How did the business in Poznań deal with the crisis?

Each crisis is also an opportunity – with this in mind, we have asked Poznań companies from the modern services industry, how they worked through the mandatory office closure and what lessons they learned from this period. The Heads of Arvato Supply Chain Solutions in Poland, Capgemini Software Solutions Centre, Miele Global Services, ROCKWOOL Global Business Services and TomTom have shared their reflections with us.

At Arvato Supply Chain Solutions in Poland, we were very quick to respond to the new situation. Wherever possible, teleworking was introduced. This change was very well received by our employees. Moreover, at present we are discussing an ultimate change of the work model for our employees and keeping for good the possibility of working from home on a full time basis for a specific group of employees.

The fact that, starting from March, we moved our IT environment to the cloud and made it more digital, definitely contributed to the good operation of the remote work model. The cloud platform we use, is based on the Microsoft Office 365 technology and has highest quality security standards. It has allowed us to introduce state-of-the-art tools that support communication and facilitate better organisation of Microsoft Teams meetings – a perfect substitute for real life ones.

In addition, these technological solutions, as well as the use of new tools supporting remote training, have enabled us to continue development programmes for our employees held so far in a regular manner. Most likely this form of education and hybrid training models will stay with us a little longer.

As Capgemini, we switched to remote work very efficiently when the pandemic arrived. Due to the fact that we had worked with our customers in this form before, the process ran smoothly. Our employees adjusted to the new mode well and fast. What we found most important was to maintain continuity of supply of high-quality solutions for our customers and ensure safety and comfort for our employees.

In the face of the pandemic-related restrictions, we switched to online communication using MS Teams, Skype or other tools meant to support distributed workforce collaboration. We introduced a series of webinars on various topics, under the common title “StayWellatHome”, and the “AmongOthers” podcasts. The guests we invited provided advice on how to efficiently maintain a work-life balance when staying at the same place, namely at home. We talked about healthy eating, sports and mental health, but also travel and business. Since April, we have conducted online courses with a personal coach, and yoga

classes for our employees. Our employees can also access various thematic channels on the MS Teams platform, to name for instance “Capgemini’s Kitchen”, where they enjoy sharing their recipes.

At present, we are slowly returning to the office, with some limitations and applying special security procedures. Daily contact with others guarantees a constant exchange of various skills, both technical and soft, as well as best practices. It ensures that our employees develop into experts, but also facilitates better teamwork, also in our relationships with customers. We have always put our trust in team spirit and we do hope that in time we will be seeing more and more of each other along our company’s corridors. Office work will remain our preferred work model, however this period of time showed us that an even more flexible model is possible and, first of all, will be welcomed by our employees.

At Miele, we adopted to new conditions swiftly and here I owe a debt of gratitude to our employees – it took us one day to successfully implement the home office. I certainly must admit that applications such as Skype or Teams and the ERP systems we use at Miele were of great help to us in switching to digital communication so quickly. Our new practices include: • an entirely different onboarding process, now extended by a virtual walk around the office, online thematic sessions and interactive materials, and, most importantly, we took care of the “human aspect”, too. Each new employee has a buddy assigned to assist them through the first days of their new job and ensure good atmosphere and energy; • introduction of everyday morning team catch-ups where we discuss our work schedule or answer any questions that might arise; • digital town hall – this is where we talk about the company’s situation and plans, and where also questions to me or the leaders can be posed. What is important, these sessions show us how fast we develop as Miele – there is more of us every month; • among a little more unusual and tongue-in-cheek actions, we have the Home Office Challenge. Here we could see pictures of our employees’ lockdown metamorphoses: new haircuts, beards, and sometimes unique outfits. Despite the lack of direct contact, we now know more about one another. During video conferences, we met many photobombers – lazy cats, barking dogs, children asking for help with their school work, neighbours obsessively renovating their apartments or mowing lawns, great grandparents looking at us from paintings in gilded frames... We have been offered a unique opportunity to get to know each other the way we are every day.

What I have listed above is just a part of all changes, but most importantly, our approach at Miele met with a very positive response from our employees. Regarding remote working, the employer’s trust and putting employees’ safety first were particularly appreciated. This trust has translated into numerous recommendations of new candidates for subsequent recruitment processes.

In the future, we plan to increase the number of remote working days as this work model is highly valued by our employees, for instance in terms of a positive worklife balance.

The COVID-19 crisis resulted in significant changes in the way our teams work. And I refer here not only to ROCKWOOL Global Business Services located in Poznań, but the ROCKWOOL Company globally.

