Stopping at nothing to help a sick colleague

#SLOVAKIA #HR #CARE

What I love about LEONI, among other things and despite the speed of changes of today's time and result oriented culture LEONI continues in very human-centered culture which in my view is lived both by colleagues as well as management.

To me, care and supportiveness for a good reason is something you cannot learn, but rather something you spontaneously do from the bottom of your heart – and I can really say that at LEONI, we go above and beyond to help each other as a company, as a team and as humans.

One of the most recent proof points I remember is about our entire organization rallying to support a colleague who was on the edge of time for medical help:

One of our machine operators - Tomáš – was suffering from a very serious degenerative disease that needed to be treated surgically.

Despite paying his health insurance regularly, his requests for local insurance companies kept being denied, so he started to look for options abroad. When he finally found a solution, he found himself in need to come up with close to EUR 40.000 to pay for the surgery – a huge effort considering he had children and a home to take care of.

When our production manager became aware of this, he stopped by my office, asking me to join him for a meeting with our Plant Manager. He explained Tomáš’s situation and we immediately started to think how we could quickly support and help as much as possible. We approached Tomáš directly to clarify his situation and timing – and within days we started an organization-wide fundraiser campaign, calling out as far as to our LEONI colleagues in Germany.

It was amazing to see that within days, several hundred to thousands Euros were collected to support our colleague in need. People donated regardless whether they knew Tomáš or not, from direct coworkers to members of our Management Board. Some colleagues even came to donate two or three times, which was simply outstanding.

In the end, our colleague underwent the surgery successfully and he has been back to work for a few months now, feeling much better.

Every time I see him I am reminded of the level of care we take for each other, of how we stand together when challenges arise – and it makes me proud to be part of the LEONI team.