Times have changed the professional work environment almost completely. Employers and their employees have mental well-being as their top priority. Post-pandemic, they have started focusing more on work-life balance, along with mental health. Employees are more concerned about their overall well-being in a work environment and expect empathy, trust, respect, and other such factors from their employers.
A professional at a top post in an Indian IT service management company suggested, “Take various initiatives on holistic planning for employees covering their physical, mental, financial, and emotional wellbeing. For physical wellness, encourage employees to keep themselves fit by providing them information on different forms of exercises through various types of internal communication channels.”
He put forth the suggestion for conducting online and offline workshops and seminars within the organization and said, “Encourage employees to live a healthy balanced life. Continue these with equal rigor. For mental wellness, conduct various engagement activities such as quizzes, entertainment contests, CSR volunteering activities, etc. For financial wellness, conduct webinars and talk show from financial experts who guide employees on how to manage their financial goals. For emotional wellness, provide counseling and lifestyle management advice not only to employees but to their immediate family members. Organizations need to find ways to meet the growing need for empathy toward their employees. In this time, when the winds of change are constantly shifting towards a better employee experience, businesses must create and reinforce a holistic culture of wellbeing for their employees.”
A high-designated professional of an American multinational technology company said, “In the current global scenario, organizations had to abruptly transition into a ‘hybrid’ workforce model and are slowly settling down with defined job-role specific work policies. With the aid of technology, not only the ‘hybrid’ complexity can be addressed effectively but also the workplace can truly evolve into a space that encourages the culture of diversity, equality, inclusion, and belonging (DEI&B)”, said Sumeet Doshi, Country Manager at India at Ultimate Kronos Group.
He continued, “Enable organizations to quickly adapt to evolving policies while ensuring it’s fair and just apply to employees from various backgrounds while removing the limitations of work locations. This would have multi-fold benefits as it would allow seamless and standard work policy adoption while ensuring better employee engagement and retention within the organization, which in turn would deliver better outcomes for the organization. Helping employees maintain a good work-life balance while simultaneously safeguarding their mental health would in the long run allow companies to evolve into great places to work. Be it morale-building activities every once in a while, doing the basic minimum of maintaining a sense of mutual respect and equality within employees and executives, it will all contribute to creating a workplace culture that nourishes talent and allows it to grow.”
CEO of an Indian job portal site said, “There are a few prerequisites that define a healthy work culture today- inclusivity, safety, and support. The pandemic brought forward many ways of working with remote and hybrid setups which take into consideration the mental and physical needs of employees. Employee sensitization workshops, inclusive policies, and flexible work models can largely contribute to creating a holistic work culture. Initiate wellness leaves and flexible work policies to create a better work environment that accommodates the mental well-being of employees. Diversity and inclusion should be core to a company’s vision and celebrate employees from diverse backgrounds and identities through diversity workshops and mentorship programs.”
