Tips for companies and employers to define a healthy work culture

With so many technological advancements coming in, both economically and socially, the way people manage work and their personal life has changed dramatically where personal factors take precedence over external factors on what is important to both businesses and employees. The pandemic has been harsh on everyone alike and has miserably disturbed the wellbeing of the people but as the impact of the pandemic started fading both employees and their employers started focusing on mental wellbeing more than ever.

Today, employees are concerned about work-life balance, flexibility, and mental health and these are their prime expectations from their employers. Thus, organizations must build a foundation that encourages empathy, trust, respect, fairness and compassion.

In an interview with HT Lifestyle, Ranjith Menon, Senior Vice President – Global Human Resources at HGS, 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 encouraged conducting various internal workshops online and offline 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 shows from financial experts who guide employees on how to manage their financial goals. For emotional wellness, provide counselling and lifestyle management advice not only to employees but to their immediate family members. Organisations 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, it is critical for businesses to create and reinforce a holistic culture of wellbeing for their employees.”

Sumeet Doshi, Country Manager - India at Ultimate Kronos Group, said, “In the current global scenario, organisations 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 which encourages the culture of diversity, equality, inclusion and belonging (DEI&B).”

He advised, “Enable organisations to quickly adapt to evolving policies while ensuring its fair and just application 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 organisation, which in turn, would deliver better outcomes for the organisation. 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, or 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.”

Sekhar Garisa, CEO of Monster India, highlighted, "There are a few pre-requisites 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 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.”