Apunts

A. How did you find this company? What are the main facts about its activities?

Apunts is at its base is a hybrid of a printing service, and a job placement agency. They not only aim to provide their clients with quality products but their employees with a job well suited to their skill sets, and the at the highest paying salary. However, this company has an added twist. Apunts chooses to work employees who have mental health issues and disabilities and are ready, or want to be integrated back into the workforce. Therefore as a part of their basic operations are responsible for operating an individually focused development plan for each of its clients.

CET Apunts uses specialists from programs like the JOIA association that, through use of their skills, split the companies tasks into nine areas of job development, and placement; Photocopying, courier services, graphic design, printing, merchandising, counseling, digital analysis, mailing, and signage. Structurally, while JOIA assists to lead skill building in these areas, they also conduct sessions aimed at helping these individuals become responsible for themselves by holding therapeutics sessions, teaching/ instilling valuable work habits such a punctuality, and problem solving.

The company’s service related tasks are completed by the developing individuals. Therefore, Apunts, through added effort and focus becomes self sufficient by hiring the very people who they wish to integrate.

B. What are the Ethical challenges this company is addressing?

The mission of the social economic company is to meet the needs of its customers with the best service, quality and market price with an added value of collaborating as a client with a social project.

Apunts is one of the companies which are focused on people, quality and innovation. Its main ethical challenge is the interest in the employment of people with difficulties such as social responsibility of the organization.

The interest of CET Apunts and the Association Apunts Joia is to provide business entities with concrete possibilities of cooperation with the aim of integrating occupationally in two complementary ways

1. Making labor mediation between existing job candidates and job vacancies for job placement services of the Joia Association and offering advice and support to businesses and individuals in the process of incorporation.

2. Offering companies solve their services (photocopying, printing, mail, mailings, etc.) getting customers of the Apunts Special Work Centre.

Moreover, the company operates with environmental considerations. Therefore, the company cares about the materials they use for performing their tasks in order to minimize the environmental impact.

Finally, another ethical challenge the company is addressing is to try to create a good environment to work at, based on solidarity and comprehension. What the company does is to design and establish individual support in order to obtain a good adaptation to the work environment. Moreover, Apunts tries to involve the family and social environment of workers in order to become an instrument of support and encouragement to ensure the stability of the integration process in the workplace and maintenance and it tries to establish criteria to detect and conceptualize, after assessing the capabilities of the person and the analysis of the job, the set of support needs so that workers can carry out their professional activities.

C. What makes this company really inspiring to you and why would you trust it?

The fact that the JOIA association of the company is a non-profit organization is the first thing that makes us believe it is ethical.
Its objective, as previously mentioned, is the professional training and the labor insertion of people with mentally disorders.

As they state it, "In Apunts we are all equal". They are very considerate with the people they are working with giving them a lot of facilities like the “Unitat de Suport a l’Activitat Professional (USAP)”, which with an individual plan for each worker helps them to adapt to their jobs going by their psychosocial needs as well as reinforcing, extending, and actualizing their knowledge with the aim of achieving, according to their possibilities, their incorporation in companies of the normalized labor market, meaning.

Moreover, Apunts with its individual plan tries to help and support each worker with the purpose of aiding them to have an adult life, responsible and economically independent through the access to the professional role and the economic autonomy.

This objective is worked though the listening of all staff members and the implication and respect towards all of them.

D.What are the possible challenges facing the company in the future and how do you think this company may improve?

Apunts has been working for 20 years. Since then they have been placed within the top 10 most important agencies of such services with a 97% level of quality in goods delivery.

One of their aims is to continue growing and they think now is a good moment to invest and expand and ensure the continuity and quality of the project for which the association of Apunts, JOIA, has been almost 20 years betting.

Apunts believes they have the knowledge to develop a social franchise network. Therefore, as it is not a very well-known company, they should invest in advertising.

We believe that a way to improve for them is to expand their business without forgetting their core values in the form of new franchises or maybe expanding their existing model to offer new services.