Our work from home
JOURNEY EDITION 6
(June 3, 2020)
Dear Colleagues: The events of the past week in the United States have left us with feelings of both outrage and disappointment. The abuse and murder of George Floyd by members of the Minneapolis Police Department is beyond reprehensible—the flagrant display of brutality and disregard for human life is shocking and appalling. But, sadly, this is not a unique event for people in the U.S. and around the world. Racism and discrimination are societal ills that harm every part of our community. Therefore, it is all of our shared responsibility as part of a civil society to bring about change. It is the obligation of every one of us to create a community that truly embraces equality in every sense. We wholeheartedly condemn discrimination by race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, appearance, or any other attribute of an individual or group. There is zero tolerance for any such discrimination at W. R. Berkley Corporation or any of its affiliates. Here, we value people by their contributions, and by what is in their hearts and minds. We are a company of people, and we are a company of inclusion. While recent generations of Americans have as a whole done better than those who have come before, we still have a long way to go. And just as it is wrong to profile individuals by stereotypes, we should not assume that the horrific behavior we all saw is typical of the many dedicated members of law enforcement who selflessly serve our communities. Nor is there a place in society for the looting and violence we have seen over the past few days. Many of the significant changes we have witnessed in our history have been driven by courageous and committed people speaking out in peaceful and constructive protest—let it continue to be so as we work together for a more fair and just society. We are all diminished when one life is lost; we all lose when society fails. We must do better. Bill Berkley and Rob Berkley
Employee Assistance Program
RESOURCES Millions of people across the country have read about and watched footage from tragic events over the past several days. It’s normal for events like this to generate strong feelings, which often carry over to conversations at home and at the workplace. Discussions about polarizing issues that surface can be tense or even downright destructive. Avoiding such conversations is not always a good solution. For children, events like this can help shape their belief systems. It’s important for adults to pay attention to the way they respond to children during these times. 1.
Recorded Webinar
Click the link below to watch a recorded webinar on ways to have healthy discussions about polarizing topics without damaging your important relationships. The recording also discusses productive ways to talk about the events with children.
Difficult Conversations During A Time Of Unrest Across America - Webinar Registration Link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8324593156683679246
Enter First Name, Last Name, Email Address and Click Register. The recording will then auto-play.
2.
Resource Packet (Attached)
CLICK HERE to review the Civil Unrest Resource Packet from EAP.
3.
One-on-One Counseling
For confidential, one-on-one counseling support (at no charge to you or your family), you can reach The Hartford’s Ability Assist® EAP services 24 hours a day, seven days a week via a toll-free line: 1-800-96-HELPS (1-800-964-3577) or by registering or logging in to www.guidanceresources.com
(Registration instructions can be found on the EAP flyer: Visit Workday > Benefits Application > External Links > Employee Assistance Program (The Hartford). Access is subject to state availability.
We look forward to continuing these discussions and supporting open and candid conversations.
Our Gratitude and Thanks Our heartfelt thanks to each and every one of our Berkley Technology colleagues for providing the support that has made work from home a success. You are our heroes!
Thanks to Anthony Abatino, Chris Larrow and Elham Hashemi.
“Anthony has helped make the work from home process as seamless as possible. He is always on immediate response and we have a successful outcome to any request.” “Thank you for all you have done and continue to do to keep us working safely at home.”
A special shout out to ANTHONY ABATINO who comes into the office to be sure the virtual Presidents’ Meeting, Board of Directors’ Meeting, HR Forums and many other meetings are conducted without a glitch.
BERKLEY ENTERTAINMENT
Berkley Entertainment thanks Chance Lindsey, Ken Gardner, Kristy Smith, and Kristin McConnell. They quickly established the infrastructure that allowed employees to work from home with minimal impact to the Berkley Entertainment business teams. They have helped set up printers, video conferencing and screen sharing, as well as Jabber and WebEx. They trouble-shoot issues, resolve problems, and do it all with patience and humility. This team has made working from home less stressful and more productive.
Berkley Accident and Health Brad Nieland, company president stated “Berkley Accident and Health proudly recognizes our IT leadership group, including Matt Robb, Irina Barcia, Walter Schwarz, and Priya Nelluri for successfully executing a major systems conversion in the middle of a pandemic! It was a team effort involving many dedicated individuals across the entire company, and our IT team collectively demonstrated their ability to excel during a challenging period of time. Additionally, their efforts to ensure the successful on-boarding of an A+ group of new hires is very much appreciated! Congratulations and thank you to Matt, Irina, Walter, and Priya, and keep up the great work!�
Berkley Asia Pacific
The Berkley Asia Pacific team has had two recent office relocations. Max Singh and Sumeet Chandra drove over 800km (or 500 miles) from Sydney to Melbourne to ensure the successful deployment of IT in the Melbourne office. They did a fantastic job – reflecting the dedicated can do approach which characterizes our IT team in AsiaPac.