With our production running as usual although in the new sanitary regime meant to protect employees against the coronavirus spread, most of our offices around the world quickly decided to switch to the home office mode. Which in turn resulted in a higher than usual demand for external connections to the corporate network and required developing new rules for such connections in order not to overload channels used to connect to the company’s critical information systems.

Predictably, no possibility of face-to-face meetings between employees resulted in more extensive use of conference systems and instant messengers. The quality and availability of systems for everyday communication between employees became a critical factor for the operations of our entire business. New tools and work rules were introduced quickly, enabling the company to cope with the crisis fully prepared for fast response to any new market needs stirred up by the effects of the pandemic.

The new ways of working have settled in already, becoming the everyday reality for our employees all over the world, but the ROCKWOOL Company holds dear the style and atmosphere resulting from maintaining good relationships between employees on a daily basis, therefore our people are returning to their respective offices as restrictions are lifted in individual countries, although we pay close attention to the risk for employees arising from the office work that seemed so normal not long ago.

YES, it was a huge challenge to switch our entire organisation (almost 4,500 employees) to home working basically within one week. Many initiatives were introduced to ensure that everything was going in the right direction. These include sessions for everyone – during which we have communicated our progress and the company’s current situation, AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions at which our employees can ask our leaders questions about literally anything and have been quite eager to seize this opportunity. Questions posed included: “Why have you stayed with the company for so long?” all the way to “What is our present financial standing?.” Furthermore, we have increased the number of surveys conducted in order to check how our employees are doing, how they feel in these new circumstances. Such a big work-from-home experiment would not have been possible in a “normal” situation, it would have most likely taken us much longer.

Our employees responded to these changes very well, which is proven by the comment: “Our communication has never been this good”. Considering our observation that people have worked remotely even more effectively than before and that they have received the improvements introduced so well, I am convinced that a great many of thesewill stay with us for a long time.

We do not know yet what “The World After Covid-19” will look like, but it will certainly be different. It turned out that we had been able to operate without business trips for months – which remains TomTom’s reality even today.

When it became possible to reopen offices, we did that as soon as we could, in the first place facilitating return to work for those who had difficulty working from home. However, with social responsibility in mind, we encouraged remote work because we knew that not all compa nies could afford it. After further easing of restrictions related to office work, I can see that over a month later a vast majority of employees (95%) still choose remote working. This will certainly affect our future decisions, for instance business processes connected with recruiting new employees or onboarding them. Working at a certain location will not matter as much as it did before COVID-19.

This has other consequences, too – now we have to compete for engineers in the local market even more, this time with the entire IT world.

As regards our business model, because of the situation worldwide, two TomTom’s products have become even more popular. I am talking about our Traffic Index – here we can see perfectly how the characteristics of human behaviour change in connection with the lockdown – and geolocation APIs. Of course, I hope this trend will continue.

As the Capgemini Group, we have coped with this huge change by being flexible and meeting customer needs – which have been updated daily. We have been able to foresee the direction of changes and modify our projects accordingly. The pandemic has confirmed us in our beliefs that our employees can rise to the challenge even in difficult circum stances, and complete their projects. Even though not all of us can see each other every day as yet, we are an integrated community and make very good project teams.

In many respects, the lockdown positively affected our business model. Our meetings are now planned even more precisely, supported by multimedia and our employees’ creative ideas. More than that – we have proven that transition can take place remotely, irrespective of further COVID-19 developments, and as Miele, we are ready to grow and establish cooperation with new countries. The last three months have proven that we make a good team, flexible and with enough resources to act even in difficult and exceptional conditions. We are optimistic about the future because we know we can do it!

Undoubtedly, the coronavirus pandemic crisis has taught the entire ROCKWOOL organisation to respond quickly to new working conditions and new ways of conducting business activity. In particular, the responsible attitude of our employees must be appreciated, as they quickly adjusted to the new restrictions and regimes introduced by the governments of respective countries, but also by the Management Board of the Company whose regula tions provided additional protection against unnecessary risk. Our managers also underwent a fast, but as it now turns out, efficient baptism by fire, responding capably to changing conditions for the functioning of societies and businesses in individual countries. Nobody wishes for another surge of crisis, but I think now we are all better prepared for the introduction of any necessary changes that would protect our employees against new threats while preserving the character and culture of our company.

Our business model did not change as it had been flexible even before the COVID-19 situation. All we needed to do was to make decisions and manage risks more often and even faster. COVID-19 has certainly confirmed that transparent and regular communication with employees, customers and suppliers is necessary to maintain trust, peace and security.

The above statements have been taken from our “2 Questions for the Boss” series published on the “Invest in Poznan” fanpage. Please feel welcome to visit it for more information about the modern service industry in Poznań and initiatives of the Investor Relations Department of Poznań City Hall.

More information:

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