It is official, AfB Slovakia is a social enterprise!

Certificate of granting the status of a registered social enterprise.

11.06.2019

The Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs and Family of the Slovak Republic has granted us the status of a registered social enterprise. In order to be granted and to maintain the status, it is necessary to fulfill several requirements, what obligations does AfB Slovakia have to follow? According to the Act on social economy and social enterprises of 2018, AfB Slovakia fulfilled all the conditions for granting the status of a registered integrating social enterprise. The aim of such an enterprise is to have a positive social impact by promoting the employment of disadvantaged people.

We do not only meet the statutory share of these employees, but also exceed them. Out of eight employees, up to 6 are disadvantaged and vulnerable. The main goal of the entire AfB Group is to create 500 jobs for people with disabilities and we can already promise, that their number will not drop below 50 percent.

Let's talk more about the number 50%. If a social enterprise makes a profit, more than half of it (after taxation) must be used to achieve its main objective. We reinvest 100% of profits back into the company, as AfB Group does in Germany, Austria, France and Switzerland. Thus, any profit will be used to create new jobs for the disadvantaged and for the necessary equipment.

To ensure that managers do not pay excessive wages and financial rewards, the law also lays down rules on wage costs. These are dependent on the minimum and average wages in the national economy and also on the number of employees. Also, the financial amount of the highest wage in an enterprise cannot exceed five times the amount of the lowest wage.

In addition to these rules, the social enterprise statute obliges us to act transparently, which can be inspected by reviewing of our annual reports or through a personal inspection performed by the competent authorities. The compulsory advisory committee ensures, that an employee representative belonging to the disadvantaged group must also always be involved in the management of the company.

The law itself is of course much more extensive and you can read its full text in Slovak language here. The fact that this law has indeed created the right conditions for the establishment of social enterprises can be also seen by the fact, that while you would have recently counted such enterprises on the fingers of one hand, today you would not have enough limbs.

We are glad that there is a legislative framework in Slovakia, thanks to which we can support the employment of disadvantaged people and thus support our alternative goals, such as environmental protection and bringing quality and affordable IT equipment to households and companies.