their care journey.
An annual barometer is used to perform strategic analysis at country and Group levels to help us to understand the best ways to improve satisfaction and identify best practices that can be used across our network.