SOCIETY

In addition to the burning issues of the climate crisis, we also deal with many social issues as a women-led company in a male-dominated tech industry.

Topics such as inclusion, gender equality and diversity are just as important to us as reducing our CO2 emissions. In 2021, the topic of gender-equitable language was staffed by a “gender representative” from the team. Gender-equitable language is defined in VAST FORWARD communications for internal and external communications.

Click here for the VAST FORWARD Gender Guide 2022.

Equal Oppertunities & FAIR WORKING CONDITIONS

Based on the gender split of 80/20 (f/m), VAST FORWARD’s goal is a transparent, fair working model for all employees.

As part of our flat hierarchy, the team also takes on management tasks in addition to the project business. Working remotely means self-determination and creates a lot of freedom in organizing daily work routines. Fair working conditions and the health of all employees are very important to us.

Within the framework of core working hours, our working day can be structured independently – this means that even full-time positions are easily compatible with family lifestyles.

We have been supporting mindfulness and the promotion of health for more than 6 years with a weekly joint mindfulness training program, and we create space for voluntary commitment.

After all, we all work in a concentrated manner where we feel comfortable – in addition to self-organization in terms of time, this is probably the greatest freedom compared to a regular workplace in the office.

VAST Volunteering

VAST FORWARD supports voluntary commitment with a defined time allocation within our working hours. By volunteering, we not only contribute to social sustainability, but also create a balance to our personal workday.

VAST FORWARD Lady Vanessa writes cards every year at Christmas & Easter for the elderly

VAST FORWARD Lady Julia has been supporting a family from Afghanistan for several years.

World Cleanup Day

Maren & Matthias donned their scuba gear and joined a group of more than 20 cruisers in the Spanish Waters bay of Curaçao. Mind you, this happens every year! Still: car tires, chairs, batteries, an electrical panel from the 80s, lots of plastic waste and three wrecked dinghies – the group of divers lifted and hauled out up to 900 kg of garbage in one afternoon!

ADVANCED TRAINING AT VAST FORWARD

Working in our digital environment means continuous professional development for all employees. In addition to mindfulness training, we can continue our education in self-selected seminars and share individual experience and our own “favorite topics”, e.g. in our monthly Lunch & Learn.

During our weekly VAST GREEN co-working session, we dedicate some of the time to our Sustainable Friday, where the team has the opportunity to prepare sustainability topics of personal interest to them.

QUALIFICATIONS & COMMUNITY

In addition to our core team, we also want to involve our extended network, of programmers and creators, in our sustainability initiative.

As part of our Developer Day, we visited various companies and organizations with our extended team in September 2022, all of which have sustainability on their agenda. For us and our network, this year’s Dev Day was an important step – we want to evolve together and face the challenges of the future.

In 2023 we organized the first Green Data Challenge. With the GREEN DATA topic complex, we want to create transparency for ourselves as a team in this challenge, and also for our supply chains, and share actionable, CO2-reducing measures that we can apply and test in our Vast Forward network. Over a course of 5 days, we created a quiz for the network, where we educated ourselves on the different topics and effects our business has on the environment.

Support Duo-Scholarship 'Künstlerhaus lauenburg'

Collaborative work – our theme since Vast Forward was founded in 2008! And our passion for art has been alive in Hamburg ever since. 

Our involvement with the Künstlerhaus Lauenburg and our support of the artist group otc are the result of our longstanding commitment to these two themes.

Our contribution to the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals

3 HEALTH AND WELL-BEING

The health of our employees is close to our hearts. We try to integrate health into our core business through a weekly yoga class & mindfulness exercises. As a team we participate in challenges like the "Veganuary" or the "Apple Watch Active Challenge".
5 GENDER EQUALITY

The VAST FORWARD core team is 90% female - a fair, diverse, gender-appropriate working environment and respectful treatment of each other are a matter of course for us. Our gender officer Maria developed among other things, a guideline for gender-appropriate language.
8 DECENT WORK & ECONOMIC GROWTH

Economic stability secures our existence; only together as a team and with our network of specialists and our customers we can continue to grow healthily. Our entire team is able to shape their everyday working lives individually within the framework of shared values and rules - the compatibility of family and career is important to us.
9 INDUSTRY, INNOVATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE

We are clearly positioning ourselves in the digital industry as pioneers in sustainability and green data. Together with our partner Code Gaia, we have put our digital infrastructure to the test and established standards - from processes to communication.
12 SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION

VAST FORWARD has long been committed to extending the lifespan of old devices. On the one hand, we focus on durability, user orientation and functionality in our hardware. On the other hand, we have been giving our devices to friends and family for a long time after they have been used at VAST FORWARD - in line with the motto "Reuse instead of waste". We also want to position ourselves here on the topic of green data, because we have been following our own Green Data Guide as a team since 2022 in order to act sustainably in the digital environment.
13 MEASURES FOR CLIMATE PROTECTION

Since 2019, we have committed to going "green" with VAST FORWARD by 2022, without greenwashing. To do this, we are taking our entire team with us. In 2023, we will continue to work on our sustainability goals to create a future worth living for all generations to come.
17 PARTNERSHIPS TO ACHIEVING THE GOALS

The major sustainability challenges can only be met with like-minded people. Our memberships in the BNW, Ad Girls Club, the Diversity Charter and the Hamburg Environmental Partnership are a contribution to a holistic, collaborative effort for sustainability change in business.

Target for 2024

ACTION PLAN 2024

In 2023, Vast Forward started with a smaller core-team into an interesting year of our sustainability journey..  

Two focal points of our VAST GREEN sustainability initiative and our co-workings were to continue measuring and offsetting the core team’s emissions, as well as reviewing our findings from 2022.

We conducted surveys to provide an update on the sustainability efforts of our stakeholders and extended network. Our offsetting in 2023 subsequently included the extended team to provide even more sustainable services to our customers.

One result was especially clear in 2023: VAST GREEN is changing. From an “internal initiative”, many aspects of the working groups have become part of everyday business life.

Our sustainability journey today is a regular element of our corporate communications; as a team, we naturally work on a wide range of topics relating to sustainability in SMEs and our personal environment in Sustainable Fridays and Lunch&Learns with external specialists; our view of new business and our service relationships naturally include sustainability issues.  

With our VAST CLASS project, we have succeeded in making parts of our internal knowledge accessible to a broad public, both in relation to our core business (project management) and in relation to our core competencies in the context of sustainability.

At the end of 2023 we decided not to take on a task that we still considered fundamental before: the certification of VAST FORWARD as a B-Corp Corporation.

In the area of social responsibility, we currently serve the following SDGs: