Things Come And Go… And So Do People by Cátia Baião (msg life Ibéria)

The importance of taking care of employees is recognized in the business environment. This reflects on productivity, performance and on the organizational climate as a whole. Taking that into consideration, people have always been at the center of our culture, since we’ve started at msg life Iberia, in 2012.

In msg life Iberia, we strive to ensure that all employee interactions in the company should add value to their previous experience. In other words, from the recruitment process to the moment the employee leaves the team, for us, his/her well-being is always the focus.

In our experience, all employee touchpoints are essential for an excellent employee experience – from an inclusive onboarding process; integration into a team from day one; regular training adjusted to employee interests; consistent feedback; opportunities for professional growth and close relationships with colleagues and leaders, all these different moments are decisive factors that we continue to improve on a daily basis. We believe that our turnover rate has remained stable over the years, as the company grows, both in age and in size, precisely due to this commitment to continuously improving our employee experience.

Changes with the pandemic

With the pandemic, we kept the focus on our employees. Of course, like other companies, we faced several challenges that pushed us to move some physical moments to the virtual context and to try different activities, always keeping our focus on what we consider essential – our culture and the well-being of our team.

We know that in companies and work in general, people come and go, especially now, in the context that we are living in, where we see an increase of the so-called Great Resignation – a trend in which employees are leaving their jobs to search for greater purposes. In our reality, the pandemic did not result in a sharp increase in the turnover rate, although, we have seen some changes in behavior patterns, possibly driven by the saturation of exposure to the virtual, as we have been in this context for some time.

On the one hand, we have noticed less interest in participating in initiatives involving greater audiences. On the other hand, there is greater involvement in team initiatives, when in small groups, probably driven by the need to belong to a community, due to the isolation that this context has forced us to face. And it has been on these initiatives that we have focused our activities to engage our team, of course, without forgetting other regular initiatives to support the improvement of the employee experience as a whole – management and communication transparency, collaborative environment, flexible working hours, social skills training, mental health support, corporate and flexible benefits, etc.

Retention practices

Over the years, especially in the pandemic context, we’ve learned that our culture is our best tool to avoid high turnover ratings and for retaining our talent.

We don’t know what the future reserves us, but we believe that if we continue focusing our culture on people and their well-being, they will give us, in return, their authenticity and talent and, for us, this is the path for success.