Businesses need to reinvent themselves and rejig their policy framework to become more employee friendly in the current pandemic situation and be future ready to strategise and implement return-back-to-work solutions. This would require an empathetic approach and prudent planning backed by seamless execution without any impact to all the relevant stakeholders. Let’s look at some of the simple steps that can help business leaders to destress and maximize productivity.

Employee Welfare
The cost of employee dissatisfaction and disengagement is detrimental and it calls for immediate attention of the C level leadership to propose tangible people-centric solutions. Leaders need to develop a sense of care and wellbeing towards their team members. Employees who feel that they are being cared for, deliver superior results and leaders need to recognise this important attribute which will go a long way in maintaining a healthy emotional bond with their colleagues and team members. A holistic approach towards employee’s wellbeing is not limited to their official matters but would also cover their social, financial and physical welfare. Fostering employee wellbeing results in happier and healthier employees who help in achieving the organisational objectives and drive business growth. Investing in employee wellbeing also helps in recruiting and retaining the right talent for building a talent pipeline for the future.

Mental Health
The rapid growth of remote working has a far reaching impact on the mental health and cyber wellbeing of employees. Leaders need to exercise utmost care to address the fallout of remote working and create awareness among the digital workforce to mitigate the risk of cyber overdose. Businesses need to take adequate protective and safety measures to safeguard the interests of their staff, processes and systems for cyber threats and vulnerabilities. The leadership team needs to groom the employees to embrace a culture of mutual respect, care and consideration in all the interactions by building a healthy cyber work ethics. Leaders can role model and institutionalise value systems like resilience and integrity that help the employees handle adverse challenges and crisis situations appropriately in a fair and honest manner.

Keeping in line with remote working agenda, companies need to collaborate with their staff and provide diverse wellbeing offerings and tools for maintaining a balanced mental health. Remote wellbeing programs like online yoga, physical exercise, cooking etc can be conducted to beat the sweat and digital detox. Employee assistance programs like online counseling and virtual meditation can be kick started for providing emotional support and delivering practical solutions for the problems faced by employees. The employees need to be provided with a variety of options like webinars, burnout podcasts that can be leveraged for emotional catharsis. Having regular employee connect sessions with the senior management team would help in addressing the pain points of the staff through active employee engagement and creating a healthy problem for celebrating diversity and inclusion.

Healthy Work Life Balance
Digital technologies like video conferencing and email integration have shrunk the geographical divide and improved the connectivity and accessibility of information across different time zones. Managers and digital workforce need to focus on completing the tasks within normal business hours for maintaining a healthy work life balance. Empowering employees to help manage their work timings would result in better productivity and free up a lot of quality time in personal space. Online meetings can be scheduled and organised more flexibly based on the business requirements rather than conventional routines. Adoption of project management and collaboration apps helps in managing and execution of tasks within specific timelines that can prevent the infiltration of work into personal life. The use of online healthcare portals helps in addressing physical and emotional issues for maintaining a healthy work life balance.

Conclusion
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