Health and safety is the highest priority at Prime Bank, then comes operations and business. Minimum staff and maximum safety. Strictly maintaining social distancing and extending care and compassion to people and community to fight the pandemic. This is the policy Prime Bank has adopted as the country adjusts to new normal following resumption of business following end to long government holiday due to COVID-19.
Although the bank has opened all of its 146 branches from May 31, it is running the branches with minimum staff and maximum health security in care of safety and wellbeing of the employees. The bank is running branches with skeleton staff and rest branch-based frontline staff s are asked to work from home even though the government holiday is over. Moreover, the bank has allowed its non-frontline employees to continue to work from home to minimize exposure risk. Female staff with pregnancy, employees having chronic health complications and old-aged employees are strictly asked to work from home. This gesture shows care and compassion of the bank towards its employees.
The bank has undertaken large scale health and safety initiatives including disinfection drive across the country, protective gears for employees and strict hygiene guidelines. High exposure risk staffs are given personal protective equipment like apron, face shield, head cover and others are provided with mask, gloves, hand sanitizer etc. The employees are trained so that they can conduct and supervise disinfection drive at all premises across the country. The bank has strictly implemented ‘no mask, no entry policy’ at all premises. The employees are advised to maintain social distancing by ensuring 6ft distance from each other. They are advised to bring home-cooked food and avoid group lunch and tea-breaks. Its Quick Response Team remains alert 24/7 to assist any employee in case of Coronavirus.
Prime Bank has expanded extent of services of alternate delivery channels including state-of-the-art Internet Banking Platform - Altitude, 170 ATMs and 24/7 Contact Center (16218). Besides, the customers are encouraged to use Cards (Debit and Credit) and ecommerce platform more. This alternate delivery channels will enable the customers to avail banking services without visiting branch minimizing exposure risk.
The support function employees who are doing work from home are provided with most advanced technology solutions for virtual meeting and video conferencing while ensuring utmost cyber security. The bank, in no way, will compromise on customer service even though presence of minimum staff at branch and support function staff doing work from home.
The bank’s proactive approach to effectively implement the Business Continuity Plan at the very beginning of the outbreak has enabled the bank to provide seamless services to the customers even during the government holiday. As the banking sector and economic activities start returning to normalcy, the bank has focused on business process reengineering for operational efficiency for sustaining business keeping exposure risk in control.
Commenting on the issue, Rahel Ahmed, Managing Director and CEO, Prime Bank, said: “At Prime Bank, health and well-being of our valued customers and our employees is of the highest priority. That’s why we have undertaken this health and safety measures from the very onset of the pandemic. We have intensified our safety and security efforts as we have resumed operations of all our branches following end of government-announced holiday.”
“We believe we have to strictly maintain social distancing and extend care and compassion to people and community to fight the pandemic. If we care for each other and spread the message of awareness and remain always vigilant, we can overcome this crisis. We will continue to fight the virus together and we will emerge through this unprecedented crisis stronger together,” Mr. Ahmed continued.
-rmc/