Christian von Albrichsfeld, Continental Romania: “The most important topic in this period was to ensure the health of our people”

“At the beginning of the year, we were thinking that this is just a virus in China and then in a matter of days we nearly ‘evacuated’ all our activities. We moved thousands of people from the office to their homes with all the necessary equipment and test benches. All the people in R&D and corporate functions mainly worked from home in the springtime,” Christian von Albrichsfeld, Head of Country Continental Romania said during Automotive Forum 2020 powered by Automotive Today and The Diplomat-Bucharest.

“We were discussing before the pandemic how we can manage this work from home without losing too much efficiency. We showed that working from home is possible for a certain time, but I think that, for example, a meeting with 10-15 people, with live discussion, coffee breaks and so on can’t be replaced by online talks.

We clearly need flexibility, agility. The most important topic in this period was to ensure the health of our people. We have more than 20,000 people in Romania. Our priority was to make sure that the virus is not transmitted inside the company. Nearly 95 percent of the infections of our employees are coming out of the private life.”