Call for Leaders | Stefan Vuza (Chimcomplex): This is a time when performance is not defined by a company’s share price

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: Stefan Vuza, Chimcomplex Chairman.

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

We communicated more with the staff, created conditions for working from home and identified employees who are most crucial to maintaining business continuity.

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The company has been producing sodium hipoclorite solution with a concentration of 12.5% since 1960, that means one of the most powerful disinfectant there is. In order to help Romanians fight the Covid-19 the company asked the Health Ministry a license for a less concentrated hipo, recommended by OMS for surface disinfection. We received this license, so we modified our industrial production lines during the last weeks, in order to prioritize the production of sodium hipoclorite, this being a necessary product for public health in the context of the Coronavirus pandemic.

We have accelerated investment and are preparing infrastructure so that we can distribute hipoclorite as efficiently as possible at national level.

We have mobilized ourselves at all levels and will donate hundreds of tons of hipoclorite to national state institutions and to local institutions in the communities where we operate, as well as to employees and former employees for their own use.

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

My experience of the last several decades, including my time leading Chimcomplex, has convinced me that business is about pursuing a noble purpose and putting employees and human relationships at the heart of how a business operates.

This belief is particularly relevant in times of crisis like the one we are going through now. This is a time when performance is not defined by a company’s share price. This is a time when performance will be judged by how a company and its leadership serve everyone and fulfill a higher purpose —and specifically how they have shown up and met the requirements and expectations of its multiple stakeholders.

This is a good time for all the business leaders to ask themselves:

What actions are you taking to help the people around you? How will you measure your own performance? How do you want your leadership from this time to be remembered?

Also we should expect that the Covid-19 crisis will change our businesses and society in important ways. It is clear that will change the consumers habits but 90% of them will return to their lives before this virus, but for the other 10% we will need new products and services and this is an interesting perspective.

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

All the Romanian business community wants to help fight the pandemic, there are so many companies who changed their operations in order to make products necessary for public health, also other provided funds, medical supplies, and protective equipment to various organizations dealing with the outbreak. This is comforting, we are still human.

In terms of expectations Goldman Sachs concluded that there won’t be systemic risks after Covid-19. Hopefully governments intervene to stabilize markets, and the private banking sector is well capitalized.