The Austrian Bank With a Very Non-Bank Approach to Remote Work

Be “awesome” — that’s the simple mantra of a major European banking group, which has written an unconventional guide to help staff embrace remote work.

Compared to many organizations (in the West, at least) that want to recall employees to offices, especially those in the financial sectors, Raiffeisen Bank International offers a blueprint for inspiration. Its secret weapon is a quirky rulebook, as well as passionate employees who are willing to fight for the cause. If a bank can do this, surely anyone can?

To make remote work a reality, the Austrian-headquartered banking giant entrusted its Croatian branch to pilot the initial transition to hybrid working, which involved training “Remote But Still Awesome” managers — a riff on its RBA branding — with tribes coming next.

The move was spearheaded by its chief security officer, giving some clue as to what’s needed: namely a tight grip on technology. However, Dalibor Kovacevic insisted it’s a team effort.

Everything is Awesome

The team behind the bank’s push to work remotely was an interdisciplinary one, with staff across human resources, security, IT, public relations and auditing drafted in.

“When we started working from home, we saw some managers were having trouble in a different environment. It was stressful for them,” said Petra Samac, the bank’s organizational development expert, and project manager of RBAlity (another play on the RBA name.)

After a series of surveys and focus groups, the “Remote But Still Awesome” guide was written to support managers to be “really awesome from their home offices,” she added.

“It’s a fun way to make it more interesting, and to empower them,” said Kovacevic.

Meanwhile, management were empowered to set up the new working terms and conditions within their teams, and held interactive workshops to listen to employees, so it wasn’t a top-down decision.

Another lesson to companies wanting to make the remote leap? It doesn’t come cheap. The bank had to change all of its network equipment, and provided laptops to all employees, as well as new mobile phones with high data tariffs. Employees are expected to log on using their work phone, because this is the only way it can guarantee end-to-end encryption.

Another rule states managers need to be able to get to an office within 24 hours if there’s an emergency. And when they do, they’ll have to get used no longer having their own name on the door, because offices have been redesigned to offer hot-desking.

Smarter Travel

One welcome byproduct from all of this is that bank executives no longer need to make the grueling 10-hour roundtrip to the headquarters in Vienna for meetings.

And any money saved on business travel is being diverted to “smarter travel,” with more offsite meetings, team building and networking activities planned for staff, once restrictions lift.

The next phase will be forming “tribes” of people in the future, and there are hopes the work done in Croatia will later apply to the 50,000 employees in the wider group.

Banks tend to be conservative, but change is happening, with another European bank, UBS, set to let most staff adopt hybrid work.

But some others, like Morgan Stanley, want people back in their offices in September, according to reports. At the same time, Kovacevic said he’s heard from peers that employees are deciding to quit when pushed to return. Raiffeisen Bank in Croatia is currently interviewing new employees, and their priority is, unsurprisingly, flexibility.

This is a radical makeover with clear advantages. But perhaps the key ingredient is passion. While there is that interdisciplinary team, Kovacevic said it’s not really about their field of expertise. “When you fight for something you believe in, the result is guaranteed,” he said.

Sidenotes

There’s yet more innovation from the world of virtual meetings and events. Inclusion will become a key area in the future, and now Zoom is taking steps to address this.

It plans to buy Karlsruhe Information Technology Solutions, or Kites, which is a real-time translation platform. Kites was founded in 2015, and has links with Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. As part of the deal, research scientists will help Zoom’s engineering team advance multi-language translation capabilities for Zoom users.

“With our aligned missions to make collaboration frictionless — regardless of language, geographic location, or other barriers — we are confident Kites’ impressive team will fit right in with Zoom,” said Velchamy Sankarlingam, president of product and engineering at Zoom.

Meanwhile, as companies debate the new size and shape of their offices, one company wants to add another dimension: smell.

Software company VMware, based in California, is reportedly exploring ways to use virtual and augmented reality to improve the way meetings are run, and that could include adding the sense of smell.

It has worked with a perfumer in Japan to develop a visor that allows users to insert a scent add-on. “We could have a team meeting where we could actually smell the redwood forest and we could get people in a state of mind where they’re more relaxed and more open to ideas,” chief information officer Jason Conyard told Protocol.

Is coffee an option?

10-Second Corporate Travel Catch-Up

Who and what Skift has covered over the past week: student  travel, Air France, ATPI, CWT, Hertz, Montefiore, Soho House, Southwest Airlines, Thayer Ventures, Travelport, United Airlines.

In Brief

EU Wants New Safety Rules for the Remote Worker

The European Commission will update rules on worker safety to reflect the shift to working from home, according to reports. With that shift came reduced social contact and more use of IT equipment as meetings went online. “For many, the concept of a traditional workplace is disappearing fast. While that brings opportunities, it also brings challenges and risks — health, psychological and social,” said Valdis Dombrovskis, the commission’s vice president. Aspects like emergency exits, ventilation and the use of workstations and screens will be reviewed. It will also write recommendations on mental health at work before the end of 2022.

Flight Centre Travel Group Incentivizes Staff to Stay On

One way to stave off a labor crisis is to give staff equity in the company. That’s Flight Centre Travel Group’s plan anyway. It has launched a share-based retention scheme, called the Global Recovery Rights programme, for its sales and support staff. If they continue their careers with the company through to December 31, 2022, they are granted share rights. Some 7,500 employees are expected to receive about 1.9 million shares, at an expected non-cash cost of $22.5 million, based on June 25’s share price. Most participants will receive a one-off grant of 250 share rights, which will vest in February 2023, when the company will release its December 2022 half-yearly results.