KALISME PRO · CHARTER

What Kalisme must never be used for

Our other commitments say what we forbid ourselves. This one says what an organization forbids itself once it gives Kalisme to its teams, and the one thing it undertakes to do. It is attached to their contract.

7 commitments, which Kalisme can enforce against the organisation.

The charter in 7 sentences

  • Kalisme never justifies a workload.
  • Kalisme never asks anyone to accept abuse.
  • Kalisme never replaces a doctor, a psychologist or occupational health.
  • Kalisme never turns a collective problem into a personal failing.
  • Kalisme mandates no calm, no smile, no positivity.
  • Kalisme is never used to judge, rank or monitor a person.
  • And the organization deals with the causes it already knows about.

Why this charter exists

All 13 Kalisme books open with the same three words: “You’re allowed to”. They are permissions, not instructions. And a permission is easy to turn around.

“You’re allowed to stop before you break” grants a person a right. Said by a manager to someone who has just broken down, the same sentence becomes “you should have known when to stop”, and a failure of the organization turns into a personal fault.

Handing out permissions to people whose workload, headcount and management practices stay exactly as they were widens the gap between what they feel entitled to and what they actually get. That gap is a well-known engine of cynicism.

We will not sell a tool that produces that. This charter is the only way we have of refusing it in writing, before the signature rather than after the incident.

The 7 commitments

The first 6 say what the organization forbids itself, the 7th what it does. All of them bind the signing organization, not its employees, and they neither replace nor lighten any employer obligation: those exist beforehand and outlive them.

1 · Kalisme justifies no workload

The organization undertakes not to invoke Kalisme, its language or the fact that it has been provided, in order to justify, maintain or increase a workload, a pace, understaffing, working hours or a known exposure.

Not acceptable

  • “You’ve got Kalisme to get you through this period.”
  • “We know it’s heavy, that’s exactly why we gave you the app.”
  • “The workload isn’t changing this year, but we are supporting you.”

What remains possible

Saying that a period is hard, and offering Kalisme alongside other things, provided it is never presented as the answer to that difficulty, nor as something given in exchange.

Kalisme is secondary prevention: it equips a person to face their work situation, it never acts on the situation itself. Workload, hours and headcount belong to primary prevention, which only the employer can carry out.

2 · Kalisme asks no one to accept the unacceptable

The organization undertakes not to invoke Kalisme in order to get a person to tolerate abusive behavior: bullying, sexual harassment, humiliation, discrimination, verbal violence, exclusion, or repeated breaches of what the law allows.

Not acceptable

  • “Take a step back”, said to someone who has just reported an incident.
  • “Kalisme will help you react less to the way he speaks to you.”
  • “Learn not to let it get to you.”

What remains possible

Nothing. This is the one commitment with no gray area. Anything touching a report never goes through Kalisme, at any point, in any form.

The work says the exact opposite, and it says so in its titles: “You’re allowed to say no to what steals your peace”, “You’re allowed to choose who you keep close”. A text that teaches people to set limits, turned around to silence someone who has just set one, no longer serves what it was written for. And a report remains a report: it triggers the employer’s obligations, it is not settled by a reading.

3 · Kalisme replaces no doctor, no psychologist, no occupational health service

The organization undertakes not to present Kalisme as a substitute for, a step before, or a filter ahead of medical, psychological or social support, and not to scale back an existing service on the grounds that Kalisme has been introduced.

Not acceptable

  • “Try the app first, then we’ll see.”
  • “Now that we have Kalisme, the helpline is redundant.”
  • Listing it in the risk assessment or the prevention plan as a measure.

What remains possible

Mentioning Kalisme alongside existing services, never ahead of them in a referral path.

Kalisme is not therapy, not a medical device, not a human service. Nobody at Kalisme is in contact with an employee. A consultation at the employee’s own request is a right, free, confidential, and does not go through the management line: nothing offered here shortens it or comes before it.

4 · Kalisme does not turn a collective problem into a personal failing

The organization undertakes not to use Kalisme, its language or its usage figures to attribute to individuals a difficulty that comes from how work is organized: workload, headcount, role clarity, support, recognition, management practices.

Not acceptable

  • “The tool is there, the ones who are struggling just don’t use it.”
  • “The problem isn’t the department, it’s how much each person can take.”
  • Reading a low activation rate as a lack of commitment from the teams.

What remains possible

Noticing that a team is struggling and acting on the causes. Kalisme has nothing to say at that point, and must not appear there.

No aggregate usage figure is a health indicator, and no result from this tool, good or bad, says anything about how your work is organized. A good number is not a clean bill of health, a bad number accuses no one.

5 · Kalisme mandates no calm, no smile, no positivity

The organization undertakes not to turn Kalisme into an expected standard of behavior: emotional composure, a required display of positivity, or the implicit dismissal of disagreement, tiredness or anger.

Not acceptable

  • “We’re Kalistes here, we stay calm.”
  • “That reaction isn’t very Kaliste.”
  • Putting the 13 permissions up on the walls as rules of conduct.

