Fortech Health Awareness Team: 1-Year Anniversary

03 March 202103 March 2021 | News

In the past year, our realities were altered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Every single individual, economic sector, city, or country had to reinvent itself in the new normal.

2020 has also been a transformational journey for us as a software development company. Along the way, our top priority was to protect the health and safety of our colleagues and of the broader community while keeping all the promises we had made to our clients. This means we kept focusing on delivering our projects at the highest quality standards, on time, and within budget. To make the transformation possible, we set up a year ago our dedicated Health Awareness Team, or simply HAT.

On the 1-year anniversary of HAT, we want to show our appreciation for their work by highlighting their tremendous contribution to our organizational health & safety and discuss about HAT’s significant role in the upcoming hybrid working model.

HAT members, from left to right: Emilia Berczi (Recruitment & Employer Branding Manager), Mrs. Silvia Banabic (Company Administrator), Teodora Bocșa (Chief Financial Officer), Suneel Sharma (Chief Operations Officer), Cristina Goia (Personnel Administration Specialist), Mihai Lonca (Facility Specialist), Nicoleta Colopelnic (Talent Development Manager), Florian Rada (IT & Security Manager), Ana Cojuhari (Employer Branding Specialist), Anda Tomiță (Financial Manager).

Guardians of People’s Health & Safety

Fortech’s COVID-19 risk mitigation plan was based on three main pillars: health & safety of the team, business continuity, and stability. Driven by our focus on our team’s safety and our commitment to our clients, we had taken decisive actions before the outbreak even reached Romania. Thus, last February was created the Health Awareness Team to track all the COVID-19 related developments and keep our colleagues informed on all the necessary precautions and measures.

HAT is a cross-departmental taskforce formed by professionals in human resources, business operations, information technology & security, communications, finance, and facility. The team’s broad background helps it get a complex overview of each situation and come with the best solutions.

HAT made a remarkable display of agility and efficiency in the past year. In mid-March, they ensured a safe and efficient migration of 800 Fortech colleagues to the home office environment in just a couple of working days. The transition was smooth and fast, with no negative impact on the projects.

“Our ability to migrate an entire team of 800 colleagues to their home offices in just a few days, without disrupting projects, was the proof of great team bonding inside HAT and between the involved departments. It was all about our hard work to achieve a common goal, as true success is the power of many to overcome challenges by working together, whatever those challenges may be.” – Emilia Berczi, Recruitment & Employer Branding Manager and member of HAT.

When the migration to home office ended, HAT switched its focus to ensuring constant communication with our colleagues. The Health Awareness Team sent timely updates on government decisions, prepared a suite of internal guidelines to help us better work from home, checked the team’s morale with recurrent pulse surveys, and organized dedicated Q&A sessions with SMURD paramedics.

“No one can prepare us for such a situation, which Fortech handled with professionalism and care for its employees. I want to thank all the Health Awareness Team for making the work from home transition easy for us, keeping all the systems up and running, and the constant communication and support provided. I am convinced it hasn’t been easy. Chapeau! I’m proud to work for and with Fortech.” – Monica Țărmure, Product Manager.

In July, we decided to take a step forward in preparing for the future of work in the new normal by opening our headquarters in Cluj for those colleagues who want to work from the office. The Health Awareness Team has been the driving force behind all the office safety measures, from health & safety policies & protocols to all the necessary equipment and posters. They also went above and beyond to ensure that we apply the highest safety measures: the building is frequently disinfected, we are providing single-use masks, ensuring temperature check at the entrance, and keeping social distancing throughout the workplace. HAT is also hosting awareness training sessions for each colleague who returns to work from the office to recap the safety measures described in the policies.

Our headquarters from Cluj and our office from Iasi are currently open and subject to the health & safety standards mentioned above. 10% of our colleagues are working from the office at least a couple of days per month.

Looking Ahead

As COVID-19 triggered the change of the working paradigms worldwide, we are already experiencing the future of work.

With that in mind, we have been taking significant steps to build the necessary frameworks that support the changing needs of our colleagues and the business landscape in this new normal.

The backbone of our new normal is the Hybrid Home|Office Model, which our Health Awareness Team is carefully building in close collaboration with the Leadership Team. This model is based on two main pillars. The first one is the foundation (the work environment infrastructure), including the legal, IT & Security, and office environment frameworks. The second pillar is transformation (the way of working), focused on strengthening a culture of performance and employee wellbeing.

“We are currently working on wrapping-up the foundation work for building the necessary infrastructure for the Hybrid Model and, pending the evolution of the pandemic, transition to this new way of working in the second half of 2021. Afterward, we want to focus more on the “How we work” transformational pillar: strengthening our competencies for enhancing team performance in the new set-up and fostering a growth mindset while caring for employee wellbeing. The Health Awareness Team will continue to have a significant role in making sure this environment is healthy and safe for everyone.” – Nicoleta Colopelnic, Talent Development Manager and member of HAT.

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