SZV held virtual general staff meeting on COVID-19 impact
PHILIPSBURG — On Friday, May 15th, Social & Health Insurances SZV Director Mr. Glen A. Carty addressed near 113 SZV employees in an interactive video conference call. Over the past two months, SZV employees have been working remotely to maintain services to customers. While daily virtual meetings have already become the norm at SZV, the virtual general staff meeting was organized to have an inclusive exchange with all employees on the global uncertainties related to COVID-19 and the impact on St. Maarten. SZV employees chimed in during the virtual meeting with recommendations to continue offering online and phone services to customers, cost-cutting measures, the importance of using technology to improve data management, and syncing data with government entities to improve compliance.
Management updates, Q&A and employee recommendations were shared during the virtual meeting, as the organization finetunes its plans to transition to the “new normal” that COVID-19 has presented. Mr. Carty thanked and commended staff once again on their commitment, professionalism, and teamwork to ensure that SZV could stay ‘open online’ and serve Sint Maarten during this pandemic. In the midst of the COVID-19 lockdown, about 80% of SZV’s internal operations were restructured and fast-tracked to support staff working from home and online data management. As a result, customer services have remained accessible by phone, e-mail, website www.szv.sx, and SZV’s Facebook page.
On the topic of phased re-opening of the SZV office, Mr. Carty reiterated to employees that, “proper health and safety conditions come first, and we are busy making sure that this is in place before the first shift of staff can start working from the office routinely again. We will work in a combination of shifts and remotely. COVID-19 will no longer allow us all to be physically in the office at the same time anymore or to physically attend to hundreds of customers a day. We cannot get relaxed about the health and safety guidelines, we must embrace technology to help us keep ourselves, our families and customers safe.”
