The FINANCIAL — International Insurance Company IRAO first started operating on the Georgian insurance market about 13 years ago. During this period, despite the competition on the market, IRAO managed to create its own history and team that have contributed to making IRAO’s name. Also, the long-standing experience and stability are guaranteed by membership to Vienna Insurance Group, that is the main reason of reliability towards the company not only in customers but in jobseekers too.
IRAO, as a company that has the ambition to be one of the best employers in Georgia, constantly tries to take care of its staff. The IRAO team today consists of 215 members. “We realise that the company’s main asset and value is the employees themselves. Each of our successes is the result of the selfless work of our team. According to the proverb “Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers”, we believe that the satisfaction of our customers is the merit of our employees’ appreciation and gratitude towards the company. We are proud of our team, their professionalism and desire for progress. The characteristics of our employees: honesty, competence, order, agility, teamwork are the values that make up our corporate culture,” said Vakhtang Dekanosidze, General Director of IRAO.
“For the company, the most important priority, and therefore long-term strategy, is to provide employees with motivation in terms of their career and personal development. We strive to ensure that each of the employees, regardless of their position, freely promotes their initiatives, and actively engages in strategic projects and in the process of elaborating executive plans. It’s always interesting for the management to listen to their staff’s ideas, because they usually look differently at each process within the company. We consider our staff resources and try to care for their productivity, providing them with a healthy working environment,” Dekanosidze told The FINANCIAL.
Besides internal trainings, IRAO also offers employees the chance to receive education at successful educational institutions within the country as well as at the Vienna Insurance Group Academy, which is a recognized institution in the sphere of insurance in the whole of Europe. This kind of accumulation of knowledge and experience is one of the advantages of being a member of Vienna Insurance Group. In the current process of EU integration in Georgia, IRAO team has already have European experience in insurance sphere.
One of the key components for the motivation of staff is promotion. Employees should feel that their work is recognized and appreciated by the company. That’s why IRAO always prioritizes the promotion of internal staff, rather than seeking new ones. In recent period several new positions and structural directions have been created in IRAO, headed by the existing employees. “We try our best to use our human resources efficiently and to allow staff to plan their own development in the long run, to be loyal and to look at IRAO as a long-term relationship, which lasts for decades. Most of our staff have been working for IRAO for already more than 5 years. We have also number of employees who have 10 years of working experience in our company. They are people who have started their career in IRAO at the lowest level of positions, like interns and year after year they had been developed together with the company. Nowadays most of them are heads of the solid and strategic departments. These employees are the models for showing the path of success and prove the huge ability of progress and job promotion within our company.” Dekanosidze said.
Keti Kharitonishvili, Head of Corporate Sales Group:
I started my professional career at IRAO as retail sales manager – one of the starting positions in the sales field, back in 2010. It took me just several months to find out that it was a job that gave me a great pleasure and realize that I was born to work in this field. I was always motivated and focused on development in the field of corporate sales, which I managed within a year. IRAO is a company that generates a lot of new ideas for me. It gave me my present life; it determined my growth to be an executive; as well as giving me a number of interesting challenges and opportunities. During this 7 years I was feeling to be a part of the whole team united to reach one common goal. From where I stand I feel that I am an employee who is respected by my co-workers, my position is strong and I am a person who can contribute a lot to the company; while at the same time the company always takes care of its workers and awakes in us the passion to do our best. IRAO might not be the largest or the most powerful company, even in the insurance market, but it is distinguished by its approach to customers; the trust of its partners; trust of its employees, which demonstrates its core values that are successfully followed by us. IRAO sees how investing in its employees can be absolutely correctly applied for a common purpose. It is also remarkable that our partners today feel very safe in their relations with us, which is strengthened with our European working experience and is considered to be our work’s main goal. In this process, if the whole team acts united, it means that the right path is taken to become larger and more developed.
