Work-life balance, flexibility and mental health are at the top of the employees’ minds, which in post-COVID times have increased significantly because health and wellness in the workplace can affect everyone. Nearly 70% of employees suffer from stress, which is a leading cause behind most illnesses. Stress can also increase blood pressure levels resulting in an increased risk for heart disease and stroke.
Throwing light on different aspects of health and wellness during Health4All Episode-23, Ms Dibya Prakash, Wellness Therapist & Founder, Metamorphosis said, “If we wish to enjoy life, we need to have good health. There should be a complete balance between your work-life, family-life and wellness. It is often seen that employees work for 8-12 hours a day and in this process, they forget to take care of the basics of their health. Workplace wellness becomes very important for many reasons. Employees working with corporate don’t get sunlight, which creates vitamin D deficiency. They neither see sunset nor sunrise. They lack physical activity and are mentally stressed.”
Speaking on the role of technology in ensuring workplace wellness during Health4All Episode-23, Dr Satyender Goel, Founder & CEO, India Health Link (IHL) said, “Technology is playing a pivotal role in ensuring workplace wellness, but there is a need to integrate it with employees’ wellness and inculcate awareness among them. There is a lack of education and awareness among the employees about their health. Awareness about knowing what prevention is required to stay healthy. For this, the corporate should have a mandate in place to inculcate health awareness amongst their employees.”
Elaborating further on the advantages of technology, Dr Goel added, “We have developed a self-diagnostic automated ATM size screening device (hPoD) keeping in mind the need of the Indians and its easy accessibility. It is handy and can be placed in the cafeteria or any area where it is easy for the corporate employees to access. Employees working with the corporate can sit and get their (20+) vitals checked within 5 minutes such as blood pressure, ECG and BMI. One can get the analysis of the screening that helps get the personalised preventive and curative needs of the individual. This device is based on the most advanced technology and whosoever has used it so far has had a good experience and is happy with its user-friendly features.”
Ms Prakash further added, “Employees get hypertension, thyroid and diabetes due to poor lifestyle and stress. Therefore, corporates should take care of their employees if they want more productivity and allow them flexibility. As employees working with corporates are stressed, they need to have 7-9 hours of sleep daily as it is very important to stay physically and mentally healthy. And the ideal time to sleep is from 11 pm to 5 am at night. Like smoking zones, the corporates must have wellness zones so that employees might be relaxed and recharged themselves for more productivity.”
Speaking on the importance of workplace wellness during Health4All Episode-23, Mr Jagat Dangi, Head – Group Employees Relations and Skill Development at Spark Minda Group said, “To ensure workplace wellness during COVID, we did organise several counselling sessions for the employees wherein reputed public health experts of the country counselled them and advised how to manage work-life balance. We also organised interactive sessions with the COVID warriors to the rest of the employees so that they might feel confident and able to combat the impending COVID situation. We look forward to providing many fitness policies to our employees such as providing Jim membership to them so that they might be doing it regularly to stay fit.”
Speaking on how to inculcate awareness among the employees during Health4All Episode-23, Mr Vijay Wassan, Joint General Manager – HR, Admin & HSE in M/S Knorr-Bremse India Pvt., Ltd., Palwa said, “During COVID, we incentivised our employees to have their vitals screened regularly because it helped them in staying healthy. We also started an initiative – a walk-in mile for your child’s smile. In that initiative, one had to complete 125000 steps in a month. Likewise, we have taken so many initiatives of that sort to help the employees stay healthy.”