20.03.2020
ARAG in full home-office mode
Continued stable service for customers
In response to the dynamic intensification of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ARAG Group has adopted a work policy based entirely on the home-office system. That goes for the main corporate locations in Düsseldorf and Munich as well as all international ARAG units. The Düsseldorf-based family enterprise has also ensured a seamless and stable transition of all customer-service functions. The Group’s consistent commitment to digitization is definitely paying off.
Practically all ARAG employees have been working from home since the end of calendar week 11. Every morning more than 1,800 employees in Germany are connected to the corresponding remote systems. The others follow during the course of the day as needed and depending on the specific applications in question. All international ARAG units have also shifted to remote work. Nearly 2,000 of the 4,300 people employed by the ARAG Group now work in Germany.
Through its branch in Italy, ARAG learned what was in store for the Group very early on and took immediate and decisive action. Additional user licenses were acquired, and bandwidths were increased. Furthermore, employees in close contact with customers have been provided – in addition to the new laptops they had already received – with the newest ultra-wide screens, which they can take home with them in order to work under less tiring conditions there. Telephones were immediately reprogrammed and now function without complicated call forwarding.
“We are here to serve our customers in every way possible, and we take their needs very seriously in this critical situation. We are also doing everything we can to protect the health of our employees,” emphasizes Dr. Dr. h. c. Paul-Otto Faßbender, Chairman and CEO of ARAG SE. “Thanks to our uncompromising digitization policy, we are able to combine these two objectives effectively and realize them immediately in this current state of emergency.”
An essential prerequisite for success was the fact that ARAG had already revamped its entire digital infrastructure. In 2019, all employees were given new, mobile terminal devices, which they can also use at home. “No one at ARAG still has an old-school desktop computer,” says Hanno Petersen, the Group Board Member responsible for IT. And all essential systems now run on either cloud-based or modern Linux systems. “This infrastructure makes us fast and flexible, and we are benefiting from that right now,” notes Hanno Petersen.
“Except for small emergency contingents, our offices are now virtually empty. Yet we are still operating without disruptions. I wish to thank the worldwide ARAG team for its dedication and the tremendous efforts it has made. ARAG is now working from outside its walls,” says Dr. Dr. h. c. Faßbender in summation.