The participants by videoconference at the meeting "Human Capital Management in Times of Crisis", promoted by the National Bank of Angola (BNA), in Luanda, consider that covid-19 imposed several challenges to the institutions, among which the "adequacy of people to business needs".
According to Bethy Larsen, from PwC Angola, the digital challenges, although previously foreseen by several companies, were accelerated due to the pandemic, so "customers and employees should adapt to the context with greater security".
Maria João Escrevente, director of human resources at Unitel, said in her speech that despite the uncertainties, the first challenge for companies should always be to put people in safety.
"I would say that this was a business decision, a decision that meets the values and culture of our organization," said the director, noting that people from groups at risk of the operator were safely dismissed.
Because, she explained: "Protecting people, we protect the business and in parallel a committee has been created that allows a very immediate response to carry out the work at a distance".
Unitel currently has around 1500 workers in rotative face-to-face service, 1000 of them in network maintenance operations, a service that, observed the responsible, "is not possible to do at a distance".
"Also at store level, working conditions were created for their consequent protection and this was fundamental for the very fast adaptation to the new normal and new work logic", explained Maria João Escrevente.
In turn, Eduardo Clemente, from Standard Bank Angola, said that the essential point in times of crisis is "organizations to focus their actions on people, especially to safeguard the business.
"Because with security people will have more assiduity to maintain the work, therefore, our focus and as we always say our people are our most valuable asset", he stressed.
The adoption of new models and practices of human capital management to ensure personal and collective security and business continuity and market competitiveness was the goal of the conference.
The meeting on "Human Capital Management in Times of Crisis" is part of the annual BNA conference cycle.
