Nevenca Doca, HR, Banca Transilvania: The physical and emotional security of employees is our priority

What would be the best practices to support employees, in today's context, to feel safe? What physical, emotional and financial safeguards do companies have in place for their people?

The Bright Talks in Difficult Times online meeting, organised by Careers magazine and EY, aims to answer these questions through its guests. The webinar is part of a series of online events designed to support the business environment by disseminating company best practices and expert advice.

Among the guests was our colleague Nevenca Doca, Senior Executive Director Human Resources, who talked about the priorities of Banca Transilvania from the human resources point of view, so that employees are safe, healthy, but also able to continue serving customers. Currently [April], about 25% of the headoffice and 35% of the network work from home, and the BT Customer Care team is on 24/7 positions. More than 400 BT offices are open, with opening hours from 9.00 to 16.00, and in Italy (Rome) from 8.00 to 13.15 every Tuesday and Thursday.

Nevencai Doca's statements about BT, employee support and Human Banking:

Bank challenges during this period:

• Life in the banks at the end of February is very different from the first two months of the year and very intense.
• Our challenges are more in the area of physical security because we haven't stopped working and we have several thousand people working in units around the country, in front of customers. Some of our customers are our fellow countrymen who have returned to the country in recent weeks and who come to do some urgent operations.
• Some pressure was felt by our front office colleagues especially at the beginning of March, until we managed to come up with all the physical security measures: disinfectants, gloves, masks, protective panels, standard safety measures that customers must comply with.  
• We have kept the units open in view of the expectations of our customers and the authorities. Closing and waiting for the threat to pass is not an option for us.
• More than 3,100 of the colleagues, mostly mothers, are at home because they have children up to 12 years old. Some are in self-isolation, including because they have people working in the front line at home.

Bank priorities for #peopleofBT:

• Physical and emotional security was our priority.
• The first measures were to physically secure our colleagues, so any kind of internal or external travels, gym classes, everything that meant big sessions even from the end of February, before the first cases appeared in the country.
• Another step was to divide the teams into two or three and distribute them in several locations, so that if a team has to stay in isolation, we have someone to continue the activity with.
• Some of the colleagues, who were doing an activity that has ceased for the time being, are now doing other activities, such as customer relations through the call center, where the volume has increased a lot, being one of the channels through which customers can request the postponement of rates.

Teleworking, from BT pilot project to be launched in April, to mass deployment in March:  

• When the crisis started, the priority was to see what we could do from home because the bank did not have the teleworking procedure implemented in February.
• In our priority plan for this year we had, however, the launch of the teleworking pilot project with several departments on 1 April. We found ourselves in the situation of doing a mass implementation in just a few days.

Thank you to the participants of the Bright Talks in Difficult Times meeting for what they shared: Gabriela Alexandru (HR Director, Michelin Central Europe); Corina Mandoiu (Associate Partner, Income Tax and Social Contributions Department, EY Romania) and Ioan Dumitrascu (Partner and Coordinator of the Employment Law Practice, Filip & Company), and the moderator was Horatiu Cocheci, Director People Advisory Services, EY Romania. The video meeting can be watched here.