Mind matters

As a company, we are aware that employees today have to juggle constantly between personal and professional priorities, which can leave them feeling overwhelmed at times. An inability to feel in charge of one’s life and emotions can also hamper growth and advancement in one’s professional life. The challenges of an urban life are complex and can have a domino effect on one’s mental and emotional well-being.

So what can we do to make things easier for our employee? The first step is to recognize that an employee’s issues, personal or professional, are in fact an organisation’s problems too – what concerns our employees, concerns us.  

At Star, we have put together an in-house initiative called ‘Emotional Wellness Program’ in collaboration with Santulan Behavioural Services to help one get rid of the fear that stops us from sharing our troubles. Through this anonymous program, employees can talk about everything from relationship issues, marital problems, grief intervention, stress management, and even confidence building with a trained expert.

“Finding harmony in our work life and personal life is key to a healthy existence. We want our employees to be happy and in control of their lives. For this, we provide them the benefit of an in-house emotional counselling program that helps them air out their problems with an expert who can guide them towards a clear solution,” says Amita Maheshwari, Head – Human Resources, APAC & India, DMED.

The Program empowers employees with easy-to-apply behavioral tips in daily life to tackle a variety of issues.

A research conducted by Santulan confirms that employees going through stress in their personal lives could suffer constant, low energy levels, lack of focus and absence of mindfulness. This was a result of an imbalance in the way we handle our work and personal lives – and one of the most common causes of this problem was a feeling of “lack of time”.

“For example, we help employees get into the habit of a science-backed everyday schedule (EDS). This technique helps employees match their energy levels to the task at hand; we help them build rituals to combat procrastination; we also educate employees on the importance of picking up an activity or a hobby in their free time and help them overcome inertia of rest. This takes more effort than watching TV, but proves to make you happier in the long run,” says Khyati Gupta Babbar, Santulan team.

The Emotional Wellness Program can be used by employees to manage workplace emotions and anxieties, cultivate new perspectives and habits that can help them get ahead at work.

“We call it upskilling. You are picking up new skills to learn how to perform under pressure, alleviate stress, manage energy levels and time, and learn conflict management in relationships,” says Khyati Gupta Babbar, lead researcher, Santulan. Babbar adds that the most common issues that employees face in the organisation today are related to personal relationship stress (marital and pre-marital), how to achieve work-life balance, how to better your concentration abilities, and how to deal with a tough supervisor.

With this initiative, we wanted to create an enabling environment for our workforce and wanted to say, ‘There is help, you are not alone, and no problem is too small’, and ensure that we give employees the best resources to address the problem at hand.

After seeking counselling, a shift was observed in people’s lifestyles. On an average, a 40% drop in stress levels was reported by the employees after seeking support. In its second year, more than 150 employees at Star have taken assistance of this program for a variety of reasons. Even daily conversations saw a healthy improvement. Supervisors could help their team with constructive feedback on issues that needed attention which resulted in richer environment at work. As the Santulan team puts it, “It has helped employees help employees”.

We harbour a culture that believes in the power of giving. We truly value an individual’s need to have a rich, wholesome life both in and out of the office.

The Emotional Wellness Program is a round-the-clock support system, available free-of-charge for all our employees, their spouse, dependent children, parents, parents-in-law and siblings. It is offered in several languages such as English, Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Marathi and Kannada. To make things a little more comfortable, this service is completely private and anonymous, without any intervention from the HR team. This ensures that the stigma that surrounds counselling is no longer a threat to your wellness.

This is how we inspire lives, by helping each other.