A BIG THANK YOU to MAX SINGH and SUMEET CHANDRA for going the extra mile and road tripping to Melbourne to assist with the set up of the Melbourne office.
Berkley Prime Transportation
They make each day brighter through laughter and spreading kindness to stay connected through the pandemic. They have done things like a talent show and scavenger hunts. They even created their own playlist on Spotify called “BPT Family Favs�!
Berkley Prime Transportation
LEADERSHIP TEAM One way the leadership team showed their appreciation recently was sending a box of delicious snacks from Snack Nation; they also donated a meal to Feeding America for every box sold.
Acadia
Delivers Top Notch Service
Working from home, our New Hampshire and Vermont teams continue to deliver top notch service with a smile.
Acadia Massachusetts Team Continues to Volunteer Efforts Our Massachusetts office donated dinner to the Providence Fire Department from a local restaurant.
Our Massachusetts team (with the help of children and pets) are continuing to provide superb service from home.
Blood Drive
Sponsored by the Maine CPCU Society
Lyndsay Woods (Acadia), Maine Branch Underwriting Team Leader volunteering at the Red Cross Blood Drive sponsored by the Maine CPCU Society, Unum & MaineHealth. From left to right is Lyndsay, Deb Wentworth (Clark Insurance) & Nick Burke (MEMIC).
Thanks to These IT Heroes
for Keeping Our Companies Running
Berkley Integrated Solutions thanks: Anthony Abatino and Felik Shvab Berkley Select thanks: Guy Blair, Dave Belloli, and Tom Zuchara Vela Insurance thanks: Kevin Brummel, Melissa Filip, and Prodgical Jorden
Berkley Agribusiness & CWG Thank DAN GUZMAN from BTS
Here are notes of gratitude and thanks from Dan’s peers I would like to recognize Dan Guzman for his tireless work in preparing my staff for the ability to work from home. He took loaner laptops and transformed them into personal laptops for the CCX team at CWG. Without his quick turnaround, we would not have made the successful transition to working from home. You were patient with the staff as we transitioned and answered numerous questions. For this, a heartfelt thank you Dan! I think Dan Guzman has been extremely helpful in getting our folks up and running at home and troubleshooting with them when issues arise. He is always very responsive and has been a big help during this transition. I want to thank Dan Guzman in IT. He has saved me multiple times. I lack tech skills and he made my transition to home much easier. He was also helpful to a user that was watching a Mandatory CEU webinar and could not get the sound!
Berkley North Pacific
We recognize Mervin Miclat, April Portugal, Bailey Fuentes, Cyndee Hester and Ashley Lind from Berkley North Pacific. With the rest of the office working remotely, they have seen an increase in their work load and deserve some praise in these stressful and challenging times. Merv is always available to answer questions and help someone out. He has gone above and beyond during this pandemic to make sure people have the capability and tools to do their jobs the best they can. April and her team’s workload has increased due to the office closures. They are handling all mailing (incoming and outgoing) for both offices which requires someone to be in the office to handle. I am sure that there is much more that they are doing behind the scenes as well that we do not know about because they just handle it and make sure the rest of us can get our work done. Like handling all the vendors who handle our supplies and deliveries. Thank you all for everything you are doing. We appreciate you!
Larry Splinter from BNP had this to say about Mervin Miclat: I would like to recognize our IT Specialist, Mervin Miclat with BNP in Boise ID office. Mervin has done a great job with keeping everyone’s computer systems running smoothly during this Pandemic. Even before the Pandemic, Mervin has always been a “go to” person for us employees who work remotely full time. If we have issues with our computers, it only takes a phone call to Mervin and he either logs into your computer to resolve the issue or contacts BTS for assistance. Mervin has been a busy man during this Pandemic!
