HEALTHY OFFICE SPACE
Companies are going beyond physical health and taking care of employees’ wellbeing
After two Vipassana courses last year, Aneesh Reddy, Co-founder and CEO of Singapore- based software- asaservice (Saas) customer engagement firm Capillary Technologies, realised meditation’s powerful impact on him. The practice de- cluttered his mind and improved his ability to focus on the present and think clearly. “I am probably at my best in terms of inner peace and mental health,” says Reddy.
With stress and loneliness becoming an integral part of the Covid-19 world, Reddy wanted to promote the meditation technique within the organisation. As an experiment, in December 2020, Capillary announced an 11- day Vipassana leave. Anyone who intends to participate in a Vipassana course can avail an 11- day leave — over and above the mandated annual leave. “Annual leave get over during the yearly vacation. Anyone hardly takes off for themselves,” says Reddy.
The pandemic ushered in the realisation that being healthy was beyond being physically fit — it is a state of complete physical, mental, social and financial well-being. This led companies to look at health holistically and expand their offerings. Earlier, employees’ health benefits included offerings related to physical health, but now emotional and social health have become integral as well. Companies such as Kellogg India, Dalmia, Mondelez, Cisco and Infosys introduced new social and emotional health offerings in their portfolio and extended the existing ones significantly. Plain vanilla insurance plans, annual health check-ups are passé, benefits such as meditation leave, bereavement leave, mandatory day offs, me time and digital detox time have become the new normal.
“There is cognizance that stress today is a greater killer than diabetes and is the underlying cause for many physical ailments as well. Firms, too, are realising how intertwined social and emotional health is with the physical self, and that investing on physical health is a curative process whereas focusing on emotional wellbeing can be preventive,” says Premkumar Seshadri, Chief Mentor, wellness services firm 1to1help, and former MD of HCL Infosystems.
Physical Health
As work from home ( WFH) and work from anywhere takes centrestage, the concept of office has gone beyond physical premises. Health benefits have to cater to this new reality. Hence, they have to be broad, flexible and personalised, catering to the requirements of a wide variety of people. “Companies would look at employee satisfaction and employee engagement at work. Today, we have to go beyond the confines of the office space and have to be conscious of experiences outside work because employees are bringing work into their personal lives,” says Seshadri.
Infosys launched more than 150 plus interventions related to employee stress, health, and overall wellness through workshops, emails, health checks, online chats, fun quizzes and focused communication campaigns. “We had a lot of activities from the engagement side that are built on the framework of the 5Cs -- Connect, Collaborate, Celebrate, Culture and Care. This is something we have always focused on because at the end of the day we are people’s business, so we need to make sure we engage our people,” says Richard Lobo, Executive Vice president, Head HR, Infosys.
As the lockdown began, the first thing companies did was convert their health benefits into virtual offerings. They tied up with online partners such
DAYS Vipassana leave Capillary Tech gives, over and above the annual leave 11 “Dalmia’s employee py wellbeing programme now caters over 30 pper cent to emotional health”
AJIT MENON Group HR head, Dalmia Bharat Group
as Stepathlon, Cure.Fit and HealthifyMe to enable fitness classes for gym or yoga since office premises were closed. They also introduced telemedicine consultations.
Health benefits were also extended beyond employees, to families and partners. Kellogg India gave insurance and medical benefits cover to not just employees and their families, but to distributors, vendors and sales people. The company also included 24x7 emergency response services through a dial-in number. “It is much clearer today that the pandemic is going to be a long haul. It is not something which is going to go away, so it is important that everyone is safe,” says Nimisha Das, Director HR, Kellogg South Asia.
Also, plain vanilla insurance plans are passé and flexi-healthcare plans will gain popularity, says Dalmia's Menon. For instance, earlier most insurance plans were slab-based, now employees have the option to choose according to their family size and age bracket.
Health check-ups have also entered offices like never before. They are no longer optional for employees. Dalmia Bharat, like many other companies, had the policy of conducting a mandatory health check-up at the time of joining. Now, it has a differentiated health check-up plan for employees, the health card being a part of their key result area ( KRA). People under 40 get access to the company supported regular check-up plan, while those above 58 can avail an advanced executive health check-up. “Health cards had to be included alongside KRAs because we were finding that people still wouldn’t get annual check-ups done,” says Dalmia's Menon. It helps the company determine the job role to be assigned to a person that doesn’t impact or aggravate his/ her condition. For instance, a person with asthma could be moved from the packaging department to perhaps the corporate office.
Mondelez India uses its annual health check-up data to curate a segmented wellness calendar for the workforce. The results of the annual health checkup are analyzed using various cuts like level, function, location etc (while keeping person-wise data confidential) — and that feeds into a segmented wellness calendar. “Just like there’s a product launch calendar, we create a wellness calendar for the year,” says Mahalakshmi R., Director, Human Resources, Mondelez India. For instance, at one of their sites, health check-up of employees revealed that many people had cardiac issues with high cholesterol level, obesity problems, etc. Another sales branch had people who felt they wanted emotional support. “Some calendar events are common and some differ according to the location. They vary as per locations to meet the requirements of that population or cohort,” adds Mahalakshmi R.
Emotional Health
While offerings on physical health have been extended, a significant focus is now on emotional health unlike earlier. Firms are offering systemic ways to enable employees to be in charge of their feelings and thoughts to understand how they relate to self and enable them to manage challenges better. “Earlier, Dalmia’s employee wellbeing programme focused 100 per cent on physical health, perhaps just 1-2 per cent on other wellbeing programmes. Now, over 30 per cent cater to emotional health,” says Ajit Menon, Group HR head at Dalmia Bharat Group.
Managing WFH, self- care, meditation, workplace ergonomics, ways to manage stress and anxiety, integrating work and life are pertinent issues that are affecting many.