Name: Western Union CEO: Global payments are more important now than ever
Uploaded: 2020-03-27
Duration: 6 min 4 s
Description: Ersek says the company anticipated the COVID-19 crisis.

[ MUSIC ] Hickman, thank you so much for joining me for this virtual interview in these difficult times. And speaking of that, everyone knows Western Union and the vital service that you provide so people can Send money all around the world. Not only in good times, but in wars, and natural disasters. And now that we are in this unprecedented coronavirus Pandemic, how are things going? How's your business doing? Well, we are continuing to support our people, the customers around the world. The first thing is we are taking care about the safety of our employees. We have employees all over the world, from New Zealand to Argentina, from the US to To Prague, and first of all the safety of our employees are the most important thing. But also at the same time while we are safety of our employees, we are thinking all the time about our customers. They come from 200 countries and they want to continue to want to support their loved ones. I mean they're sending money. Our digital business is growing very strong obese and people said sit at home and then there are a lot lockdowns, they send money from home, worldwide to 200 countries to support their loved ones so the loved ones can really go buy a medicine or visit the doctor or You know basic things and it's important to keep that up. Because without that many people may have, you know, other difficulties and Western Union has done that for 170 years and we are going to continue to do that. So you mentioned that there there are two ways actually that people can send money your customers. One is digitally, as you mentioned, and the other one is to go into a Western Union retail store and you have a lot of them. No vast network of them. But as you mentioned, now that people are told to stay home, how is this impacting the retail side of your business? There'll be some black dance or gold white But it depends on the country, depends on it's known as essential business or not not many, many locations are open because it's essential business but it does have an impact on the retail side of our business. If people can't go on straight Can go visit a retail location. They can't do transactions. They can't pick up the money. At the same time. They are getting also innovative. We are promoting our digital business, we even start starting a video conferencing so you can like we do both of us the extra money Why I video conference to support the people. One of the big worries as you know is for so many people is getting laid off, not getting a paycheck. What are you doing to prevent layoffs at Western Union? Well, so far, we are supporting the customers so we need our people to that money moves, right? I mean, we do also Retrain the people, some people who are in retail dedicated [ INAUDIBLE ] locations are on the phone now are on the video conferencing now. But our people are more on the settlement side, more on the operational side and but I'm also worried about our agents or agents locations where people are working there. Well So far we need our people to support the customers. So are you saying that so far you have not done a single layoff and if that's true, how long can you keep that up? Yes ma'am we have not done a single layoff as long as possible. We want to keep the people working. We are supporting that. And if you are really dedicated that the people can support the customer. So we generate cash flow and they keep their jobs. I know that you stay in close touch with your employees and you talk to them at least in the good times. I think now it's a little tougher. But What are they telling you? What concerns them and how are you supporting them? Well, obviously I'm staying still very close to our employees. We have daily calls. We have I just came out from a call with our employees which we communicated and the end of the call. We had a question. q & a session so I can tell you directly what we have communicate to our employees. First of all, they are worried about their loved ones about their families. And they are seeing that Western Union has a leadership so you need is well equipped to give a trust to our employees. So this trust translates also to our customers they're most worried about besides their loved ones is obviously keeping the lights on. Keeping current constantly that our customers get served in a very well way and they are very dedicated to they know they everything they do has an impact to the to our customers and we're they're very dedicated. You know, these are tough times. That's very impressive. I can hear about that dedication, but how are you motivating Your employees. What are you doing and saying so that they stay positive and keep coming to work? Well I am probably being authentic as I am [ LAUGH ] being, really telling my own stories, how I do call my relatives. Really, look, I personally have relatives all y in Austria, in Turkey and in India. I'm especially worried about my elderly relatives and I'm telling the stories how I do support them. I think if people see authentic leadership. That makes them really say, now okay, this is real. Look, this is a global company. We saw the early signs that we're seeing again. As this [ UNKNOWN ] in China we already implemented there with our employees business continuity plans. And to learn, it's what we took. The as the virus is unfortunately spread all over the world. We implemented that everywhere and that learning was a big advantage for us. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Ersek says the company anticipated the COVID-19 crisis.