Globe Telecom Inc. - Most Valuable Corporate Response

Company: Globe Telecom Inc.
Company Description: Globe Telecom, Inc. is the Philippines’ leading telecommunications provider. Founded in 1935, it caters to over 76 million subscribers, including individual customers, small and medium-sized businesses, and corporate and enterprise clients.
Nomination Category: COVID-19 Response Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Most Valuable Corporate Response

Nomination Title: Globe Telecom: Keeping Employees and Customers #SafeAtHome

Under a global pandemic, Globe had one dilemma: How do we keep people connected while keeping our employees safe?

Our COVID-19 response can be categorized into four phases:

Pre-lockdown:

In January 2020, Globe already began its mitigation plans. We established a COVID-19 Task Force that was responsible for:

-Monitoring the situation;
-Developing strategies, policies, and execution plans;
-Communicating action plans to implementing teams; and
-Releasing advisories across the organization.

We also launched a communications plan to educate our employees on the virus. This included below-the-line advertising, posters, emails, and online posts. We also set up a Guest Manifesto Portal for incoming overseas guests.

Early lockdown:

To ensure business continuity, we adopted Rotating Operations and assigned a Critical Skeletal Force (CSF), while the rest would work from home. In order to support both groups, we increased their mobile data, provided discounts on productivity items, and strengthened their broadband connections.

To keep track of the health of our employees, we created DUDE (Digital Usher for Disasters and Emergencies). DUDE is a chatbot that performed daily check-ins with over 8,300 employees and disseminated critical information about the pandemic.

Mid-lockdown:

To support our employees throughout varying quarantine restrictions, we launched the following programs:

A Work From Home Survey that allowed us to address employee pain points;
Wanda, a recognition platform where employees could commend each other;
Vacation Leave (VL) Conversion, which allowed employees to encash unused leave credits;
The Good Vibes Club, a virtual variety show;
Mental health support via partnerships with KonsultaMD, Mindnation, and Hopechat;
WOW! From Home, which gave discounts on productivity tools such as gadgets, desks, and tables;
Sagot Kita, which empowered our employees to help our customer service frontliners.

Post-lockdown:

After lockdowns eased, we introduced a Voluntary Return To Work policy. This allowed employees to return to their offices if they met certain criteria; which was checked by a suite of in-house apps called GCheck, GTrace, and GAccess.

Lastly, we also built our own Globe PCR Lab, to give access to affordable and accurate COVID-19 testing for employees, their dependents, and our managed services partners.