How we have dealt with Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic took hold within our company once again in 2021 and continued to significantly impact everyday life here. Our crisis team, a multi-disciplinary task force made up of experts from various departments, continued to monitor infection rates in the same way as they did in 2020, instigating suitable measures depending on the situation at hand. These measures include, for example, the drafting of guidelines for mobile working, stringent hygiene and safety precautionary measures, social distancing rules, restrictions on business travel, etc. These measures were updated on an ongoing basis, with employees informed of any updates every week.

Given the significant increasing in working from home, UNIQA also took measures to safeguard an appropriate level of data protection for employees. As an example, all employees working from home did so using secure VPN connections. We also adapted our training and awareness-raising measures looking at common types of cyberattacks and launched an awareness campaign on phishing in order to increase its awareness in everyday professional and personal situations. Given the risk situation and infection rates at that time, we were able to temporarily bring back employees to our UNIQA sites in Austria in summer 2021. We did this subject to stringent conditions and guidelines, such as hygiene measures and restrictions for meetings. These measures were linked directly to national and regional infection rates and other criteria. The situation was also monitored constantly by the crisis team and reported to the Management Board on a regular basis.

As part of our responsibility towards our employees, we actively recommend they get vaccinated against Covid-19 and signed up as a member of the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber’s “My Team. Our Vaccination” (Mein Team. Unsere Impfung) campaign. We are also committed to getting vaccinated in our online activity, getting involved in the #ZusammenGegenCorona campaign.

The global pandemic has massively shifted focus towards the importance of personal health and mental well-being. With the #mentalhealthmatters campaign, we have actively taken a stance and have introduced numerous measures to support our employees in these times of crisis. Our existing KEEP BALANCE offering was replaced by consentiv, a subsidiary of our health start-up SanusX. These services allow you to make use of phone, face-to-face or online consultation on all kinds of professional and personal issues.