We met with the entrepreneur and Zurich cantonal councillor Daniel Hodel for an interview. Daniel Hodel is the CEO of Geocloud AG, a leading GIS company in Switzerland. As an ICT service provider, Geocloud AG is specialized in information and data logistics and, at the same time, the secure storage of data. The company has several locations.
Good morning, Mr. Hodel. Thank you for taking the time to give us an interview in this special situation. You are the CEO of Geocloud AG. How are you doing at the time of COVID-19?
Geocloud currently considers itself as a basic digital provider. Indeed, in this difficult situation, we have to ensure that our customers’ GIS workstations can also be used in home offices.
A particularly difficult task during this period is the management of employees. How can we take advantage of this?
As a progressive ICT company, we recognized the seriousness of the situation early on and took appropriate action. One of the measures we took is the conversion to a home office. This conversion in turn has a direct influence on employee management and in particular on the control of teams and individuals. As an employer, we expect all employees to assume more personal responsibility and self-organization. To be able to demand this, we must provide the appropriate digital work infrastructure, which employees can access from anywhere.
You have been a committed supporter and a loyal user of Approovd since the very beginning. How have you been able to benefit from our services in this difficult situation?
The current situation naturally raises a lot of legal questions. Last week, for example, I asked my human resources manager to supplement existing employment contracts with the home office option .The amendment, including the sending of the new employment contracts, was entirely handled via Approovd, without the need to consult a lawyer. The new contracts solve difficult data protection issues, in particular with regard to the protection of business secrets and customer data.
In addition, we have adapted our personnel regulations via Approovd in such a way that the above-mentioned values of personal responsibility and self-organization are now also set down in writing.
More recently, we have also benefited from the fact that we digitized contracts with suppliers and customers via Approovd even before the Corona crisis. This now has the advantage that all employees have access to the relevant contract documents from home.
Thank you very much for the interview and I leave you the last word…
Thank you very much! I am convinced that the current situation will produce new forms of cooperation as part of a widespread digital push. We must therefore consider the current situation as an opportunity and prepare ourselves as best we can for the post-crisis period.
