When Neela Badami moved back to her hometown Bengaluru in 2009 and interviewed with a law firm, she had one question for them: “Is this the kind of job that will allow me to go to the gym every day?”
The answer was yes, and Badami came home to colleagues who understood there was life beyond the office.
She recalls, “When I walked into the office in big law, I couldn’t even say good morning.” “It was almost like, if you were happy and cheerful you didn’t have enough work. By 9 a.m. everyone had a tense look on their faces” Badami says his company continues to attract “boomerang” employees or people frustrated with the practices of larger companies.
The tragic event of the last few days, written by a grieving mother, has revived the conversation about toxic workplace culture. The stress of work led to the death of his 26-year-old daughter, Anna Sebastien Perrayil. Anita Augustine urges Ernst & Young Chairman Rajeev Memani To consider the work culture in your firm. Augustine wrote in a widely shared letter, “Anna would return to her room completely exhausted, sometimes collapsing on the bed without even changing her clothes, and would be bombarded with messages asking for more reports was,” Augustine wrote in a widely shared letter, describing the life of an overworked, overburdened man. Employee.
A junior employee at Ernst & Young told me that after Perrayil’s death, managers had given “a little relief” and scheduled calls to “assess our well-being”, but this is exactly the kind of knee-jerk reaction that Companies with good working practices will let you know what they try to avoid. The 2024 Gallup State of the Global Workplace report shows that 86% of Indians feel they are either “struggling” or “suffering”. The survey found that almost half the workforce is “not engaged”.
A happy employee is a productive employee, this has come out from across the research, and efforts by some to question the efficacy and effectiveness of the 70-hour work week have been touted by a handful of corporate figures as the Indian ideal. . Toxic workplaces may be increasingly common, but few companies are leading the way in the efforts they make for employee wellness.
A happy employee is a productive employee. , Photo Credits: Illustration: Sai
cricket and compassion
At LinkedIn India, Susan Mathew, director-human resources, describes the annual year-end shutdown, running from Christmas to New Year, as giving employees a chance to “completely switch off and reset.” The company’s ‘Perkup!’ The program lets employees use their allowance on anything from elder care and pet care to house cleaning and student-loan payments. Other initiatives include a fortnightly dialogue with leadership and a day each month when people can team up to focus on personal passion, learning or community service.
Axis Bank has a Wellness Sherpa program where counselors train employees to provide “emotional first aid”. “We are cognizant of the fact that people reach out to friends on their team for support,” says Harish Iyer, senior vice president and head of diversity, equity and inclusion. This is in addition to the Bank’s small team of in-house consultants and EAP (Employee Assistance Programme) service providers.
Barclays India employees have access to unlimited and confidential advisory support; The company organizes two-month long ‘Olympiads’ with games like carrom, chess, table tennis, badminton, cricket and futsal (there are over 70 cricket teams this year). Barclays was among those who persuaded insurers to cover gender reassignment surgery and hormone replacement therapy; And it has a liberal mixed working policy.
The four-year-old Barclays campus in Pune has a playground, cricket nets and a rooftop tapas bar, multiple dining spaces, relaxation areas, a virtual reality area with gaming consoles and a fully stocked gym. It’s part of their holistic approach, says Arun Krishnamurthy, head of human resources, in which he lists five elements of mind, body, social, financial and workplace. “Only when all these elements come together can we say we are concerned about the well-being of employees.”
Godrej Industries group says it consciously worked to revise its care policies this year. “We have strengthened the support we offer to new parents of any gender,” says Parmesh Shahani, head of the Godrej DEI Lab. “This includes doing more for new mothers, but also secondary caregiver leave. has also been extended, support for elder care has been introduced, so you can free up time and get better support for older people – and all this is built on top of policies to look after yourself, mental health. With help.” Unlimited sick leave and flexi-work options are part of the support framework for employees with chronic illnesses.
modeling behavior
Other companies hold managers accountable not by monitoring work output but by tracking practices, such as how many of their peers they acknowledge for praise or how late they hold meetings and the pronouns they choose for their employees. How much we respect him. Many companies have anonymous feedback mechanisms because they know that all office culture flows from the top. “More than policies and structures, role model behavior is important,” says Meena Sinha, vice president and head, human resources and communications, RR Donnelly India.
