Since Tuesday, March 17, Puls has been working from home, with only emergency staff in the office. The HR department is taking turns on site, as is the IT department, which has set up an emergency number. Log-in and time recording are carried out from home as usual, and any minus hours, as Puls Managing Director Bernhard Erdl promises, will not be deducted from salaries "until probably the end of May", but simply capped, with Puls covering the costs.

Smartphones have been ordered for all employees and will be sent to their homes in the coming week so that everyone can be reached on the move. For video communication, the company switched from Skype to Microsoft Teams.

Erdl had previously sent a video message to his employees. The current risk situation is considered to be "very serious". "Everything we can do, we will do." However, Erdl is also confident. In the Chinese branch in Suzhou, there has not been a single case of infection, "thanks to a perfect action plan put in place by our employees there". They now want to repeat this in the European branches: "We are now working together in Europe to protect their health and for our joint fight against coronavirus."

Anyone at Puls who needs to go to the office urgently after consultation with their supervisor takes a pool car or their own car and pays for the costs afterwards. For colleagues without their own car, Puls is working on a rental car solution - the use of public transport is to be discontinued "with immediate effect please". Travel and visits with customers have been canceled for the time being.

Erdl makes no secret of the fact that he expects a "massive economic slump", "but these losses are not yet foreseeable". It has therefore been decided to postpone the salary increase planned for April, and new appointments are also "on hold". The big 40th anniversary celebration, for which an entire hotel on Lake Maggiore had been booked, has also been postponed.

"It is important that we change our behavior before it hurts!" explains the company owner. At the same time, there is an employment guarantee: Puls has good reserves "so that we can get through even the most difficult times without redundancies". This goes down well with the workforce. One of them praises the "huge trust" in the employees. And addressed directly to Erdl: "They reduce the burden on each individual wherever possible. An industrial company deserves the utmost respect for that."

Phoenix Contact: Failure risk defined, employees sent home to a minimum

Prof. Dr. Gunther Olesch, Managing Director (CHRO) Phoenix Contact.

© Phoenix Contact

What does Prof. Gunther Olesch, CHRO of Phoenix Contact, report?

"We have sent people home to a minimum. In HR, around 85 percent are currently working from home, and 90 percent in IT. We have had the option of working remotely for a long time. At the moment, however, we are upgrading our PC contingent even further in this respect.

We have divided our departments according to their risk of failure into very high, high, medium and low. IT, for example, has a high risk rating in terms of potential failure. In production, we protect our employees by eliminating shift handovers and introducing a half-hour break before the next shift comes in. If a handover is necessary, it is now done by telephone. In suspected cases, we act in accordance with the Robert Koch Institute: contact at a permanent distance of less than 2 meters and 15 minutes of talking to each other. These employees are then sent home.

In the company restaurant, we had already set meal times some time ago and reduced the number of tables to ensure a distance of 2 meters. Now the restaurant is completely closed, you can pick up your food and eat at your desk in order to be as isolated as possible. But there aren't many employees on site anyway."

How is everything going?

"I have the impression that the atmosphere is really good so far. Also because we provide a lot of information about the current situation, every day on the intranet: where was there a suspected case, where were employees sent home, etc.?

We've had three suspected cases so far. In each case, around 30 people were sent home for a 14-day quarantine. All have been negative so far. But now we also have a positive case.

We have set up a coronavirus core team that people can contact. The employees there can be reached by phone 24 hours a day. As Managing Director, I also receive a report at least once a day. In addition to our Monday meetings with the entire management team, we also meet digitally.

And the technology, which tools?

We have been using Skype for Business and Zoom for some time now. Unfortunately, we only had 2600 VPN accesses so far, of which only 1600 were actually used. And now we have to quickly order and set up additional ones. And unfortunately that's taking a while at the moment, because a lot of people are doing it.

Nobody expected this to happen. You can't blame anyone.

Recom: Strict rules right down to the coffee machine

Bianca Mastnak, Recom Power GmbH.

© Recom

Bianca Mastnak is Head of Global Human Resources at Recom Power.

"We have switched to working from home for all employees who are able to do so. Meetings are currently taking place via Skype. We have a small number of employees in the office, as they are needed to ensure that operations run smoothly. They must adhere to strict rules: a distance of at least two meters from other people must be maintained, regular hand washing is mandatory and all door handles/coffee machine/stamping terminal are disinfected every hour."

Elatec: "We take social responsibility very seriously"

Sabine Thier, Head of Human Resources Elatec.

© Market&Technology

At Elatec, we reach HR Manager Sabine Thier.

"On Monday, we sent all employees who can work from home to the permanent home office so that employees are protected by fewer social contacts. Meetings then take place virtually. Contact with customers/service providers/applicants should also take place virtually - after all, we want operations to continue and we want to be there for our customers with unchanged good service."

However, there are also employees who can only work in the office, such as production staff. "We also protect them more when there are fewer colleagues in the office. For example, production and dispatch have been split into two teams in order to reduce risks here too and remain able to deliver."

Journeys by public transport are to be avoided by carpooling - "if there is no car and no colleague to give you a lift, Elatec would look for a solution," assures Sabine Thier. Travel to high-risk areas has not been permitted for some time.

To make up for the lack of childcare due to school closures and if working from home is not possible, children can also be taken to the office. "We have an extra box of toys and a meeting room that can be used for this purpose," says Thier. This can be used by anyone who has to work in the office and whose partner cannot look after the children - "but with additional safety and hygiene guidelines".

Will the home office work?

"We're not stopping communicating - we're just changing the way we do it. Even if it will still be unfamiliar for many of us at the beginning - and certainly not for the sales employees - and there are still a few bumps in the road here and there, we will soon get used to it and will certainly appreciate the benefits. To help employees and managers, we are currently drawing up guidelines for working from home, virtual meetings and virtual collaboration in general," explains Thier.

"We take great care of our employees and their families and take our social responsibility to reduce social contacts very seriously: It is not only within Elatec that it is important that everyone is sensible and prudent and tries to avoid all possibilities of infection. We have also asked our employees to be careful in their private lives and to limit social contact as much as possible for a few weeks, as every employee is sure to have parents, grandparents or vulnerable people in their circle of family or friends who need to be protected right now."