Subhashini Ponnappa – Head, HR & Admin, APAC, 75F
“The pandemic, besides teaching us about the importance of our physical health, taught us to keep a check on our mental well-being. Entering the lockdown phase was hard, but it is only now that many realise how much harder to come out of it. The transition is stressful, overwhelming, and exhausting, not only at a personal but also at a professional level.
Adding to the stress is the moving-back-to-office scenario. The readjusting itself has taken a toll on many employees, impacting them especially mentally. In such a scenario, it is important for employers to build a healthy and welcoming workplace environment for employees, one in which they feel they can open up about these issues.
At 75F, we’ve been undertaking many collective initiatives in our approach to heed the concerns of our employees’ mental well-being. Towards this, we also ensure that the demands of work are not detrimental to our employees’ well-being. We focus on employee morale by organise employee engagement activities such as to help them feel at home even while in their workplace. To build team motivation, we also give away quarterly gifts, periodic recognition, and rewards—including tenure completion rewards. We organize regular team outings and festive get-togethers, as well as CSR activities such as World Environment Day, to avoid our employees from becoming mentally exhausted at work.
Another of our steps towards ensuring our employees’ health is by maintaining general hygiene in our workspaces. We take pride in ensuring factors that add to the physical environment, such as indoor temperature and proper ventilation for air and light, are monitored so that employees are comfortable while working in these spaces. This alone, we have noted, has helped improve their work efficiency.”
Priyan DC, CEO, Star Squared PR
Mental health awareness has received significant attention in the media in recent years. Drastic changes at the workplace such as remote working, virtual meetings and lack of social engagement for prolonged periods has resulted in stress among employees more than ever before. At Star Squared PR we recognize the importance of this and have tried to incorporate a host of initiatives into our daily routine to address these concerns as we moved back into the physical office. As an organisation we believe in building a collaborative team and a healthy workplace that will allow everyone to thrive individually and contribute to the overall success of the organisation.
Employee engagement activities have been calendared on a regular basis at the office with the aim of encouraging increased networking and one to one engagement with other team members. We also recently organised an off-site with the whole team, which included a host of outdoor activities as well as an interactive session on mental well-being with one of India’s leading psychologists, Ajanta De of Inner Sight. The session covered common challenges such as depression, anxiety, and the need to adjust in a new environment with many people having to relocate for jobs. We believe that such engagements on a regular basis can help build a comfort zone at work where employees feel valued and respected and are given an opportunity to address any challenges they may have.