Lavanya Garg, director of partnerships and people at the Good Business Lab (GBL), a nonprofit that works with businesses that employ blue-collar workers to help create better workplaces, says her work helped define their office culture. “Because our external mission is to inspire businesses to take better care of their employees, we knew from day one that we had to walk the talk. We don’t expect people to work weekends, we have a minimum number of vacation days a year and a flexible vacation policy. If you’re not taking enough days off, your manager will push you to do so,” says Garg. “We truly believe that time away from work is important for the well-being of employees.” Parental leave – as the GBL calls it – is 26 weeks for the primary carer and 13 weeks for the secondary carer.
GBL makes the business case for workers’ well-being, highlighting its relationship with productivity. Inache, GBL’s anonymous redressal tool, allows workers on 50 factory floors across the country to lodge complaints or respond via call or text message, many of whom are women. “Having an opportunity to report can have an impact on how they feel about their workplace,” says Garg. Complaints can range from the quality of canteen food to the temperature on the factory floor or an intimidating environment. Could even be a maker supervisor.
colonial hangover
“‘Everything is urgent’, ‘You have to see it now’, ‘Take your laptop with you when you go on holidays’… it’s all nonsense,” says India Ashok, a Bengaluru-based neuropsychologist who works with companies. Let’s work together. Optimize your work culture, and a strong proponent of the four-day week. Even Japan, which is understaffed, has a brutal work culture and is punishable by death for overwork – Karoshi – Experimenting with shorter work weeks.
Ashok believes toxic workplaces are a remnant of colonialism, a monster that developed when India became a call center for America in the 2000s. “American workers did not want to do work that involved rotating shifts, staying up late. They found it cheaper to outsource and didn’t care whether shift work harmed our mental or physical health,” she says. Indian IT companies were the first to adopt this work culture.
A recent letter written by Securities and Exchange Board of India employees to the Finance Ministry said, “Shouting, scolding and public humiliation in meetings have become common.” The letter cites distrust, lack of respect, pitting employees against each other and an atmosphere of fear.
Vineet Nair, former CEO of HCL Technologies, was one of the few business leaders to directly address Parayil’s death, accusing companies of “exploiting” young employees under the guise of “training’ or ‘preparation for the real world’. Warned against doing so.
Flexibility and care for all
There are many things that a company can do to improve its work culture. “Really put your money where your mouth is, not the greenwashing carewashing bit,” says Ashok. “Don’t offer stress management or yoga sessions when you see people quitting because of burnout.” He suggests that companies leverage AI to complete some boring/repetitive tasks.
RR Donnelly’s Sinha says flexibility is key. “We understand and accept that well-being means different things to different people, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach. So, we give employees options,” she says. “For example, we don’t have mandatory training hours. “Instead, we provide them access to learning resources and curated courses that they can take at a time and pace that is convenient for them.”
Barclays’ Krishnamurthy says it is a mistake to see the focus on well-being at the expense of productivity. “We need to dispel the notion that resilience and care are only for people with special needs,” he says. “They are extremely important to everyone.” Flexibility can only be normalized if top executives take the lead and make use of available accommodations, such as using a break in the workday to go to the gym or leaving early if their schedule allows.
As for how do good companies respond when bad things happen? “When events happen that go against our ethos, we must first accept them. Then identify not only the ‘what’ and ‘who’, but also the ‘why’. Address the underlying cause rapidly and effectively. Nipped it in the bud,” says Sinha. “Toxicity in the workplace can be harmful in myriad ways, but only if we let it. We have the power to stop this.”
The author is a Bengaluru-based journalist and co-founder of India Love Project on Instagram.
published – October 18, 2024 04:07 PM IST
