Open-minded HR people make workplace healthy
SHARJAH: The pillar of sound health at the workplace are the open-minded Human Resources (HR) people who should continually search for innovative ways and interventions to at least maintain everyone’s well-being and fitness towards increasing productivity. The complete equation though includes the intrinsic full support of the higher management and even the rank-and-file since human capital is the most vital and best investment in any business.
Abu Dhabi School of Management (ADSM) Master of Science in Leadership and Organisational Development director/full professor Dr. Rommel Pilapil Sergio, from a late aternoon Wednesday webinar, also expressed his wish for health and wellness to be deeply ingrained within all workplaces worldwide, when Gulf Today asked him regarding its institutionalisation and the role of both the public and private sectors in realising it.
The educational/organisational psychologist was the featured speaker at the ADSM webinar on “Promoting Wellness at Work: Towards Responsible Innovation.” The online event was in conjunction with the UAE’S celebration of “Innovation Month.” Eighty HR experts, psychologists and educators from the UAE, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore, atended.
Some of the HR experts mentioned of their frustration as to the dis-interest and cold attitude of higher management to squeeze into their financial logbooks health and wellness programmes, preferring more what government and non-government organisations offer for free. There were sharings about employees simply and only equating health and wellness to financial perks such as salary increments. For this, Sergio stressed on the significance of communication, collaboration, teamwork and unity.
Sergio defined “responsible innovation at the workplace” as the capability, adaptability, teachability and open-mindedness of the entire HR plantilla to create, modify, combine and execute participatory programmes with the use of technology in the pursuit of quality people management. Relative to health and wellness, this, he pointed out includes the employers’ and employees’ families and the stakeholders. Families are an integral part of the former. Stakeholders such as communities affect businesses: “Embedded in these are ethics and responsible protocols (because we are dealing with human beings and not machines). What is the must core, mission and vision of our company. We must reflect on this.”
Whatsapped, Sergio said: “Innovation is a skill, not a git. It can be learned by anyone and applied systematically.”