I’m closer to people now

Although every major change could be stressful and difficult, at the end of the day, it might prove to be an upgrade. Of course, you need to prepare well, or like in the case of the pandemic, mobilize quickly and open yourself up to close cooperation with others.

Izabela Urbanelis, HR Director, Lionbridge Polska: The Warsaw HR Team consists of 13 members: five employees work in the Personal Administration Department, five in Recruitment, one HR Business Partner, and one Training and Development Specialist. We’re a relatively small team with big responsibility, and we support over 1,500 Employees and contractors.

Managers had to face many new challenges, from managing remote teams and introducing new rules of work, monitoring motivation and mental wellbeing of their employees, to ensuring that the productivity stays at the desired level. Another difficulty is that we are a very diversified organization and we employ persons from many different countries. The lockdown period spent in Poland, far away from families and loved ones was particularly difficult for this group of global employees, and managers put a special focus on their needs. Transitioning to a fully remote onboar - ding system is one of our major chal lenges, even more because it was totally unexpected. We have developed new ways of integrating a fresh employee with the company and its values. Another difficulty is integration with the co-workers and the team spirit – it is not easy to achieve it all online. Currently, onboarding of new employees looks completely different and requires more attention and monitoring of all the areas in which a given person could need a helping hand.

Our managers have learned, and shared with their teams, is the fact that the common safety rides on the responsibility of an individual – it really depends on each and every one of us.

This knowledge has brought results. The supervisors’ engagement increased. They are monitoring the COVID-19 situation and sharing the current news with their employees. They ensure the comfort of work at the home office by giving their teams access to the tools that are necessary for remote work, all the while delivering the high level of management, planning, and ongoing communication

within the company. HR managers also had to face the lack of concrete, up to date procedures and provisions of law tailored to the situa tion. Although the global health crisis was equally unexpected to all of us, each employer must make their independent decisions on the right course of action. Luckily, we could see a lot of the basic level cooperation between different employers, also in the HR areas.

The major challenge that we had to face recently showed how much we have already learned about cooperation and crisis management. Some time ago, we reported the first, and for the time being only, confirmed case of COVID-19 at the Warsaw office. Despite the gravity of the situation, we were glad to see that the procedures we had introduced worked as planned. The crisis management team took immediate action. Along with the Administration and BCP Teams, we applied procedures that covered all key areas. Nobody was left alone with the problem.

The departments did an amazing job cooperating with each other. In no time, we drew up the action plan for the following days, and we published the related communication for the employees.

Both the Warsaw office, as well as the global leaders, agreed that security is our top priority. We immediately decided to run the tests, which gave our employees the peace of mind and the sense of security. We issued a clear and transparent communication to our clients and employees, explaining why we have to “go back home” once again, which was received very well. Our clients supported us, and our employees took to heart the new guidelines. This flexibility, cooperative spirit, and the awareness that we are well prepared for any future circumstance allow us to feel secure should anything else happen and look forward to the upcoming months.

In the face of the global pandemic, Lionbridge introduced special security measures and precautions early on – both in relation to current employees (Lions), as well as future Lions.

We moved to a fully remote recruitment model. Job offers contain information on the remote recruitment process and the candidates are also informed of it during the first phone contact.

The initial step of our recruitment process is a phone call with the selected candidates. Then we set up an online recruitment meeting – a video conference with the use of the latest technologies. The online calls were very well received by both candidates and our managers. They enable us to have a call from any part of the world, which is a great advantage for the persons who are currently staying outside of Warsaw. The online contact gives both sides the sense of security. If the recruitment process entails further stages, such as tech nical tests, these are also done in electronic form.

How many of Lionbridge employees work remotely? Is there any group of employees who cannot work from home?

The majority of Lionbridge employees moved to remote working overnight. In the period of the strict lockdown, 95% of our employees worked remotely. As of July 1, approx. 25% of people came back to the office. This was due to the requirements of some of our clients.

What is the greatest challenge, and what is the greatest fun of working from home for your team?