Nino Chkhikvadze, AML and Risk Manager:
“I started my professional career at IRAO at the beginning of 2009 as a back office operator, when I was still a student. In general, I always care about developing myself, improving skills, gaining knowledge in different areas and using this knowledge to contribute to creating something valuable. For this reason, I tried to learn more about an insurance industry, related processes and products. I feel lucky to be the employee of the company that appreciates this kind of attitude and effort and always takes care of motivation and development of its stuff. IRAO supported me to improve my knowledge with different trainings and gave me opportunities to use this knowledge on different positions. So, my career path was quite interesting – full of challenges that resulted great working experience. I worked as a head of operational department, I also was a project manager for implementation of new core system in the company. Nowadays I work as AML and Risk Manager and monitor the process of facilitating the prevention of illicit income legalization, as well as, work on issues related to operational or non-operational risk assessment. Also, I’m involved in the process of strategic planning. I want to mention, that any stage of this path is equally important and interesting for me. During these 8 years, for the company there have been difficulties too, periods of making important decisions, periods of extremely hard work and sleepless nights, and then periods of achievement of goals and celebrating successes. This cycle would not be bounded without team work and the sense of responsibility that performing daily minor work or huge projects professionally, both can bring success to the company in the same way. Some time ago, I heard great definition for the word “TEAM” – “Together Each Achieves More”. This is what feels to be a member of IRAO team for me. I believe that working together with this team, results not only success of our company, but achievements of each member. I feel the same attitude from my colleagues too and this creates more motivation. I feel responsible role to support achievements of corporate goals of the company, as a whole team, as well as personal achievements and development of my colleagues.”
Lasha Khukhua, Deputy CFO:
After joining the IRAO team in 2010 I took the path of the major professional and personal growths while the company has been aiming for significant achievements as well. Looking back through the past years when I held two different department head positions, I cannot refrain myself from highlighting the support from my colleagues as a substantial contribution in my success. It has largely defined my recent accomplishments that company would always embrace my aspiration towards continuous professional development activities, resulting in mutual collaboration. The projects, I was in charge for, have been appraised as successful endeavors. The latter played the crucial role in taking me to the new role of Deputy CFO of IRAO. New position and the company’s anticipations in that regard draw the inspiration and brings the greater sense of responsibility for me. Fighting off with challenges would always rise motivation for me to work harder for the purposes of strengthening IRAO’s financial perspectives. IRAO has defined itself as a company that appreciates enthusiastic, hardworking employees. Membership to Vienna Insurance Group (VIG) allows IRAO to constantly share the experience from its role model and valuable knowledge from its international partners within the VIG Group. Management team has already ensured an approximation of company’s activities with European Union requirements and business experiences. Thus I put constant effort to demonstrate the knowledge and opportunity given by our European partners. I feel proud to be a member of IRAO team – company that takes every team member into consideration not only as a hired employee but as an important part of the whole company.
Baia Didishvili, Head of Corporate Clients Service Department:
I have been able to experience for myself the practices of career advancement in IRAO. My career here started in 2010, during my senior year of university, as an ordinary cashier. Since then I have held 6 different positions. Two of them were heads of departments. Today I’m leading a strong and outstanding team of nine, who are not only oriented on increased customer satisfaction but also constant growth and personal development. In everyday work I make my contribution to accomplish our company’s mission: “To preserve a welfare of our society”… Since I fully share the company’s mission and my activities are directly related to the well-being of our customers, their satisfaction and loyalty, I’m constantly involved in all the important decision-making processes, their strategic planning and implementation, as well as IT projects of process improvement and automation. IRAO is one big family with the most skilful, honest and motivated employees. Being a member of this family means being just, ambitious, motivated, friendly and focused on supporting each other. Here each member feels a huge responsibility towards each other as well as towards our customers. IRAO is a company where there are lots of career advancement opportunities for the motivated and growth oriented employees. Company gives equal opportunities to all of us. Our striving for advancement/development is encouraged through the constant support in the educational, and other related fields. During all these years, as with all of our successful staff members, I continuously worked on my own professional growth and a month ago I successfully completed a professional program in business supported by IRAO. Here at IRAO, everything depends on your passion and desire for growth. In such kinds of cases you are always encouraged by the company in moving forward on the career ladder.
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