Call for Leaders – 3Q is a new category where Business Review features our 3 questions with some of Romania’s top business professionals, bringing a positive, insightful, or otherwise constructive view of their markets in the context of the current crisis.

Current conversation: Andrei Romanescu, Managing Director of Veeam Software Romania

What are the measures you took for your business during this period?

One of the first measures we took was meant to protect our employees, thus we made possible very fast that our entire team can work from home and be safe. We supported our employees to easily adapt to this new routine and to manage to keep the performance up, by prioritizing their wellness. Although isolated, we have found ways to stay closely connected with our employees. The managers are constantly communicating with their teams and address their needs and concerns. To keep the team spirit up, they even are having virtual coffees together. So far, we can say that our employees have adapted quickly to new conditions, have an optimistic attitude, and some departments registered higher productivity.

Veeam is an expanding company and we constantly recruit people for our team. We adapted the onboarding of our new employees in a virtual framework, where they benefit from online induction to succeed in acquiring the necessary knowledge, skills, and behavior. We offer virtual reality tours where they can discover their physical workplace even if they are at home.

I would mention our employees’ benefits are not affected while working from home. As for the offices, they have been cleaned and disinfected so that our employees to be perfectly safe when they return to the office.

What’s your advice for business leaders regarding this crisis?

This is not an ordinary crisis, but a large-scale medical one with financial implications and this context implies complexity in ways the crisis is addressed and responded to. In fact, I don’t think we have just one crisis, but four different challenges happening at the same time: a demand crisis, a supply crisis, a medical crisis and a trust/ fear crisis. Under the circumstances, we may see special measures added while business continuity and disaster recovery plans companies have may not work.

Therefore, now it is the time for business leaders to show empathy and flexibility in an environment where decisions must be taken quickly. My recommendations for the business leaders are to actively listen, to stay informed, see what others are doing without spending too much time in detail as the decision-making process should be fast, then act on it.

Also, they should not be afraid to overcommunicate with employees, customers and suppliers in a transparent and balanced manner avoiding extreme ways: over optimistic or entirely negative.

I think leaders should realize that we live special times, in which a command and control model where the decision-making process is gathered at the top may not work because of the nature and complexity of this crisis. In fact, we never passed a crisis like this so lessons learned before cannot be fully replicated. I think empowering more decision makers in the teams might be a better solution for the times we live. Leaders should overcome the fear that empowered managers will make mistakes, as they will surely do. Empower those people with the ability to learn from mistakes. They will rapidly rebound, and the next decision will make will be better.

What’s the most positive business news you’ve read today and want to share?

We are glad to see that many companies show their human face now and take care of their people, before taking care of the business itself. It is good to see business leaders showing optimism and generating scenarios for what the future will look like instead of complaining and focusing on the past, something they can no longer control.

DMCA

PROTECTED