As we strive to create a 5-star customer experience for our partners and enable rewarding careers for our colleagues, we also feel responsible to protect all the people we work with, as well as the extended community.
Over the past weeks, we’ve kept a close eye on the spread of COVID-19 taking clear actions to safeguard the health and wellbeing of our colleagues, clients and visitors, while ensuring business continuity and supporting global efforts to manage the outbreak.
“As early as February 26th, we began to put in place an adaptive, 3-staged approach to reduce the risk of exposure, effectively manage any potential or suspected cases, and ensure minimal disruption to our work. We’re an agile organisation with an adaptive mindset and we have the tools, systems and processes in place that enable us to continue to deliver value for our customers in a way that is safe for our colleagues.” – Dana Florea, COO, Accesa
Focusing on prevention, we initially reduced international business travel by 80% - to essential trips only. We have been following the office hygiene and safety measures recommended by the Robert Koch Institute and Department of Public Health in all countries we have offices in. We have also asked colleagues with any respiratory symptoms to stay at home and seek the medical attention of their primary care physician or our private insurance health providers, as soon as possible.
Accesa was one of the first companies in Cluj-Napoca, our largest geography, to introduce a work from home policy, as part of our Equilibrium Wellbeing program, in 2017. In October last year, we updated this policy, transitioning to an unlimited work from home policy, adapting our internal systems, processes and infrastructure accordingly. This has allowed us to quickly adapt to the latest developments related to this outbreak, by encouraging our colleagues to work from home as much as possible.
As the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic and the number of cases in the countries our colleagues and partners reside in, are growing, this week, we decided to implement additional steps, suspending all international business travel in and out of our offices. Colleagues who’ve been travelling in the past 14 days are being asked to self-isolate and we’re limiting national travel to essential only.
Also, we’ve postponed all on-location gatherings of groups over 100 people to limit the risk of exposure for ourselves and our community.
Over the past 3 years, our virtual workplace model has proven effective both in giving our colleagues flexibility and consistently ensuring valuable outcomes for our partners. With this successful approach in mind and since over 90% of our colleagues are working from home starting March 16th, all of our activities are transitioning to the digital environment, across all of our locations.
“We’re building a people-oriented organization. This doesn’t just mean that the systems we develop and support are built with the end-user in mind. It also means that we value all the people we engage with. We feel that ensuring the health of our people and our community is a shared responsibility. We are confident in our community of professionals and in our ability to stay connected in this virtual workplace, continuing to strengthen our culture and value-driven collaboration model." – Iulian Iuga, Group Chairman, Accesa