BorgWarner Inc., an American manufacturer of turbochargers, automatic transmission control and control systems and timing chains for the automotive industry, has currently 6 specialized divisions in 19 countries around the world, employing approx. 30 thousand employees.
During our webinar event "The Role of the Individual Firm in Economic Resilience", we hosted the Polish representative of BorgWarner, who explained how they are fighting crisis during pandemic season. BorgWarner is a really big company and was prospering really well before the pandemic situation started. The spread of coronavirus pushed them to face a new reality, just like entrepreneurs in different market sections.
The first step they took to fight the spread of coronavirus, was to learn from other countries and their solutions. They read and listened what was happening across Europe and the whole world. They learnt some lessons that they finally applied to their company. At the beginning, they informed their employees about what exactly coronavirus is. It was a great choice, as that helped them to familiarize with the problem, so they were willing to accept the restrictions that were applied in the company. First steps that were taken to limit the spread of the virus in the company were:
• keep the social distance;
• minimize the number of meeting;
• minimize the movement;
• reduction of interference between employees, and customers as well.
When the virus didn't stop, they needed to take more actions to fight the pandemic. The company had to make some changes in the way they worked:
• temporarily reduce the salary for employees;
• change work time to allow keeping the distance between employees;
• be careful with the energy consumption;
• use external services as less as possible.
Finally, due to the whole pandemic situation they were forced to lockdown, like most of companies in Poland. The lockdown in Poland started in March and consequently the company didn't receive as many orders as they used to before the lockdown. Luckily, in July they were able to come back to work. Anyway, they couldn't run their activity as they used to, so they were also forced to cut down the number of employees. Since July, the automotive business started to live again. Over time, the situation of BorgWarner also started to improve. Now, they're able to hire their employees again.
For further information contact [email protected], General Programme Manager - Paweł Tetela - Website https://borgwarner.com
