The Fürstenberg Institut
Empowering people and creating healthy work environments - that is our passion. As experts of long standing in the field of mental health in the workplace, we have clear values that guide our work. Day after day, we draw on enthusiasm, well-founded expertise and vision to help the working world to become a slightly better place.
With conviction for a healthy working and living environment
The health of individuals and the company is crucial for successful, stable and innovative companies. Reinhild and Werner Fürstenberg already recognized this when they founded the institute in 1989. With their passion for mental and corporate health, the Fürstenberg Institute has since established itself as the leading source of inspiration in the industry. We stand for holistic concepts, many years of experience, trusting cooperation with our clients and maximum flexibility with regard to new challenges.
Whether in individual cooperation with your employees, at management level or in entire teams - our work is always solution-oriented, focuses on the entire company and thus initiates sustainable change.
As pioneers of mental health in the workplace, we know what makes a healthy company. For more than 30 years, we have been empowering our customers with innovative solutions - in everyday working life, during social upheavals and economic crises.
Trust is built through long-term customer relationships and sustainable success. Close, personal communication with our clients and regular evaluation of our work is therefore particularly important to us. We ensure our successful work through regular further and advanced training of our highly qualified, permanently employed consultants.
With our hands-on mentality, we quickly find customized solutions for your challenges. We adapt our work to individual circumstances and global developments.
Founded with a vision
Our self-image
Conscious, respectful treatment of our fellow human beings, work done together towards a shared goal and a firm conviction that we are doing good with our daily actions drives us and shapes the relationship with our client companies. All this unites us and makes the Fürstenberg Institut what it is – which is something we are all proud of.
The Fürstenberg Model - Mental Health in 5 Dimensions
We are dedicated to ensuring that people receive early and preventive support – before serious mental stress has a chance to develop. For this reason, we have always been occupied with the central question of what keeps people mentally healthy?
Various scientific studies provided us with answers to this, and on this basis, we developed the Fürstenberg Model of Mental Health with its five dimensions that reflect the core of our work. This model defines our understanding of what mental health is and how mental illness can be prevented, and provides the foundation for what we do.
Our history
In 1989, Reinhild and Werner Fürstenberg founded the Fürstenberg Institut in Aachen. Through their work with companies in the fields of addiction prevention, reduction of absenteeism and management seminar provision, it had become apparent that there were no adequate contact points for mentally stressed employees that could recognize their concerns and offer practical help. This gave rise to the idea of external employee and management counselling.
Today, with more than 200 colleagues in 10 institutes and 70 various locations, we ensure that mentally stressed employees from our client companies receive support at all times and in complete confidence for all challenges relating to work, private life and health.
• New customer login, "myFürstenberg", with many digital services and an extensive media library
• Realignment: Employee and management counseling becomes Mental Health Coaching, Organizational Counseling & Academy becomes Corporate Health Counseling
• New business unit, "Health & Safety" (modern occupational medicine & occupational health and safety)
• Opening of the Institute’s 10th site, in Bonn
• Signing of the Diversity Charter(Charta der Vielfalt)
• Development of the 5 dimensions of mental health on a scientific basis
• 30th anniversary celebrations at all of the Institute’s sites
• Expansion of the nationwide expert advisor locations
• Gründung eines Wissenschaftlichen Beirats
• Launch of the Fürstenberg Academy: expansion of seminar and continuing education programmes
• Official recognition as a debtor and insolvency counselling centre by the city of Hamburg
• Extension of counseling services to Austria and Switzerland
• Expansion of external employee and management counselling to include companycorporate integration management (BEM)
• Expansion of telephone counselling to the whole of Germany
Services: External staff and management counseling, seminars and organisational counseling, emergency management: stress management after emotionally difficult events
• Recognition as a specialized outpatient clinic for the rehabilitation of addictive disorders
Services: External employee and management counseling (Employee Assistance Program / EAP), prevention and therapy.
Services: Workplace addiction prevention and reduction of absenteeism
Our commitment to sustainability
In our work with people, we build on trust, appreciation, diversity, respect and the sustainable use of resources. For us, these values are not just simple words; they shape our relationships with client companies, clients and each other. They are given life by the employees of the Fürstenberg Institute and motivate us to give of our best every day.
It is natural for us to live our values beyond the confines of our daily work and to take responsibility for ourselves and others, for peaceful coexistence and a healthy planet.
Our first sustainability report
Appreciative cooperation and the sustainable use of resources are very important to me. I experience this in the cooperation and open communication with our client companies and the sustainable success of our work with them. Through the sustainability project, I can now also make a greater contribution to the entire company becoming more sustainable – for our client companies, for nature and for future generations
Diversity Charter - Charta der Vielfalt
We have signed the Diversity Charter / Charta der Vielfalt. This means that we are part of the Germany-wide diversity network and shows that we are committed to valuing and promoting diversity and to creating an appreciative working environment for everyone, regardless of age, ethnic origin and nationality, gender and gender identity, physical and mental abilities, religion and belief, sexual orientation and social origin