New ways of working in Societe Generale European Business Services

Considering this unique situation, the COVID-19 pandemic, the entire workplace has changed. From the fact that most of our colleagues are now working from home, to adapting the office space to the new local rules, to offering online support to our employees not only for work related subjects, but also for physical & mental support. So, facing this new situation, we had to adapt and develop new ways of interacting with our colleagues and new way of working efficiently from home.

It wasn’t easy to react instantly and to keep in mind all the things necessary for the safety of our employees and partners. From making sure that every employee is physically safe, evolving the work from home capabilities and many other activities needed for the business to continue in a safe and clear manner. In depth, during the lockdown, SG EBS managed to adapt its work from home capabilities to more the 90% of the employees, kept its partners close and made sure that work from the office was done in the safest conditions and only for extremely important needs. But, being a responsible employer means more than just a clean office and a good network for working from home. Means understanding your employees, helping them cope with the difficult situations they are facing and offering them physical and psychological support. We became a responsible employer through the vast activities done for all employees:

• Through Diversity & Inclusion program, we organized internal online conferences, with specialists from Mind Education Health, on subjects of real importance during lockdown: working from home with children, challenges of a relationship, prevent depression during isolation, leadership during crisis and many more. Around 480 colleagues took part at these conferences.
• Homeschooling program for preschoolers (age 3 to 6) and schoolers (age 6 to 9): carried out in collaboration with two private educational institutions, KlugeKinder Kindergarten & FamilyHub, the program is designed to keep children engaged and excited about learning. The curriculum combines education with interactive fun, including activities such as telling stories, doing impro, playing riddles, word or math games, practicing attention and logic exercises, motor activities and mindfulness, drawing, singing, or even discussing feelings and sharing personal experiences. The feedback from the parents was great and over 200 children (age 3 to 9) of SG EBS employees have been included in the program in less than a month.
• Facebook community for parents with children: SG EBS brings together the community of parents, encouraging open discussions and sharing ideas and good practices. Knowing someone that is facing the same challenges as you and being able to talk to about it, it sure helps a lot. Moreover, creative activities or challenges for the little ones are constantly organized by community volunteers and/or curators.
• Facebook community for passionate travelers: Even though it’s not the best time to travel the world, in SG EBS we have a lot of colleagues passionate about traveling and discovering new places. So, we decided to bring them all together for them to share their past and future experiences. The community is growing fast, and many colleagues are sharing their experiences especially the ones from these troubling times, are proposing local place that could be perfect for a vacation.
• Engagement on the closed Facebook group only for employees: in order to make sure that all colleagues have a place for discussions and support, not just colleagues with children or married, SG EBS has continuously updated the content on the SG EBS Facebook group with posts about recommendations of videos, online article and books to read, weekly good news, pets of SGEBS (pictures with the employee’s animals during the lockdown), polls and topics of interest to raise conversations among employees in order to share experiences and knowledge. All this, to make the work from home experience as easy as possible and to help employees realize they are not alone, SG EBS is supporting them in these difficult times.
• SG EBS and Medicover come up with a free of charge, non-stop, support line called Atlas Helpline: all employees could talk with a specialist or have an online session with a doctor, through Atlas Helpline. Besides a dedicated phone number, employees could also use the mobile app to schedule appointment online or face to face. This benefit also included 2 psycho-emotional support session, for free, 100% confidential.
• Online fitness classes: considering that during lockdown, people were not able to go to gym, SG EBS in collaboration with a professional trainer, offered the possibility for its employees to enroll in online fitness classes meant to provide basic exercises for an energy boost. The classes where available daily and employees could participate at 2 classes per week, in order to make sure that every colleague could take part in one or two classes during a month.
• Employee moral measured at Societe Generale Group level: beside all the local activities that where implemented during lockdown, SG Group launched a short weekly survey, to maintain the connection with the employees at global level by collecting their perception of the situation and understanding their state of mind. This survey helps the company understands the diverse situations that where happening locally and to better implement personalized measures that could improve work and the wellbeing of the employees.

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