"Duty Of Care Is The Core Of Well-Being,:" Shruti Bharadwaj

After the Covid pandemic, the well-being of employees at the workplace and those who are working remotely is being widely discussed. At the individual level, feelings of well-being are fundamental to the overall health of an individual, as well as for organisations, believes Shruti Bharadwaj, Head of HR, Nutrition and Ice Cream, South Asia at Hindustan Unilever

Also, well-being enables the workforce to successfully overcome difficulties in their personal and professional lives.

Bharadwaj said that in the last 2 years of the pandemic, there has been a huge change in work, workplace, and the workforce that we had not conceived until the pandemic.

The first major change is the massive digitisation at every level in the country and abroad and the second significant change is the starting of a conversation on well-being. The pandemic became a major fulcrum in the whole discussion of well-being.

She further said, as employers and HRs, we should take seriously the well-being of our employees and need to dig deep into the real meaning of well-being.

The duty of care is the core of well-being. Each individual should put care towards themselves, leaders towards the team and organisation towards employees at every level including vendors to distributors, she added.

Organisations must have their own well-being framework. She told about Unilever's well-being framework and said that it is all about holistic well-being, which means mental to physical well-being and having a purposeful approach toward well-being to be emotionally confident at the workplace.

She emphasised that after the pandemic, organisations have to focus on the holistic well-being of not only employees but the whole chain of the workforce. The ways of achieving holistic well-being may include insurance and financial support, unlimited special leave for well-being, holistic support for families of deceased employees and policies for survivors.

Also, Programmes like employee assistance programmes (EAPs), well-being seminars and vaccination calls in the case of the pandemic.

In a concluding remark, she says, we need to bring the servant leadership philosophy to the workplace. All leaders should learn to put their arms around their employees and work together.