SPECIAL THANKS to Berkley Technology Services
Operations has remained onsite (24x7) in Wilmington
Facilities has remained onsite to handle building and Data Center issues as well as shipping and receiving
Network quickly increased the capacity for AnyConnect/Internet in both Data Centers, as well as rolled out a quick version of Cloud WebEx
Network Operation Center (NOC) was involved with getting everyone setup with softphone and WebEx; they continue to monitor the WFH environment
Enterprise Monitoring Solutions (EMS) Team quickly setup additional dashboards and event monitoring for our new WFH environment
Berkley Technology Services ESSENTIAL STAFF
A heartfelt thanks goes out to the BTS essential staff that remained in the office to support everyone else that was working from home: Dan Guzman and Tim Myers (Desktop Support Services), Jason Powell (NOC), Andy Stroud (Facilities), and Lori Bell (Human Resources). They are a small but mighty team making sure that BTS employees have what they need to be successful working from home.
Mary Morgan appreciates when she calls the Service Desk and they are patient and take the time to explain things. Mary is especially grateful when she knows they are overwhelmed with calls. WE ALL AGREE WITH YOU MARY!
KUDOS
to Berkley Technology Services
We would like to recognize these teams for their special efforts.
BTS Network Engineering Team and the Network Operation Center (NOC) These team members were instrumental in upsizing our remote access solution that moved us from about 2,000 to now 5,500 concurrent remote users; building and monitoring the infrastructure; the work to setup Cloud WebEx , Soft Phones, and remote call centers that now support the Berkley companies “Work From Home” model.l.
Service Desk Team The BTS Service Desk worked long days and some weekends to ensure support was readily available during the transition weeks. We continue to have Service Desk and Shipping & Receiving personnel in the office every day to ensure new hires receive equipment on time. We continue to have Procurement personnel in several days a week to manage hardware inventory and asset management requirements.
Data Center Services During this WFH journey all groups within Data Center Services have gone above and beyond to ensure that the Data Center environment not only remains 100% up, but also that it can handle the additional “outof-the-office” workload.
Berkley Surety
Recognizes Matt Rodrigue and Tim Armstrong Matt Rodrigue and Tim Armstrong were instrumental in helping us all adjust from working in the office to working from home. During this transition, they helped with technical support for all users, any user issues, provided additional training, secured equipment, and created how-to instructions for any new technical needs (scanning from your phone, WebEx video calls, etc.). They did all of this with a can-do attitude, sense of urgency, and a high level of service. Kudos to Matt and Tim!
TIM ARMSTRONG
MATT RODRIGUE
Massive Thank You to the UK IT TEAM
A massive thank you to all of the UK BTS Team for keeping us running through this period of remote working
Intrepid Direct Appreciates Their IT Team Intrepid’s much appreciated, extremely accomplished yet super humble Engineering team is ALWAYS hard at work solving problems for our team. Whether it’s day and night status monitoring our of main website to protect against outages, building software (people can do that?!) to automatically test website changes or driving efficiencies to make us better, faster and smarter, our Engineering team wears the cape around here!
CONGRATULATIONS
to Richard Pope from Union Standard Insurance Group Lifetime Achievement Award Winner
A Special Thank You from USIG to Rafael Taveras RAFAEL TAVERAS, Senior Desktop Analyst Union Standard thanks Rafael for his quick work to get employees up and running on newly issued laptops so that they could work from home effectively. The response and turn-around time was nothing short of miraculous.
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WRB Employees Around the Globe Give Back
Manpreet Dhaliwal (part of Rich Baio’s team working on the BDW Implementation project) was featured in some major UK national newspapers for the work he has done in London during COVID-19, working with the UK National Health Service (NHS).
CLICK HERE to read the article in UK “The Guardian” (2020-05-08).
Manpreet Dhaliwal
Helps with Donations to NHS Trust
Hundreds of scrubs have been donated to the hospital staff in Kent. CLICK HERE to read the article in the BBC News (2020-05-20)
Berkley Oil & Gas
The BOG IT Team works hard every day and are always willing to accommodate their users when asked for their assistance. We appreciate every one of them!
Jose Rodriquez said: “Without the help of the IT department, I would probably be going crazy questioning why my jabber doesn’t work or why my report isn’t showing the right data. I just wanted to say thank you for making this experience a smooth one and I am grateful to have you guys in our corner. “
Patrick Linton said: “From now until the end of time, IT will be the backbone of all organizations moving forward. As far as BOG, we have one of the best back bones!”
Berkley Oil & Gas
IT SUPER HEROES You are ALL our super heroes; we are thankful for your commitment, support and dedication.
Justin George said: “Y’all are the best! Tech wizards for real. Without IT doing their part, we couldn’t do ours.”
Madison Clement said: “When it became clear that we would be needing to all work from home, Ralph made sure that I was able to receive all of the supplies that I needed in order to comfortable and efficiently WFH and kept me updated on how to set everything up at home!”
