Our global Employee Relation Policy (ER Policy) is a very important instrument to strengthen and grow our most important asset, our human capital.
It’s the way how we engage and motivate our employees, how we attract and inspire talents and how we form a great and agile team from individuals which is based on utmost respect for each other. Therefore, it is essential to keep this policy active both at national and international sites to ensure that all main elements of our ER Policy are being followed. From June 11 to 13, 2018 we conducted an ER Policy review at Magyar Telekom. Here is what we experienced.
We carried out topic-specific interviews and had deep-dive conversations with members of management and individual employees located in the headquarter and at other company locations. We learned that Magyar Telekom was voted among the Top 10 employers in Hungary for 2017 and the company’s goal is to be rated among the Top 5 employers in the future. They seem to be on track as employee loyalty was evident everywhere and we also experienced high levels of team spirit and good collaboration among colleagues.
One of the elements, which contributes to this result is the excellent training and career program available at Magyar Telekom. Every year colleagues are entitled for a specified sum of money that can be used for training and skills enhancement. This is a great initiative for supporting continuous learning and growth mindset.
In recent years Magyar was confronted with a number of changes at various levels that posed new challenges for both the company and its employees. It is not always easy for the colleagues to understand these changes, plus new targets and strategies, which usually result in decreasing scores on sense of security and job satisfaction. This was evident in employee surveys conducted at that time. Magyar Telekom started to address with area relevant actions and edutaining communication with first tangible impact. They keep up the momentum as new challenges are coming, including moving into a new headquarters building, the implementation of new work models such as agile working in the digital age and the acquisition of new skills. These measures require intensive support on the part of supervisors and managers.
The management also put emphasis on finding the right balance between achieving transformation targets and hiring new employees: On one hand there is a need to find new employees with innovative skills and quickly integrate them to bigger, multigenerational team, on the other hand the long-term performance of the company must also be boosted. Magyar Telekom relies on various channels to find new employees – social media is just one of them. In the future the company plans to work closely with more universities and take the activities addressing students to the next level in order to recruit young talent for the company.
In total, the ER Policy and its core elements have been successfully integrated throughout Magyar Telekom and most employees are very aware of what the policy means. Special mention needs to be made of the realization of training and career development options offered to both employees and managers. This is quite an impressive achievement. Antidiscrimination and compliance are also matters of great importance to employees. Training sessions of relevance to these topics are conducted for employees and managers regularly. Employees also take advantage of the various offerings related to their health and well-being. The principles of the ER Policy were explained through communication campaigns, and details are available on the local intranet. We identified some potential for improvement in the areas of diversity and recruitment. The number of men working in management and technical IT departments is much higher than the number of women employed in those areas. Overall employees have a high regard for their employer, and they have a positive mind-set. Despite the challenges of transformation, employees are quite satisfied with the team spirit and the wide range of development options the company offers.
