First things first: We are glad, that all employees at Cashare are well and that no one has been infected with the coronavirus so far. It is our first priority that things stay that way and that our employees, their families as well as the general public are protected.
Even though we have doubled our office space last week and we therefore have enough room to practice “social distancing” the current situation has lead us to the decision that all staff will work from home as far as possible effective immediately.
We have already drafted a crisis plan a few weeks ago and are following this plan consequently (see past week’s blog entry). At the moment we are still at level one of our plan, which means that we can pretty much operate normally. However, all members of staff have trained the home office mode. Since we have initiated the plan, all employees take their laptop computer home every day and have access to all systems from their home office. This allows us to completely switch to home office – a measure that we initiate due to the developments over the week-end and the decisions of the federal council on Friday.
We do this hoping to help prevent the spread of coronavirus and to break the chain of infection. From now on, the following measures apply at Cashare:
- All staff work from home effective immediately, except one person that is in charge of treating the mail and direct phone calls.
- Persons from risk groups as well as employees that use public transport to get to work are all required to work from home, without exceptions.
- At our headquarters, strict social distancing measures apply: Not more than one person per room and all meetings have to be held virtually. A minimum distance of 2 meters has to be respected at all times and 2 people are not allowed to be in the same room for more than 15 minutes.
- Physical business contacts are forbidden as of now. Meetings have to be conducted over the phone and direct meetings are only permitted in exceptional situations (The minimal social distancing rules still apply in such cases).
We therefore kindly advise our clients, commercial partners and all other contacts that no physical meetings will be held in the following days and thank you for your understanding. We can still be contacted trough all regular channels. Should our landlines be temporarily overloaded we invite you to primarily use the e-mail support since this channel is served by multiple employees and you will get an answer sooner this way. As a Fintech company from the very start, all processes except the ones mentioned above are digital and the operations continue without restrictions.
It is important to us to keep calm! Panic is not helpful and the priority is to contain the spread of the virus, protect risk groups and relieve our health infrastructure. Our employees have time to organize child care or take care of children themselves. Further, Cashare employees outside of risk groups are encouraged to help neighbors and family members, for example with procuring essential goods etc. – under the consideration of social distancing guidelines. This help can explicitly also be offered during working hours.
As a great team we will manage this extraordinary situation together and I thank all employees, customers, business partners and all the helpers for their unwavering commitment. The Cashare team and I hope that all of you stay healthy.
Sincerely
Michael Borter
CEO of Cashare
