"It took us only three days to design and implement the best solutions for maintaining business continuity during the COVID-19 lockdown. And the key factors behind this achievement? Anticipating the situation and our employees’ sense of ownership and responsibility." Lucian Maican, General Manager Systematic Development Center
19 May 2020
Lucian Maican, General Manager, Systematic Romania
Tags: Employees, Cultural diversity, Collaboration, Teamwork
Our concerns were raised on 9 March following the Romanian government’s decision to close the schools in Romania. Our purpose was clear: we wanted to provide the safest solution for our employees and their families. However, due to the security requirements of our projects, code can only reside on a computer which is connected to the internal Systematic network. Thus, the decision to close the office and switch to a working-from-home approach for all our employees was quite challenging from an administrative point of view.
On 11 March, we started to align the new business operations approach at group level. In the meantime, we were preparing the IT infrastructure with the necessary hardware for working remotely. On 12 March, Systematic decided that all its employees must work from home, and starting the following day everything had to be plug and play. Approximately 60 PCs (laptops and desktops) had to be configured in less than two days by the IT management team, and PCs were required for the work-from-home set-up. We intensified cleaning, doubled the number of sanitisers in our office and we carefully followed all the recommendations from the local authorities in order to provide a safe work environment.
Good colleagues help and protect each other
It took us only three days to design and implement the best solutions for maintaining business continuity during the lockdown. On 16 March, a state of emergency was declared in Romania, so we were very happy that we had anticipated the situation and were completely geared to working from home with no business interruption.
When you take the right steps and genuinely care about the people with whom you work on a daily basis, the incredible results never cease to amaze you. Some of our employees who fall into the risk category for coronavirus were replaced voluntarily by other colleagues in order to protect them, even though their role was sometimes critical in implementing the work set-up and ensuring business continuity. This is just one example of the shared sense of responsibility that we embrace at Systematic. People reflect on and understand the situation, and they act upon it on their own initiative in order to maintain the sense of togetherness which has been cultivated within the organisation.
The key factors that enabled us to manage the crisis were: anticipating the situation combined with our employees’ sense of ownership and responsibility. There was no need to micromanage the situation – everything fell naturally into place.
Maintaining productivity and recruiting new colleagues under unusual circumstances
We maintained the same level of productivity by continuing to use the Scrum framework to ensure an agile workflow. This is how we work at Systematic, and it proved to be extremely effective in all circumstances. The management team ensured the continuity of this process by organising frequent check-in meetings to maintain the sense of belonging. Thus, active listening played a key role in maintaining the same level of connection between the team members.
Moreover, we registered a positive outcome on the recruitment side, managing to attract 13 more people between March and the beginning of May, so that we are now close to having 140 team members. For our new employees, we have adapted an online onboarding session until the restrictions are lifted and everyone is able to travel to our head office in Aarhus to participate in the Danish onboarding programme that we are so proud of.
Another important aspect that we took into consideration was ensuring that employees had a good experience during the lockdown. We can easily define ourselves as an active team that is very keen to maintain its social life. We enjoy our breakfast meetings, the coffee we drink together on the terrace, the lunch we serve together as a family – keeping the social spark alive was definitely something we wanted to focus on.
Engaging in social activities keeps everyone in touch and maintains spirits
Thanks to our staff association and team events, we regularly organised Triviador, rummy or bingo & beer afternoons. We also participated in Systematic’s first worldwide virtual Friday bar, an event organised at group level every last Friday of the month. We played Music Bingo, we listened to a live guitar concert and joined a Kahoot! quiz. Also, our social platform, Yammer, was the key channel for maintaining spirits through sharing pictures of employees’ Easter holidays and hosting the beauty contest for our homemade cozonaci (a Romanian recipe of sweet bread filled with chocolate).
We were also supported by our medical partners Regina Maria and Medicover, who broadcast various webinars so that we could better understand how we can protect ourselves physically and mentally during the lockdown.
Employee satisfaction up 10%
Our employees appreciated the way in which the company managed the crisis and the sense of security and stability it provided, with the huge focus on their well-being. This was evident from the monthly satisfaction survey results for April, where we registered the highest number of responses in the last 12 months and an all-time high score for satisfaction (an increase of > 10% vs previous months).
We helped to support the local healthcare services during this difficult time.Systematic donated EUR 10,000 to Cantacuzino Hospital to support its coronavirus treatment centre. The donation was used to secure personal protective equipment for the medical staff as well as for cleaning and disinfecting materials and devices.
Also, we continued to support our partnership with FruitBreak, our local fruit supplier. In this connection, we signed up for their ‘Together we can help’ (Impreuna putem ajuta) initiative, a campaign that donates fresh fruit to frontline medical staff battling COVID-19. Volunteers from MagiCAMP and Godmother NGOs delivered over 3,500 kg of fresh fruit and more than 350 litres of natural juices to help sustain the medical staff.
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Now that Romania is no longer in a state of emergency, we are following the authorities’ guidelines and making the health and safety of our employees a top priority. Business continuity takes second place, but it obviously depends on the health and safety of our employees.
”My philosophy is that when you want to provide help, especially in a crisis, it’s important to just roll up your sleeves and do it.”
Getting back to normal
Given the current situation, we are thinking about reopening the office and gradually starting up again with a limited number of employees (20%-30% initially). However, we will introduce a careful and controlled ‘working from the office’ option, which takes into account the strict requirements for those coming into the office to work (e.g. health status, family situation, commute from/to the office, social distancing etc.). Also, we are looking at creating ‘shifts’ – groups of people who will spend perhaps two weeks working at the office, and who will be replaced with another group, while adhering to all the required hygiene measures such as in-depth office cleaning and sanitising in between the ‘shifts’. Such a scenario would be evaluated after two weeks, and adjustments made as necessary, or based on new directions from the local authorities.
It only takes looking back at the past two months to realise that Systematic is a community founded on trust, support and a forward-looking approach. Our people demonstrated a strong sense of ownership and responsibility, and for this I am deeply thankful to be part of such a caring and professional team.
