Listening with your eyes wide open!

Inspiration and aha moments strike closer to home more often than any other place. No wonder home is synonymous with ‘happy place’ for most of us. Among the many things that impacted our lives last year, the integration of home and office in the most instant (forced) partnerships in recent times changed the worldview of what ‘home’ was once defined for some. In one way, it opened a portal into personal lives of others – we became no strangers to spouses, partners, parents, children, pets, plants, pressure cooker whistles and other prominent features of our colleagues’ lives. It also gave some of us glimpses of vulnerability that perhaps we couldn’t easily see at the workplace. Providing great experiences in the workplace has been something we always stood for. We did it well, looking at the employee lifecycle to ensure the best of the best for our people. However, these times have taught us that our role as HR practitioners go beyond to first truly impact people’s lives - everything else follows.

If there’s one thing I never miss telling my team each time we roll out a new policy or benefit its “If the work we do today makes a difference even to one person, you can say that we’ve done our job right”. It is imperative to create experiences for people that go beyond the professional dimension to truly make a difference – and a difference that lasts. The right experiences power the mental & emotional capacity of our people to be productive & thrive. That’s when everything changed last year, we had to rethink our strategy in how we help our employees run at their best.

They say the best thing to do in solving a problem is listening - and we listened to what our people were saying & also what they were not saying. Here is some of my top 5 things we did to put help our employees by just listening.

1. Time off: ‘Always on’ is something we are so used to in this digital world, but there are times we need to breathe and take time off to focus on things that matter the most. Therefore, we not only provided time off for burnout, but also enhanced our leaves to cater to the need of our people. Today family is an all-encompassing word that constitutes both people and pets without whom our lives would be incomplete. Therefore, we introduced Family Care leave for employees to care for their loved one in times of their illness and hospitalization. Our most recent enhancement is the inclusion of Mental Health (illness) as part of our sick leaves. It’s easy to tell one’s manager the need for a day off due to illness like a cough or cold. But when it comes to matters of mental wellbeing, it still remains a sensitive topic and the only way we can address this taboo is by being aware and speaking about it more openly.
2. Turing the clock around: SAP already had future ready infrastructure and policies giving us ample flexibility even before the pandemic. However, it was a challenge for all of us to get accustomed to working this way on a sudden and long-term basis. Meeting fatigue soon took prominence with most of us in back to back calls, skipping meals and even compromise on basic hygiene breaks. We took a conscious call to reduce meeting times from 30-minute meetings by 5 minutes and anything longer than that by 10 minutes. We also introduced No-Meeting-Fridays and Learning Wednesday’s for employees to take a break from routine and focus on self. This small change made a big difference in helping us balance our time well while reminding ourselves of much needed breathing time.
3. Wellbeing in the front Seat: Prior to the pandemic, we already had in place our Employee Assistance Program (EAP), Sahayog, available for counselling services for both employees and their families. Along with strongly promoting this channel, we also designed customized programs and curated offerings for employees on mental wellness ranging from managing stress at work to developing emotional intelligence in children. When it came to physical wellbeing, put in place “Come Alive” with virtual yoga, mindful eating, Zumba, desk yoga and other activities that could encourage employees to be physically fit and find innovative ways to exercise within the four walls of their home. We also designed small actionable tips and tricks called "nudges", influencing healthy micro behaviors to manage stress better, including taking healthy breaks, eating right, digital detox and more.
4. Standing up even when it isn’t expected of you: As human resources practitioners, we know that employees lead complex, fascinating, and sometimes turbulent lives. After all, employees are people no different from our friends, neighbors, or family members. Therefore, as much as we do everything in our power to support a loved one even when it’s not enforced on us, why must we wait for legal & governmental mandates to impact the lives of our people? We all are aware the statistics around this topic in our country, can we safely say that our employees do not fall in that statistic? We didn’t wait for something to happen for us to then get working on it. We therefore ensured as an organization, SAP in India has an official policy to support employees & their families against domestic violence. We established a strong support channel for anyone in distress, including seasoned EAP partners and an Employee Support Group so that as an organization, we stand united with our peers to fight this violence.
5. Influencing the right leadership culture: We all know the saying - Leadership is action, not a position. Every leader comes with a unique style, but this style must be redefined in the current context. A key component for achieving a healthy work environment is leadership. The two most important assets to effective leadership in the present times are compassion and empathy. We still encounter challenges of working from home, so one can only imagine how much more it takes to lead from home. People may go through difficult times while they are sitting back at home and struggling to give in their best efforts, and a leader needs an intent and insight to understand these circumstances. We therefore enabled our leaders with topics stressing on the importance of creating an atmosphere of psychological safety and a culture of inclusion, partnered with a manager toolkit, that helped us take the step forward to create an environment that gives employees the feeling of belongingness.  

We know our investments in employee well-being goes beyond making them happier and healthier. It sparks a whole value chain of engagement to belonging, which in turn leads to a high performing & productive workforce fueling innovation that leads to customer value! Our people inspire us to do better and this new world of working has plenty of opportunity to create experiences that translate beyond 12 to 14 inches of your screen. We live in an experience economy with “experience” being the only currency that matters. It’s not just creating temporary ‘wow’ moments anymore, but really designing relevant offerings that have a lasting impact. With so many lives in our capacity to care for, we cannot miss the opportunity of going above and beyond for our people. This pandemic has left plenty of Easter Eggs to get us thinking in this direction – all we need to do is listen with our eyes wide open and act wisely.