What remains possible

Publicly standing by Kalisme as a choice the organization has made. Not expecting a way of being from its employees, and not quoting it to end a discussion.

Kalisme is a secular philosophy with no master, no disciple, no initiate and no levels. There is no such thing as a “good Kaliste”. Requiring someone to appear at peace adds emotional labor to their load, which is precisely the burden these texts set out to lighten.

6 · Kalisme measures no one’s worth or maturity

The organization undertakes not to use Kalisme, the activation of a seat or fluency in its language as a criterion for judging a person: performance review, appraisal, promotion, transfer, probation, team composition, or any career decision. No benefit, bonus, challenge, ranking or named communication is tied to usage.

Not acceptable

  • “She hasn’t taken the principles on board yet.”
  • “A bit more maturity would do him good, he should get started.”
  • Asking a manager who, on their team, has activated a seat.

What remains possible

Nothing. Usage and non-usage enter no assessment, in any form, including praise: publicly commending those who practice creates the same pressure as reproaching those who do not.

There are two safeguards here, and only one of them is technical. No table, no key, no log links a person to their usage: that data does not exist, and nobody can produce it, not you, not us, not under a court order. The human safeguard, however, does not exist at all: a judgment needs no data, one sentence in a meeting is enough. That is exactly why this commitment is written down.

7 · The organization deals with the causes it already knows about

The organization undertakes not to present Kalisme as a sufficient answer to a risk it has already recorded in writing: a risk listed in its risk assessment, raised by its employee representatives, or flagged by its occupational health service. On those findings, and on those alone, it examines the causes and tells its employee representatives what it does with what it finds, whether or not Kalisme is deployed.

Not acceptable

  • “The issue is dealt with, we have deployed Kalisme.”
  • Listing Kalisme in the prevention plan as the answer to a risk already identified in the risk assessment.
  • Postponing the review of a finding from the employee representatives on the grounds that a tool has just been made available.

What this commitment does not ask for

No new survey, no imposed deadline, no promised result, no reporting back to us. One word sets the boundary of this whole commitment: “already”. It covers only the findings you have written down yourself.

This is the only commitment in this charter that asks for action, and that is what keeps the charter from being a mere promise to do no harm. The first 6 stop Kalisme from being misused. They require nothing to be done: an organization can follow them to the letter and still sit on a finding it recorded itself. We do not check this commitment, and we could not, because we see nothing of what goes on inside your organization. We write it down because this charter is handed to the people who can.

WHAT THIS CHARTER DOES NOT ASK OF YOU

It has to stay workable

A charter nobody can apply ends up ignored, which is worse than no charter at all. So here are its limits.

  • No mandatory training, no officer to appoint, no process to create.
  • No reporting back to us, no annual attestation to produce.
  • No policing of what your managers say: this charter is about the acts of the organization, meaning official communications, meetings and decisions.
  • It does not forbid talking about Kalisme, recommending it, or quoting a line from it. What it forbids is using it against someone.
  • A clumsy sentence is not a breach. A breach is a use: a decision, an official communication, a review meeting, a practice that repeats.

Reporting a breach

Who can report

Any employee of the organization, any employee representative, any occupational health professional, without going through their management line and without informing the organization.

Write to ethique@kalisme.com, stating that this is a report under this charter.

Who reads it

The message lands in a mailbox read by the founder of Kalisme, and by nobody else. This is not an emergency channel: if someone is in danger, the emergency services, occupational health or the right to raise an alert are what answer, not us.

What we do

  1. We acknowledge receipt within 72 working hours and tell you the next steps. The review itself takes as long as it takes.
  2. We do not pass your identity to the signing organization or its management, including if they ask for it. One thing alone can compel us, and we would rather write it down: a binding legal obligation, a court order for instance. If that kind of anonymity matters to you, write to us from an address that does not identify you: an anonymous report is handled exactly like any other.
  3. If the breach is established, we request the correction through a written formal notice, with a 30 day deadline.
  4. Failing correction, we terminate the contract and close the seats. Personal data stays on each person’s phone: notebook, conversations, reading progress.
  5. We remove any public mention of the organization, if there is one.

What we cannot do

We do not qualify any fact under employment law, we are no substitute for the labor inspectorate, the employee representatives or the occupational health service, and we protect nobody against their employer. What we can do is stop supplying a tool that is being used to do harm. That is all we can do, and we would rather write it down than let it be hoped for.

What we commit to in return

This charter would be dishonest if it bound only you.

  • Our own sales material is bound by it. A pitch promising an effect on absenteeism, performance or individual resilience would breach commitment 4.
  • We turn down requests that contradict it, including paying ones: employer access to content, a list of people who have not activated their seat, a breakdown of reading by title, any correlation between usage and HR indicators.
  • The rest of our commitments sit in our ethics charter: separation from the employer, no resale of data, transparency about artificial intelligence, no promised figures.

This charter is attached to the Kalisme Pro seat contract and handed to employee representatives before any rollout. Every change is dated, explained and published: a commitment is never quietly weakened. It can be clarified, never hollowed out.

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Kalisme · Hakan Kaynar · version 1.1, August 2026.