Focusing on Wellness and Wellbeing: Understanding and Designing With A Focus on Wellness, Wellbeing and Mental Health
This panel was part of the Hacking HR event: FORWARD II
After all that was discussed in Forward II, we now came to discuss more about mental health. Conversations around mental health and wellbeing have been more present in the previous years but we still have a lot to learn and unlearn. In this panel, we invited Anju Choudhary to talk about Understanding and Designing With A Focus on Wellness, Wellbeing, and Mental Health.
In the previous panel, we talked about designing talent strategy in a volatile marketplace but now we also got to think about focusing on health and wellbeing in a volatile world. Anju shares that even something as simple as technology not supporting us in our daily activities can be a big problem that can lead to burnout.?
To start off the conversation, we asked Anju how does she take care of herself?
Anju works at a very fast paced environment and supporting people in that setup can be difficult. She shares that they have a cute slack channel called Dogs of Next Role and by the end of the day, together with her kids, they would look at cute puppy pictures which help them relieve stress. If she have time over the weekend, she also listen to podcasts that help her rejuvenate and engages her to drive back to her mission. Another thing she mentioned is spending time with her children, doing arts and crafts, hiking, and yoga. She prioritizes herself over the weekend because she knows that during the week she have to prioritize work and her children for the most parts. She does not also expect herself to be giving her 100% all day long, we all have our peaks and downtimes we just have to accept it and re-energize.?
For the next question, we asked her how does she help people to take care of themselves? How does she promote self-care in an industry that is not necessarily known for it??
We all know that being in the industry of technology can be quite challenging and most professionals are always at risk of burning out. The speed with which technology is changing keeps them on their toes so their employees are always striving to do their best. She shared that their organization has been very intentional about the talks on mental health and wellbeing so they have programs that are designed to support their employees in a holistic way. Managers are doing more check-ins with their team and encourage them to take more breaks. She suggests to take breaks as an organization, they implemented recharge days every quarter. She also mentioned having discussion circles around the topic of burnout, resilience, and mental health among others since it allows employees to connect and have some coaching for these topics. It must be a continuous conversation. It is very helpful to know what’s the best way to have a conversation around it.?
Moving forward to the conversation, we asked her how does she connect the dots between selfcare strategies with the meaning they have for the success of the business.
It is important for leaders to walk the talk. They must be the first to take care of themselves so people can look up to them be influenced to also take breaks. We must also encourage managers to have a conversation with their employees. If your organization is implementing these mental health initiatives, it is crucial for leaders to show up because it will show how important the topic is for them. Lead by example so people can follow effectively without feeling the pressure.?
The next question we asked was how do you bring leadership on board in this journey.
At some point, we send out emails on a Sunday afternoon because we are preparing for the week but what we don’t know is we put pressure on our employees to think about work on their free time. Be more mindful about these things. You can schedule send it during their working hours or give a preface that it is not urgent to respond and that they can respond in their own time. Let your employees speak up and make sure they feel heard because after all these initiatives are for their own good. Creating policies and processes based on employees need is the right leadership behavior. Being able to ask questions and leaders responding to that questions is very helpful.
We wish that most organizations can behave like that but in reality many organizations still don’t. We then asked her in an HR perspective, how do you tell those leaders that a culture of working longer hours is unsustainable??
She shared that during pre-pandemic when many people are still in the office, you would feel the pressure if employees are staying back until 8pm because you start thinking if you are just leaving too early. When everyone was forced to be remote, it allowed everybody to think that they can have some flexibility. It opened our eyes that flexibility is an option and you can still be productive as before. So organizations need to actually open their eyes and look at their data because employees are now more aware and they would want that flexibility and support for their mental health to avoid burnout. Those organizations who are not open to provide policies about this would not survive very long since they leave employees with no choice but to leave and find another organization who offer what they are looking for. Leaders have to ask the right questions and be data driven in order to gain the insights they need for the implementation of their initiatives. It will boil down to how organization respond to employees’ needs.?
Lastly, we then asked her what don’t we have in HR to create this different story that promotes self-care, wellness, wellbeing, and mental healthcare in our organizations. What are we missing in HR? What do we need to build? What do we need to get better at
It is crucial for HR professionals to think about what their role really is about. Is it only for compliance purposes to serve the leaders? If that is the case, we are missing big time on this idea of looking at employee engagement. When we dig deeper and have a mindset of serving and engaging employees, asking them the right questions, looking into the data, and bringing it back to the leaders then we are doing the right thing. Identify how HR is truly designed. We must let the employees feel our support.?
领英推荐
It is high-time for organizations to care for their people before it is too late. Now is a great opportunity to implement mental health initiatives that are also backed up by science and data. HR can actually be the trailblazers that lead people and organizations. HR’s role is to ensure the success of the business through the success of your people.?
You may also check out the other articles on our Forward II Series:
-----------------------------------------------
The Hacking HR's Experts Council
We are thrilled to invite all Directors, VPs/SVPs, and HR C-suite level leaders in companies with over 100 employees to join us as Founding Members at the Hacking HR's Experts Council!?
The Expert Council's goal is to provide insights, ideas, recommendations and expertise about very specific topics to the thousands of members of the Hacking HR community and the extended HR global community.
?The Experts Council is also a place for community for senior HR leaders to share and also ask, to be safe while having vulnerable and open conversations about the challenges in HR, and from there to generate insights and ideas and innovations for the extended Hacking HR community!?
In addition, Founding Members in the Council will always be our priority to invite for our Hacking HR events, particularly our annual global online conference, and also podcasts, and much more!?
Almost 400 HR leaders from around the world have already joined, including multinational and local companies, for profit, nonprofit and government institutions, different sectors and industries as well.??
Do you want to join us??
Are you an HR leader (director, VP/SVP, C-Suite) in an organization with more than 100 employees??
Reach out to us: [email protected], and let us know more about you!
(Please note that at the moment we are not including consultants/vendors in the Council.)