Krasnodar, 13 November. Last week, our weekly co-organized an online conference “Work experience and practice of business organizations under pandemic,” held in the framework of the long-term program “Time for New Strategies.”
“Digital technologies have become a key tool in resetting the companies,” Lubov Popova, Chairperson of the regional Civic Chamber stated. “At the same time, new problems have also appeared. What is at issue are natural monopolies – resource suppliers. They have not fully switched to e-workflow so far. It takes weeks and even months to get their services. They continue to accept all documents on paper with live signatures. I believe that the authorities together with business associations should initiate subsequent entire digitalization of resource-supplying monopolies.”
“Although our company had acquired good experience [in digitalization], we could not fully avoid the crisis situation, when the load on all systems soared up. For instance, Skype and Zoom platforms simply failed. We were not able to gather meetings on the first days, so we had to invest money in the development of new technologies,” Anna Kalmykova, Director of EY Branch in Krasnodar, commented.
Oleg Zharko, Danone Russia Regional Director, said that “the remote work has been lasting [in their company] since last March. Bearing in mind the newly acquired experience and the current situation, we are not planning to return to the old pattern of office organization. Instead, we are developing a new concept of a so-called ‘smart office’.”
Igor Brener, Chair of the HR Sub-Committee of the Association of European Business’ Southern Regional Committee, noted that Krasnodar “has very good chances to become an attractive spot in Russia, where such centres will be organized.”
Konstantin Shadrov, Business Consultant for Mercuri International, also shared his experience about the difficulties borne during the period of constraints:
“We had to cancel all our offline events, including the trainings scheduled at the beginning of the pandemic. Presently we are working online, holding remotely even such large-scale events as teambuilding activities for a hundred participants. We are also developing our own digital education centre.”
“We are changing our document traffic into the digital form. We plan to fully get rid of any paper carriers by 2023. As for the corporate insurance policies, we are also shifting to an online platform, like we are doing with the retail insurance,” Yulia Shurygina, VSK Insurance House’s Remote Service Executive Director, explained.
Many new questions, including ones regarding to e-workflow, are arising with the advent of the tasks proved new both for the business circles and authorities. Natalia Abtseshko, Head of International Projects Group at VEGAS LEX, listed the nuances that are worth noticing:
“A difficult point of this draft is that it cancels the additional grounds for dismissal of a remotely working employee, which considerably reduces the employer’s possibilities to control such employee’s work. Another negative point is that the relations with an employee off hours will be paid as overtime work.”
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