A fully remote working model is brand new to us and it has a number of new challenges. The biggest one was initially staying in current and uninterrupted contact with the team members and the employees from other departments. We suddenly missed the face to face meetings, chats in the hallways or at the coffee machine in the kitchen. Seeing each other exclusively on the screens during various conference calls did not fully meet our need to socialize. We developed several solutions aimed at keeping the balance between work duties and interpersonal relations. We run video conferences on a regular basis, and each meeting starts with a little chit chat. We implemented numerous initiatives that help our employees stay in touch and ensure ongoing communication, such as Hyde Park, Virtual Coffee Break, and various types of challenges and contests. Our weekly Newsletter contains up to date news on the current activities within the company. We are monitor ing feedback and interest level shown in each initiative, and we are doing our best to adjust our communication channels accordingly. New ways of communication require all of us to adjust our ways and prac tices, for example, it is advised to turn on the cameras during online meet ings. We are getting the hang of it, and the opportunity to see each other through the screens certainly helps a lot! After the initial period of great mobilization due to the rapid changes we all went through, we started to receive information about various needs related to working from home, such asthe importance of a comfortable working space. Not everyone has the possibility to create their dedicated working space at home. We had to act and react quickly. We made the office chairs, extra monitors, and other equipment available to our employees. We would love to be able to support them even more, but we must keep in mind that, for the time being, the company’s priority is ensuring the continuity of the business and employment. We noticed that working from home might result in blurring the boundaries between work and family life. On the one hand, it is easy to forget oneself and work longer hours, and on the other, working at home is usually full of distractions, such as home duties, relatives, pets, which we had to learn to manage. Therefore, it was crucial to develop solutions that would help us organize properly our home office patterns. Among other things, it is key to create one’s own working space, as well as to schedule the necessary number

We noticed that working from home might result in blurring the boundaries between work and family life. On the one hand, it is easy to forget oneself and work longer hours, and on the other, working at home is usually full of distractions. Therefore, it was crucial to develop solutions that would help us organize properly our home office patterns.

of breaks during the day. Working from home can have some positives, and it totally could be an effective working system. Our employees are telling us that while working from home, they are allowed more flexibility in their daily life and they save plenty of time that normally they would use to commute.

Although during the quarantine many people missed the live contacts with other team members, the internal survey we ran showed that majority of our employees enjoy working from home and they feel that they are productive and well informed. Interestingly, the productivity has in many cases improved compared to the time before the pandemic.

After two months of remote work, we ran a survey among our employees. What we found most interesting and motivating at the same time was that majority of our employees feel in touch with what is happening within our organization. Communication in big enterprises is always a great challenge, both for the supervisors and the HR departments, and in order to get the message across, one must meet the needs of various recipient groups. Communication in the time of COVID-19 is a brand new competence that we had to acquire

on a very short notice. The survey results prove that we did very well in this field, although we certainly haven’t said the last word yet, and we keep working on improving our communication processes.

We keep monitoring the work related needs and sentiments of our employees and, as the recent survey results have shown us, vast majority of us would like to keep working from home, or both from home and at the office, and only 9% would like to permanently return to the office. It could be said that the COVID-19 induced transitions were in fact an answer to the needs of many of us.

Surprisingly, I feel closer to the people now than before the pandemic – it has become so much easier to quickly initiate a direct contact through Skype or during the online meetings than back when in order to talk to someone, I often had to walk two floors of the building. The physical distance from the others made us frequently and proactively seek new forms and tools of contact. I also have an impression that the distance between me and the employees has been reduced, as the online communication makes the exchange more equal. We all had to deal with the same challenges, and we all had to adapt to the new working system, as well as to find the balance between work and the needs of our relatives, while getting to know each other and ourselves much better.

Moreover, the close cooperation with our global Leadership has become more frequent and regular since the beginning of the global health crisis. We are currently in constant contact with our offices all over the world and we share information, plans, and tips daily.

We received a great support from our global Leaders when the first case of the coronavirus was confirmed at the Warsaw office. We could really feel that we are one organization, and our local matters are important to the entire company.

The pandemic removed our doubts as to the productivity of remote work. It turned out that we would have been ready to make such a transition earlier, there was just not enough incentive to take the leap. We used to think that business requires the traditional model of work organization and that such change would entail a great deal of preparations, but in fact, it turned out that thanks to active cooperation between departments, as well as en gagement and support of administration, IT, and business, we managed to go through the transition smoothly and quickly. What is more, our employees keep manifesting productivity and engagement. As you can see, the crisis can be a powerful incentive to make a change and to take a major step forward.

The new reality will involve several changes that we will have to face in the upcoming days. Although every major change could be stressful and difficult, at the end of the day, it might

prove to be an upgrade. Of course, you need to prepare well, or like in the case of the pandemic, mobilize quickly and open yourself up to close coopera tion with others. A remote recruitment process, based on objective criteria, might prove to be a much more effective way of sourcing candidates, which could provide the company with the new talents necessary for stable growth and goal achievement. Also working from home could be an advantage by the candidates.

It seems to me that the recent events showed us that the most important role of HR is to constantly listen to the employees and to cooperate closely with the business units. This is how I see our role in building trust and support across the company, all the while staying in touch with the business. Listening to and understanding the needs of the employees and the business allows us to define common areas, interests, and goals.