Better and stronger

Over the last one hundred years, the Aboitiz Group has proven its resilience to rise above the challenges. For generations of Aboitiz team leaders and team members, what remained constant was its commitment to its time-honored values of integrity, teamwork, innovation, and responsibility.

Sabin Aboitiz, Aboitiz Group president and chief executive officer, is at the forefront of building a culture of values and engaging people at all levels.

Since the start of his leadership in January 2020, Human Resources has constantly introduced efforts to engage its workforce beyond the usual programs like SuperDuperCon, Welcome Aboard, UpClose with SMA, MyBen and MyTX, including first-of-its-kind virtual contests, engagement surveys, recognition programs, and international and local holiday celebrations.

These initiatives opened the door for better collaboration among business units through sharing of best practices and became a way for the organization to challenge the norm, grow through different perspectives, embrace diversity, and promote inclusion.

Always putting its people first, it has ensured that there is a push for a balanced pursuit of financial gains and sustainability. Its rich history shows what it has achieved while using its values as its compass, and how these have enabled the company to drive change for a better world by advancing business and communities.

Riding out the crisis

Aboitiz Group has acknowledged that it is not going to be business as usual and due to the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the company has to adapt to the new normal.

At the onset, Ruby Jaucian, vice president for group human resource at Aboitiz Equity Ventures Inc., told Malaya Business Insight that the Aboitiz COVID-19 technical working group regularly updates the group-wide COVID-19 response, health and safety protocols, vaccination campaign, and return to office plan in collaboration with all business units based on different scenarios under the global public health crisis.

Committed to innovation, one of its core values, the group and its business units have been implementing their digital transformation journey, in effect preparing the organization to ride out the crisis.

“Innovation has been the key success factor in the organization’s performance in the last two years,” Jaucian also said, and continues to be a main focus of the organization moving forward.

Digital transformation path

The most pronounced new strategy has been a doubling down the company’s digital transformation path, which helped serve its existing banking customers and sign up many new ones at the height of the pandemic.

As of the first nine months of 2021, the Aboitiz Group continued to gain traction in its digital take-up.

Aside from other business interests, the Aboitiz Group highlighted its banking operations, saying “We posted another record high in terms of number of sign-ups across our UnionBank online and portal platforms at more than 666,000,” bringing its total app users to 3.6 million as of end-September 2021.

Similarly, the company has posted the highest number of new accounts opened in a fully-digital manner via the app in a single quarter with more than 278,000 accounts in the third quarter of 2021. “This brings our total digital accounts opened to 1.1 million or 30 percent out of our total digital users,” the Aboitiz Group said.

Moreover, digital transactions continued to grow by 1.8 times to more than 7.3 million transactions in the month of September as the company onboards more users onto its digital channels and as they become more familiar with transacting digitally. Digital transactions also continued to significantly surpass branch and ATM transactions by as much as 3.5 times.

UnionBank was the only Philippine private bank among six entities granted a three-year digital banking license by the central bank, which has capped the number to six after the remaining applicants failed to meet the requirements.

UnionDigital will be Aboitiz’s vehicle to tap the lower-end of the pyramid who are usually unbanked and underserved by traditional banks.

This complements and further expands the banking group’s customer base to cover all portions of the pyramid. The bank aims to leverage on a community banking approach whereby it can acquire customers en masse as it provides products and services that cater to the needs of its specific communities.

UnionDigital, on the other hand, is essential in its overall digital strategy as it fast-tracks the onboarding of more customers onto its digital channels.

“On top of this, we started a company focused on data science and artificial intelligence called Aboitiz Data Innovation, but that could be discussed separately — it’s very exciting!” the Aboitiz Group noted.

The group’s COVID-19 response

The group’s response to COVID-19 was focused on three areas: people, process, and technology.

On people, which is the Aboitiz Group’s greatest concern, it has established a system in monitoring the COVID-19 cases across the Aboitiz Group. It has developed a “Re-Entry Assessment and Management Program” with its healthcare provider in case there is an urgent need to go to the workplace. The Aboitiz Group started planning its COVID-19 vaccination program for the free inoculation of its team members as early as March this year.

In process, the Aboitiz Group is ensuring that each business unit prepares its business impact analysis and regularly updates these to include flexible risk mitigation measures. The Aboitiz Group developed and regularly updates the “Group-wide Return to Office Playbook,” aligned with the government’s guidelines and ensures access by all team members online.

On technology, the company ensured that the Aboitiz Group’s virtual private network (VPN) and endpoint security, threat intelligence, and cyber-attack response installation are completed for all team members as a protection during the work from home set-up. The Aboitiz Group has maximized the use of digital channels for activities that would normally require face to face interactions, while monitoring on a daily basis VPN utilizations, information technology security and IT infrastructure.

COVID-19 assistance

“When the COVID-19 was just starting in the country, the Aboitiz Group had earmarked a total of P900 million to help its team members cope with the pandemic,” Jaucian added.

This amount only covers the early release of salaries and 13th or 14th month pay of over 11,000 team members across strategic business units. The amount spent has increased since then to cover COVID-19 testing, setting up safe spaces, and other protocols, including vaccination.

Well-being a priority

Apart from ensuring the safety of its team members, Aboitiz keeps its team members engaged with weekly town halls and check-ins across the business units.

“The health and well-being of its team members remains a priority that is why human resources across the group roll out various activities that would help maintain both mental and physical fitness,” she noted.

These include livestreamed exercises such as ‘e-Zoomba,’ yoga, barre and mindfulness, among others. Online clinics and virtual consultations are also made readily available for the TMs.

Vax efforts

As of November 2021, 90 percent of the company’s organic TMs group-wide has been vaccinated, either through the local government units or company-initiated vaccination programs. “We also keep our team members informed through vaccine info sessions,” she said.

“We continue to take steps to protect our team members, who sustain our businesses. We are 90 percent vaccinated and are working on our booster program, and commit to continue to work hand in hand with the national government until the Philippines succeeds in achieving population protection,” she noted.

New, pandemic-proof initiatives

The group’s businesses are “pandemic proof” as they are categorized as essential industries, the Aboitiz Group said, adding it will be the last to be foregone by consumers in the event of another COVID-19 surge or pandemic.

“Our businesses are actually supporting economic recovery in the countries where we operate, despite lingering risks. The resources we have spent building our digital infrastructure and strengthening our business continuity plans have paid off,” she said.

The group has continued to deliver its commitment to stakeholders despite the telework arrangement.

The group’s existing digital infrastructure and a strong innovation mindset helped power through many physical roadblocks.

Many organizations had trouble moving their operations to the cloud but for Aboitiz, it was like flipping a switch, she added.

“We already were doing remote work and had the corresponding guidelines and related tools in place,” she stressed, thanks to its team members who embraced the agile working environment with remarkable openness and enthusiasm.

Also, the company worked with its stakeholders to keep each other going.

“We quickly moved to provide our employees with a “lifeline.” With the early release of salaries and bonuses, we wanted to demonstrate to our team that we acknowledged the uncertainty of the pandemic and that it was a significant burden for them and their families,” Jaucian said.

“Aboitiz considers Building Human Capital as one of our four strategic pillars. This means being able to support the execution of the Group’s strategies through people. We invest on resources and implement relevant programs that are focused on attracting, optimizing and retaining the right talent. We also deliver an engaging talent experience through a seamless end-to-end HR service delivery.”