Weaving wellbeing into the culture
Manah organized the round of HR Roundtable Discussion on 28th June 2024, in association with Bajaj Finserv, and witnessed stalwarts and senior leaders of the HR community visit, partake in discussions, and throw light on how the responsibility of ensuring employee wellbeing is a duty of many, and how to blend it into the culture of an organization. Our guests spoke at length about wellbeing's need to move from just being a one-off program to moving up to strategy, all the way up to leadership’s list of priorities.
This article summarises the fruitful discussion we witnessed.
How is wellbeing perceived in your organization?
The HR Roundtable discussion began with Dr. Ashwin Naik conducting a brief activity and sparking conversations around how one action or word can be perceived differently. He also proceeded to explain how many organizations are confused between mental health and mental illness, and that many HR leaders themselves are guilty of not knowing the difference between the two.
This keeps the organization from taking the first step toward breaking the stigma, and allowing employees to voice their concerns and seeking help. Wellbeing initiatives are now being offered as one-time activities by many organizations – a band-aid after the stressful peak season is over. Given how employees spend most of their time at the workplace, small bursts of wellbeing sessions won’t be effective in the long run.
Instead, wellbeing must be made a part of the compensation package, and made mandatory for all, right from the start, so employees know their company follows a work+wellbeing approach, instead of the work vs wellbeing approach.
Whose responsibility should wellbeing be?
Often, organizing wellbeing programs from the get-go becomes the responsibility of the HR department. Getting the right experts, securing leadership buy-in, organizing the logistics of the programs, coordinating with managers, clearing attendees' schedules, ensuring everyone turns up for the event, and so much more.
The employees consider these carefully curated programs as just another event to mark your attendance in. Sometimes they might choose to get pending work done in that time instead of spending an hour attending the program. In some other cases, managers hold back their star employees from these programs to work.
The main reason why the rest of the workforce put wellbeing programs in the back of their mind is because they think it’s the HR department’s event, and not ‘their’ event. That’s why the responsibility of ensuring wellbeing must be vested with the leadership – to ensure everyone understands wellbeing is as important, if not more important than work itself.
Jaydeep Reddy, the Head of Wellbeing at Bajaj illustrated the need for leadership support beautifully when he said,” Wellbeing in an organization stands on 4 pillars – leadership commitment being the first, followed by mind-body integration, wellbeing culture establishment, and metrics to measure the success of the program.”
The HR leaders at the Roundtable discussion stated that the HR team needs leaders to back up and advocate for your cause, so the efforts are top-down, and are taken seriously.
Culture and its importance in profit-making and sustained productivity
Another crucial pillar for all your wellbeing initiatives to stand on is establishing a culture that views wellbeing as the fuel that moves the organization forward and reaps profits and productivity.
Culture is one of the most misunderstood terms in the workplace. It runs deeper than engagement initiatives, or having a flexible work arrangement. It touches the core of what the organization stands for, the collective beliefs and values of all those who are part of it.
Rupa Kulkarni says, “Culture is not hung on the wall, it is absorbed unconsciously.”
Good culture is important because it enables good strategy. When wellbeing is infused into the culture, the work environment shows a marked improvement, along with employee satisfaction. People are more driven to contribute, hence driving profits and peak productivity. One small, but significant move – creating a wellbeing culture – can have positive cascading effects and secure the business’ future.
The secret behind driving wellbeing initiatives
The luminaries in the discussion contemplated the other proven way to sustain your wellbeing initiatives in the long run, without seeing them fizzle out with low adoption rates is to make them completely accessible and personalized so employees can take their wellbeing into their own hands and make earnest efforts to take part in the initiatives you organize, and they are given utmost priority. Wellness is driven by autonomy when employees know they have control over their actions. When they understand there’s utmost confidentiality in the process, and can access the programs when they most need it, they start trusting and utilizing the programs you’ve implemented.
Vini Kapoor says, “Wellness is scalable, only when you own your health and wellbeing.”
To get to this point, hold wellness dialogues at every level in your organization. Discuss with leaders how giving considerable autonomy to employees will benefit the organization tremendously, and show them industry data. Any discussion presented with data seems to make execution easy. Make your wellbeing programs easily accessible, so employees don’t have to count on anyone to avail services discreetly, whenever they need them.
To understand where your people need support the most, place suggestion boxes in your office, or share feedback forms for employees to fill in anonymously.
Caring for your people in times of crisis
Regardless of which industry you work in, and what type of employees you hire, you secure your employees’ trust, goodwill, and loyalty by being there for them when they need you the most - especially when they’re in crisis. Make sure support is made readily available to anyone in crisis, without having to hold onto the line letting the golden period in an emergency fly by.
It takes a conscious effort to plant the seed and continuously nurture wellbeing. But when done right, the program will keep giving the organization results and benefitting employees personally.
The HR leaders who participated in the roundtable empathized with others and realized there was a whole community of like-minded people who shared the same concerns they had in mind. It was a seed for a warm HR community, to open up and help each other.
Manah Wellness is planning more such roundtable discussions in the future in different cities. Stay tuned for more updates!
