B & B With Matron

The obsession of cutting costs at the present time of crisis is expanding and dispersing like dust, covering everything and everywhere. The Spanish are staying put within the home country for their holidays, and the tour companies even offer a €50 guarantee for every rainy day, and another offers free 'canguros (kangaroo)' which in Spanish also means babysitter.

Asepeyo, one of the principal Mutual of Accidents of Work and Professional Diseases, recently sent recommendations to their employees that 'If there were available rooms and when it doesn't interfere with any activities', it's recommended, in both Madrid and Barcelona, to spend the night in the hospital that belongs to the company, with breakfast and meals too there. This being part of the plan of saving money.

"We are a sufficiently solvent company not having to resort to adjusting salaries, but reduce significantly high and unnecessary expenditure." said Ricard Alfaro, the director of Expedient of Regulations of Employment (ERE). The syndicates are delighted.

Asepeyo has 3,500 employees scattered in 160 centres all over Spain. Between centres and offices, many of them, not only the 250 directives, travel frequently for work, for meetings and formation, in classrooms belonging to Mutual, as well as 2 hospitals, one in Madrid and one in Barcelona. The many travels, locomotion and maintenance amount to huge expenses. Taking advantage of their own hospital beds and dinning rooms seems a good measure in hard times.

It was explained that the hospitals function in floors. If the occupation on one floor is 20% or less, that floor would be closed, and the patients would be transferred to the other floors. So the company travellers would only be using the floor where there are no patients. As to the meals, the kitchen has to prepare food for 40 doctors and nurses, putting out another 10 or 15 plates is not a problem. But the saving is considerable and direct, as those are the service we already have. For further saving, the Mutual has also decided to intensify more video-conferences, to save travel time and related expenses.

Tags:travel hospital

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