Berkley Fire & Marine
Thanks These BTS Employees
The entire BTS team has done an outstanding job supporting us in our WFH environment. However, we would like to provide a special shout out to Deborah Whitby, Tracey Tierney, Brandon Lenzini, Jerome McGrowder, and Jamea Moore for going above and beyond and responding to late night requests.
Miami Office Would Like to Thank BTS Employee, ELLIOT GARCIA This is Elliot Garcia, BTS employee based in Miami. Elliot supports the Berkley Latin America and Berkley Corp Teams. He is our IT Angel here in Miami, always available to help and always with a smile. He is very creative and approaches everything he does with great humor. We’ll always remember the day we sang Happy Birthday to him on the wrong day – even then he let us sang our hearts out and was very discreet to let us know we had gotten his birthday wrong.
BERKLEY MEXICO
Thanks Jose Barbosa
Since the beginning of the pandemic, every employee in Berkley International Mexico has the connections, IT tools and systems to continue working and provide the best customer service!
Nautilus Thanks |
JESUS LERMA
While the entire Nautilus IT department is amazing, Jesus Lerma has been the only IT member to be working as a part of the few people on the Nautilus skeleton crew. It is a unique and unusual challenge being part of a small crew working in a three-story building that has somehow become a bit of a ghost town. Kudos to Jesus, as well as the members of our Facilities department who round out the skeleton crew! They rock!
Thanks to the
Brazil IT System Team
Rui Veiga testimony (IT System Manager): “This phase of Pandemic was an overcoming for our time. All of a sudden, everyone’s home office, without contact with the day, meetings and homologations from a distance. Face the urgency and put pressure on all employees, who were also in this unprecedented situation. An unparalleled experience, and we continue to learn and improve with it. Our times are to be congratulated! Everything works as expected. The problems they are presenting, we are managing to solve the same or better way than if we are physically in the office. Without a doubt, we are proud of our work.”
THANKS TO THE
Brazil IT Infrastructure Team
Emmanuel Almeida testimony (IT Infrastructure Manager): “In fact the first action was to accomplish a project about mobility that provided the opportunity to work from anywhere. The first month was the big challenge to all of us. We’ve created the action plan to support people from home”.
Berkley Southeast Insurance Group
Thanks These IT Professionals Phyllis Steib, Debbie Wills, and Cheryl Manis have all agreed that LINDA PARKER went above and beyond supporting their WFH environment. If she doesn’t have the answer, she will dig until she finds it! Debbie Wills said that DEB WHITBY is very responsive and does her work cheerfully! Samantha Hutchison said that STEVE SKOWRONSKI was a big help getting her phone set up to work from home; his follow-up was awesome. John Myrick feels BRIAN DYKES was a big help with connectivity and video capabilities during his WFH journey. Cheryl Manis said that CHRISTOPHER ENGLISH was very helpful getting video set up for meetings.
(top to bottom, left to right) Christopher English, Brian Dykes, Deb Whitby and Linda Parker
BSIG extends a huge THANK YOU to all of the BTS staff that have answered our questions and helped us get everything set up the first few “Work From Home” days!
KEEP YOUR SKILLSET CURRENT
Keeping your skills current is one of the most important ways you can do your job well and stay on top of changing demands in the workplace. It can also help you prepare for new opportunities that may arise. Learning new skills can be both stimulating and motivating. Now is a great opportunity to expand your mind.
Consider exploring these targeted Skillsoft resources available to you via Brainer today!
TITLE
LINK
Keeping Your Skillset Current in the Digital Economy
https://berkley.brainer.com/#/object/1078
Excel 2010: Pivot Tables and Pivot Charts
https://berkley.brainer.com/#/object/2658
PowerPoint 2016—Core Presentation Design and Delivery Skills
https://berkley.brainier.com/#/object/6921
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MORE
Berkley Graduates
We have a few more graduates we would like to congratulate that missed our last edition. We are very proud of ALL the Berkley grads! From Berkley Re Solutions and Berkley Program Specialists: Haley Renee Born, Jackson Doss, Jack Coyle, Ben Coyle, Drew Coyle, Justin Patton, and Zac Campbell.
KUDOS
to Graduates from Berkley Southeast Group
John Zulueta’s son, Ethan, is a 2020 Weddington High School graduate who is attending Washington & Lee on a Baseball Scholarship. Debbie Wills niece, Arlie McCranie, is a 2020 graduate from Berrien High School.