The Workforce
Positive progress in the pandemic Thales Director of Technical and Engineering, Michael Powell, speaks to Rail Express about how the company is ensuring its staff remains productive and positive while coping with the challenges posed by lockdowns. Not just a global leader in the aerospace, defence, transportation, communications, digital identity and security markets, giant multinational company Thales is also firmly showing the way forward in managing the workplace disruption caused by COVID. It has taken a proactive human resources stance in confronting the challenges of the “new normal”, placing emphasis on the welfare of its employees as they come to grips with adapting to the pandemic. “Our CEO once said this new situation is like a forced experiment,” Powell said. “Today, everyone has been forced to learn to work remotely, to move to a different mode of working. “And essentially, with this kind of disruption, what we’re doing is learning new skills. There are people in the workplace for which working remotely is entirely new for them and we need to recognise this new element of our workplace because it is here to stay in some form.” MANAGING THE WORKFORCE Powell said there was no escaping the fact that there is now just “a different way of working”. “It’s all the way along the chain, from when you’re remote from your colleagues, from your customers, from your suppliers or whomever you’re dealing with,” he said. “And this has been an adjustment for people. And I think it’s important that companies recognise that everyone is different in this kind of journey, if you like.” Powell said that from the outset of the virus outbreak, Thales ensured that all staff members could work remotely from home in Australia, or at least were fairly well-placed for this. “This resulted in a type of flexible, hybrid habit where some people worked from either home or office or both as the situation changed,” he said.
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Thales is helping staff adapt to working from home or remote locations.
The arrangement of course was not ideal for everyone, which Thales was quick to take into account. “Like every company, we have people at different stages of their lives and different personal requirements,” Powell said. “Some people have young children who may need to be homeschooled, or maybe they don’t have kids but might be living alone. “In a lockdown situation, they’re missing interaction with colleagues like they used to, and I think it’s important for organisations to understand those differences.” Thales has put in place several initiatives to lift the morale of its workforce. “For example, the company has introduced a program which provides some online activities for kids, which is funded by the company,” Powell said. “Kids can interact with a teacher and do some activities, giving the employees or parents a couple of hours break during the day.” Even more important is checking in on the mental health of staff. “We interact frequently with our teams,” Powell said. “We have regular check-ins with our staff members. These interactions have naturally changed during the pandemic from action lists, tasks, schedules, and so on to more of “how are you going”, “do you have everything you need” and importantly, “how can we help”. “We have an employee assistance program, which allows people to reach out to a professional in case they’re struggling. It’s an anonymous program, so the company doesn’t know who utilises it, but it’s free for everybody. “It really embraces the RUOK philosophy, to understand that people respond to this in a
different way. We’ve had a strong safety focus for a number of years, but after the events of the past 12 months, it’s really vital to include mental health into the safety culture. “Mental health is definitely a safety issue, and it should be addressed and managed and treated as such. “We have provided training to managers, because they’re not doctors, they’re not psychologists. So this actually raises the issue of mental health to a to a higher plane.” The safety measures also take a more physical form at the workplace sites. “Even with COVID lockdowns and quarantines, we have people attending to sites, for example tending to metro stations to do installation and other works,” Powell said. “Managing the safety hazards associated with this sort of environment has become very complex. Initial safety assessments did not include, for example, the wearing of face masks and glasses which can fog up. “We have people that need to come into the office for various reasons. For a period of time, we set up rapid antigen testing at our facility, to test people before they came onto site to mitigate the risk associated with this whole situation. “If staff are coming into work, we want to make sure that we’re not then impacting others on site and creating a safety issue for them. It’s created a complex situation for the company because, for example in Sydney, they’re starting to lock down particular local government authorities, so certain people might be able to travel to work one day, but not the next day. “There was a lot of discussions about for
