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Citi Malaysia announces special employee compensation

KUALA LUMPUR: Citi Malaysia has offered a special compensation of RM1,000 each for employees earning a base salary of RM60,000 and below per annum, recognising the hardship these employees are likely to face during the Covid-19 pandemic and to help ease their financial burden.

"We have always adopted a progressive strategy of employee compensation and welfare benchmarked against best global human resource practices and aligned locally to differentiate Citi as an employer of choice.

"The award is our way of supporting the eligible employees cope with daily expenses and meeting financial obligations at this time," Citi Malaysia chief executive officer Lee Lung Nien said in a statement today.

Citigroup also announced recently the special compensation for more than 75,000 employees worldwide.

Citi Malaysia also provides through its Employee Assistance Program independent trained professional advice and counselling for employees.

In addition, Citi Malaysia’s focus on advocating Work From Home for employees and technology strengths have also enabled close to 5,000 employees in Malaysia transition seamlessly from an office work environment to one of working from home.

More than 82 per cent of Citi Malaysia employees are now working from home given the Movement Control Order and evolving Covid-19 situation in the country.

“Working from home is not a new culture at Citi Malaysia and productivity has never been an issue.

"We have always encouraged flexibility in work arrangements and it is now a matter of taking this a step further to include employees who were not able to do so before,” Lee said.

Citi Malaysia’s technology network has equipped even mission critical employees to work from home now. Citi’s Markets team has achieved 100 per cent readiness to work from home in the event of a crisis.

At present, about 70 per cent of Markets employees work from home.

In consumer banking, the aim is to have 50 per cent of Citi Call Centre officers to work from home by mid-April with the same operating hours from 8am to 10pm.

To date, about one third of Citiphone officers work from home.

Following the Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) moratorium announced recently, the team from Operations and Technology for the consumer business worked from home and took just 7 days to get Citi Malaysia’s system readiness in place.

Analysis and building quick effective solutions were done in just under 96 hours.

The team worked together with Citi’s regional technology colleagues around the clock to find tactical solutions best suited to client needs.

For Learning and Development, all employee classroom training have been substituted with virtual learning where possible to encourage continuous learning and upskilling of employees.

“We are seeing a trend which does not require split operations or continuity of business sites anymore. However, there will be the need for some of our employees to serve

branch customers but this number has been reduced to 15 per cent.

"We have kept one branch opened in Kuala Lumpur apart from our branch in Penang and Johor for customers needing teller assistance to do transactions that cannot be done online,” Lee said.

Citi Malaysia has also implemented its employee tracking system online and through mobile phone to ensure employee safety.

All employees receives daily email or SMS messages and will need to respond accordingly to confirm their whereabouts.

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