Visa CEO vows to help employees amid 'prolonged' Ukraine battle

Visa Chief Executive Al Kelly, who’s been helping employees and their families who have fled the war in Ukraine, said he expects a “prolonged battle” because Russian President Vladimir Putin has underestimated the strength of the resistance. 

“We’re going to be there for our employees,” Kelly said Tuesday at the Bloomberg Equality Summit in New York. “This is not something we’re into it for two or three weeks. We’re into it for the long term and whatever it takes to make sure they and their families are taken care of.”

Visa Inc. Chief Executive Officer Al Kelly Interview
Visa CEO Al Kelly.

Earlier this month, Kelly visited Dubai, which has become a landing spot for his employees fleeing Ukraine and Russia. He was also in Poland, where he handed out clothing and toys to families affected by the war and spoke with teams assigned to relocate displaced workers.

Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine has spurred hundreds of global companies to abandon his country, leaving the Russian economy disconnected from the global financial system. Among those firms is San Francisco-based Visa, which derives 4% of its net revenue from business linked to Russia and has announced it would suspend operations in the country. 

Kelly has been one of the few CEOs to offer a frank assessment of the work his company had to do to get employees in Ukraine to safety following the invasion. As part of the firm’s frantic work to evacuate workers from Kyiv, the payments giant loaded up Sprinter vans with supplies and stationed them within a half mile of the Ukrainian border in Romania, Poland and Hungary, ready to receive staffers and their families as they fled their homes. Visa also hired mercenaries to go to the western edge of Kyiv to transport employees and relatives by van.

Separately, Kelly said Visa is planning to bring more workers back to its offices in the U.S. He said workers will have to be in the office half the time, and every employee must be present on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, which he called “collaboration days.”

Kelly, 63, said he’s grown increasingly worried that the work the company has done to improve the diversity of its ranks will lose ground in a remote environment, which can make it harder for managers to develop talent. Minority employees can be “less in the mainstream,” and in-person contact is an important part of helping them succeed, he said.

“It’s easier for them, and the majority, to break through in person,” Kelly said. “Inclusion, in particular, requires getting people together and grabbing people and say, ‘Hey, join me on this meeting’ or ‘Hey, join me on this phone call.’ ”

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