Support for the employees

We enabled remote work of most office staff from the outbreak of the pandemic. On average, 85% of our employees work remotely, including the call center staff. The bank’s critical employees (handling critical processes) were the first to switch to remote work. Later, along with the migration of staff to remote equipment helped by quick leasing of portable computers and reorganisation of certain job positions, other employees also started to work remotely. We ensured that our infrastructure has the capacity to support up to 100% of employees working remotely. We expanded the capacity of our equipment over 10-times, reaching full readiness for remote work as early as in March.

We provided our employees with all necessary support, including a help desk where operators offer advice by phone and remotely on any technical issues relating to the network, applications and devices. We raised data transfer limits on company smartphones. Thanks to this even those employees who experience bandwidth shortages at home can work remotely. To improve the comfort of remote work, we let employees borrow office chairs and screens as well as printers. We aligned many procedures to replace hardcopy documents with digital files.

Our top priority was safety and health at our branches. Employees were equipped with protection equipment: masks, gloves, disinfection agents. We put up plastic barriers at the customer service desks and required that visitors at branches keep a safe distance. Employees were provided with detailed guidelines concerning safety when meeting clients. We imposed limits on the number of clients allowed into a branch at the same time. We modified dress code, food and drinks requirements, as well.

We temporarily shortened the business hours of our branches. Certain branches, especially those in shopping malls, have been temporarily closed down due to governmental restrictions.

In addition to enabling remote work, we protected employees who came to the office. Employees who commuted in the first phase of the pandemic were allowed to travel by taxi on the company’s expense account. All our car parks were opened to employees who travelled with private or company cars so as to avoid unnecessary difficulties.

Employees were offered free-of-charge meals in the canteen: a benefit for employees as well as genuine assistance for canteen operators faced with shrinking revenues.

The bank imposes a limit of persons working at any time in the office, which is no more than 15% of staff. Employees may only come to the office with the consent of the manager and only when their work cannot be done remotely.

We cancelled all major meetings and a vast majority of domestic and international business travel. Most meetings take place remotely on Skype, Teams, etc.

During the pandemic, our regular employee meetings with the management board switched into an online mode. We held five virtual meetings in 2020 (March, May, July, October, December), each featuring a Q&A session. We addressed approx. 450 questions. Between 2,000 and 3,000 employees took part live in each meeting. Recordings of the meetings were available in the intranet from the next day. We also posted recordings of interviews with management board members who answered employees’ key questions.

We supported our employees from the start of the pandemic, ensuring comfort of remote work from home and protecting their personal inner balance. To address employees’ needs, we held additional Pulse Check surveys (in April and July 2020) gauging employees’ mood and ability to cope under the new conditions. Employees at branches and the head office were positive about their own sense of safety, some of them due to the safety measures provided by the bank, others because of the ability to work from home. Employees also enumerated the challenges they face, including the onerous epidemiological regime as well as the lack of face-to-face contact with colleagues when working from home.

We provided dedicated email inboxes for employees to submit questions and suggestions to be discussed by the Crisis Command. The bank’s intranet features a dedicated section #coronavirus which is a repository of useful information for employees, including pandemic FAQs, technology tips for people working from home, as well as practical advice how to organise one’s work place (including the option of borrowing office screens, chairs and printers). We regularly email employees to advise how governmental restrictions impact our work (including additional child care benefits) and to communicate decisions of the mBank Crisis Command. We also publish such advice in the intranet. The Legal Department shares interpretations of pandemic-related regulations. We issued a special edition of our regular newsletter with a summary of key information for employees.