AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

Nestlé Trinidad and To­ba­go be­lieve they are mov­ing in the right di­rec­tion fol­low­ing the re­cent im­ple­men­ta­tion of a stan­dard hy­brid work cul­ture in the wake of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The an­nounce­ment was made even as the food and bev­er­age com­pa­ny of­fi­cial­ly opened its re­cent­ly ren­o­vat­ed An­glo-Dutch Caribbean of­fice in Val­sayn on Fri­day. Nestlé in­vest­ed over US$2 mil­lion in­to the in­tro­duc­tion of a new plant-based bev­er­age pro­duc­tion line and re­mod­el­ling of their cor­po­rate work­space.

Speak­ing dur­ing the event, Mar­ket Head for Nestlé’s An­glo-Dutch Caribbean re­gion, Jo­sué De La Maza, said they are al­so plan­ning to make T&T the hub for its new Na­ture’s Heart al­mond milk in the re­gion, not­ing the com­pa­ny would eas­i­ly be able to ex­port the prod­uct to its Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets.

Specif­i­cal­ly ad­dress­ing the hy­brid work sys­tem, he said, “This new fa­cil­i­ty em­braces a col­lab­o­ra­tive work cul­ture. We are work­ing smarter to re­duce our car­bon foot­print, cater­ing for six­ty per cent of our work­force on site each day.”

He said their new head of­fice has a flex­i­ble pol­i­cy that al­lows all em­ploy­ees to al­so work any­where on the prop­er­ty. De La Maza be­lieves that this is im­por­tant as Nestlé ush­ers in plant-based man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions in­to the Caribbean here in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“Our head of­fice is ful­ly equipped with in­tel­li­gent tools that lever­age tech­nol­o­gy so that em­ploy­ees work­ing vir­tu­al­ly can be ful­ly con­nect­ed to what’s hap­pen­ing here in Val­sayn. The in­ter­face be­tween peo­ple work­ing at home and peo­ple work­ing here on-site is seam­less,” he added.

Ac­cord­ing to De La Maza, the health and well-be­ing of Nestlé’s em­ploy­ees were tak­en in­to heavy con­sid­er­a­tion as they sought how to de­vel­op a healthy and pro­duc­tive work­space cul­ture.