Team size: Five

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?

Our exceptionally lean legal team of five attorneys in Austria has a broad area of expertise and even broader geographic remit: We provide legal advice in all key legal areas — regulatory, product, contract, privacy, employment, corporate and business law, M&A— in over 82 jurisdictions.

Our local legal team is embedded in the European Legal team, and as such part of the Western Union’s global legal team, which is spread across all continents worldwide. Exactly this internationality has posed its challenges, as teams tend to cluster locally. Innovative ways of working have significantly improved how our literally global legal team works: Virtual team meetings — as mentioned, the Vienna Legal team is part of a truly global legal team spread across all continents. A true gamechanger for the team cohesion and team building has been the adoption of regular virtual team meetings that replaced previous bi-annual physical team meetings (that involved preparation and administration, international travel, jetlags, overtime and significant cost to the company). The financial, CO2 and time efficacy of replacing physical meetings with regular virtual meetings is undisputed. Also, parents of young children – who may have struggled with the impact of staying away from family for several days – appreciate that this innovation allows them to be fully included in the team; E-signatures — Particularly during the Covid pandemic it proved to be priceless that the legal team had just recently implemented the innovative software for e-signatures. When everyone was locked down at home, the team could continue all regular legal processes without interruption and had numerous contracts signed in real time, despite the acting parties being physically separate, be it within Austria or beyond. This innovation avoided significant delays that would have been caused by the pandemic, saved hundreds of hours and thousands of EUROs on travel, let alone CO2; Team Collaboration Software Tools: Recently, the Legal team implemented a Team Collaboration Software tool that helps with project administration, coordination of tasks, and collaboration on documents and contracts in real time. This innovation saves sending documents back and forth for review, waiting time, and clarifies document storage. It proves to be a very important and cost-effective solution for legal teams that work with colleges on an international scale; Contract Policy: a very important innovation was realised with the Global Contract Policy which the Vienna Legal Team (co)developed. The Policy provides clear advice and guidance to all Western Union employees worldwide on the guardrails of all contracts, limits on liability. This helps with a harmonised, globally consistent approach to contracting, reduces potentially significant legal risks, and protects the company from unintended local outliers; Privacy Inventory — our legal team in Vienna developed, designed and implemented in-house, without budget, and only using existing systems – a regulatory compliance tool that supports compliance with GDPR and meets corporate needs. The inventory tool records all data processing activities, allows full data mapping of processes and systems, and can automatically generate records of processing and will support other processes, such data subject rights management, privacy risk assessment program and regulatory inquires. The overall development took 1,5 years and is now up and running and supporting the processes documentation. We are very proud of this milestone!

Apart from legal matters, has the team worked on other company initiatives?

Yes! Despite a heavy – and seemingly ever increasing – workload, our legal team has supported a high number of company initiatives and embraced meaningful volunteering opportunities: (I) Women@WU – Andrea Schwartz is the leader of the Women@WU circle in Vienna since its inception 5 years ago. Women@WU is a global networking initiative at Western Union to nurture a culture within the global workforce where leadership is gender-inclusive and women are empowered. It is a very active group offering training, mentoring, empowerment, and networking opportunities; (ii) ViennaOffice Goes Green – Andrea Schwartz was part of a bottom up, employee-driven initiative to propose and implement changes in the daily business operation to reduce the Vienna office’s CO2 footprint; (iii) Pro Bono/Volunteering Committee: Andrea Schwartz is part of the global Legal team’s Pro Bono Committee. The entire Vienna Legal team is participating in meaningful pro bono and volunteering activities, such as: Mentoring refugees, providing language classes to new immigrants, sitting on board of international Montessori school, participating in blood drives for the Red Cross, organising and volunteering a 3-week Kids Camp every summer, organising fund raisers for Doctors without Borders, sponsoring children in Africa, and by adopting a foster child. (iv) Ethics and ESG, DEI: Western Union has a strong focus on Ethics, ESG and DEI. Ethics Legal team, which the Vienna Legal Team is part of, drives a strong culture of ethics and integrity. Western Union was recognised (among others) as one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies® for the second time in a row, and on Bloomberg’s Gender Equality Index for the third consecutive year; (v) Sustainability: our Legal Team supports the drafting of the company’s (voluntary) annual Sustainability Report (Navideg).

Can you sum up the team culture/ethos in one sentence?

The culture of our team reflects two key differentiators: first, our thorough legal background and training in top law firms and second, our broad international personal and professional experience. We are corporate champions, trusted business partners and great colleagues.

We are very internationally minded, open to new ideas and innovation, and passionate about our customers. We drive results by being and holding each other accountable, we reimagine everything by seeking to innovate every day, and we lead with intent, by motivating and inspiring others through our own actions.

Our values – integrity, respect, trust and innovation – reflect that culture. We develop and nurture that culture by creating a trustworthy and respectful culture and supporting a diverse and inclusive workplace. We see ourselves as role models, celebrate our successes, learn from our mistakes, and have fun along the way.

When we are together, we create moments that matter.