For Infosys to succeed as a company, the health, and well-being of our greatest assets, i.e. our people are extremely important. Having a healthy and productive workforce allows us to offer the best for our clients as well as is great for the long term success of our employees. Given the challenges of today’s environment, employee burnout is a lurking issue and if not given immediate attention, can significantly affect the productivity of the workforce. Having realized the impact a while back, HALE (Health Assessment and Lifestyle Enrichment) was Infosys’ response to counter the increasingly evident issues at the workplace like busy schedules that had long periods of sedentary activity and irregular working hours.
To add to the mix, there were complex transitions from college to work, from rural to urban settings and lack of suitable leisure opportunities. The objective of HALE is to have a “proactive approach to health and life enrichment” aimed at increased awareness, overall wellbeing resulting in good health, reduced stress levels, a safe work environment and improved productivity levels. The HALE initiative focuses on the increasing emotional value-add for our employees by optimizing their health, quality of life and work environment. The goal is to ensure healthy and happy employees who will be more productive and in the long-term, add to our competitive edge in business. HALE strives to achieve this goal through a set of offerings that focus on health, safety, stress, and leisure.
Emphasizing the importance of mental health in wellness programs and including wellness objectives to help promote healthy mental well-being is the focus. We are also embracing digital technologies to custom design our programs and make them more interactive as well as easily available to users. Some of the interventions that have worked well for us are:
Samaritans:
A peer to peer counseling network of Infoscions who are trained in barefoot counseling and provide counseling to other employees thereby helping them cope with personal and professional issues. Employees us this to discuss both professional and personal situations and this has helped many.
Professional Counseling:
- HALE Hotline– Provides professional counseling help in times of crisis. A hotline facility has been made available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, whereby calling in, instant access is provided to a trained professional. Each location has a dedicated local number. Issues like cases of serious mental depression, substance abuse, attempted suicides and relationship issues, etc. have been resolved through hotline service.
- Professional Counseling at locations- Counseling at the campus for our employees by professionally trained counselors that provide face to face advice to the employees.
Online wellness tools:
- HALE Tool – An online wellness survey that ends with a professional de-brief session that suggests changes to lifestyle, diet habits and other interventions based on the analysis.
- Stress Audit Tool: An online tool (questionnaire) created for self-awareness that assists employees in identifying their stress levels and thereby seek help or take appropriate measures to improve their mental health basis the results.
Expert Talks:
By professional counselors, external speakers on topics ranging from mental health at the workplace to depression to managing work-life balance. Online chats with the counselors are also available at an employee’s perusal. The segmentation approach is followed where our objective is to have focused sessions for the target population, ours being Millennials, Family members, Women, etc.
Key highlights (last FY)
- 21,000+ health checks conducted across locations.
- We have on-boarded 20+ health & wellness vendors on InfyGold+ (our e-commerce platform used for employee engagement and rewards) wherein these vendors provide wellness offerings at discounted rates exclusively to our employees and their family members.
- This year, our key focus was on enhancing the importance of mental health & mindfulness where we conducted 50+ expert talks across locations on topics directly/indirectly impacting the mental health of an individual as well as workshops on mindfulness.
- The segmented approach in terms of the campaigns was followed to alleviate the key health & wellbeing risks. To name a few, we conducted a sleep wellness campaign emphasizing the importance of sleep, WHO Health Days to raise awareness on health issues, International Yoga Day, Anti-Tobacco Campaign, HALE Run, etc.
- Focus on Healthy Eating by introducing healthy eating kiosks on the campus.
- Enhancing Quality of Life: Sessions on Lifestyle management, digital detox to ensure employees are able to improve the quality of life.
- Partnered with famous fitness brands to promote group workouts for employees.
Note- These are some excerpts from Krish Shankar, Group Head- HR, Infosys Interview by SightsIn Plus in July 2019 edition. To read more – https://sightsinplus.com/2019/08/14/in-conversation-with-krish-shankar-group-head-hr-infosys-on-cb/
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