About

Initially recruited by The Adecco Group Chile in 2015 Magdalena Strahovsky Villanueva quickly demonstrated her ability in the in-house legal department which led to promotions, first as chief of the legal department in 2016, and then to legal and labour risk prevention director, her current position, in 2017. ‘My role consists of providing legal advice to the company, providing strategic legal advice to the executive committee, of which I’m a member, I also assist with tenders, negotiation of contracts, and deal with a broad range of issues, especially labour law and business law’, she explains. Strahovsky indicates that her participation on the executive committee of the company moulded her as a legal professional because it ‘gives me a wide perspective of the company’s operations and allows me to participate in the business decisions, giving a legal perspective to the committee in accordance with the core business of the company’. As part of taking on the role in 2017, Strahovsky was given the opportunity to manage the brand new legal and labour risk prevention direction, which she created and structured from scratch. In addition to making her a better leader, Strahovsky says this made her ‘faster and better on the legal decisions that I had to take’, adding, ‘I had to change my legal mentality because I have had to be more commercial and have a commercial perspective for the legal decisions that I must take’. As part of combining the legal department with the labour risk prevention department, her efforts in creating and implementing essential processes has elevated the company’s compliance standards and made it a safer and better place to work with fewer accidents occurring in 2017 and 2018. She is also credited for restructuring the legal function into three different areas so that its commercial, operational and litigation specialists are utilised effectively, which has contributed to the company saving costs when it comes to winning litigations and heavily decreasing complaints. Another key change implemented by Strahovsky is ensuring every commercial decision is supported by legal advice: ‘The legal department has become a supervising body, there are no business decisions that haven’t been approved by the legal department. This has affected, in a positive way, the whole company because we have a legal standard to make business, and everybody in the company understands that every business needs a double legal check, on the beginning of it and at the business closing. This has made the company have less issues with its clients. They know how we work and they know what to expect when they deal with us’. Aside from the legal department, Strahovsky has also contributed to Adecco by being an active participant on the human resources trade association specifically by working on negotiations with the Inspección del Trabajo (Work Inspection Department) as well as being the privacy lead on GDPR matters. Despite the rules not being mandatory for The Adecco Group in Chile to follow, Strahovsky says she is ‘very committed to this implementation because it is an innovation, and can give a competitive advantage to the company, which is an advantage directly given by the legal department.’ Shortly after the research process, Strahovsky moved on from Adecoo to take on a new role.