Happy and Satisfied Workforce is the Key To Our Success: CHRO, Blue Dart Express

How is it important to promote mental health and specifically in this contactless world? 

Mental health is of great importance and a key functional area for our organization. The stress of contagion coupled with the socio-environmental conditions made mental health care, which was already a priority, a strategic necessity. As an organization that prioritizes its People, we recognize that a Happy Blue Darter is equivalent to a Happy Customer and we want to safeguard our colleagues’ interests always.

We have introduced several initiatives to boost employee health & productivity:

-To felicitate our hardworking employees on the frontline, we launched the Silent Heroes campaign. The Silent Heroes campaign aimed to show gratitude to our employees and thank them for their tireless service throughout the lockdown in helping our customers, the organization, and the nation at large.

- Appreciation Week: We observed appreciation week from July 20th – 24th July 2020. This year, being in the middle of the pandemic, the appreciation week was a strong tool for us to make our employees bond, feel acknowledged, heard, and appreciated.

During the Appreciation Week, we celebrated, acknowledged, and appreciated one another; be it our co-workers, team members or even colleagues from other teams or business units, for the commitment, and dedication. There was a special letter designed for the families of our Blue Darters that was delivered to their homes. We recognize the support of our family members, peers, customers and take out time to thank all of them for their indispensable contribution in our lives. This time, the appreciations have gone beyond our employees and their families to that of our customers and partners.

· We continuously encourages its employees to maintain a healthy lifestyle with regular goal setting, lifestyle assessment checks, physiotherapy, etc. which are a part of the wellness program. A mandatory health check-up is conducted for all managers aged 35 years and above and for all employees 50 and above once every year. We have also extended our medical program to include home quarantine.

While working in Flexi work styles and in the era of flattened hierarchies, To what extent do you think it is important to be people-centric?

We at our organization has always championed the ‘People First’ philosophy by encouraging creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, empowerment, and fair & equitable treatment to every one of our colleagues. A satisfied and happy workforce is the key to our success.

We believe that our employees are a key catalyst in driving forward the company’s growth and business and we also believe in an open culture where our team is encouraged to express themselves and voice their grievances freely. This, along with an assertive and motivating leadership team is what maintains the business. The 'People First Philosophy' has made Blue Dart a great place to work and the passion, zeal, and commitment exhibited by our people is visible across India, or as we like to call it, Blue Dart country. Further, at Blue Dart, we often encourage the ‘As One’ value to show teams that working together, as one, is what boosts results.

What are your views on WFH and employees' productivity during in WFH scenario?

Work from Home is the new normal and a necessity in the current situation with employee and community safety being an utmost priority. We have always emphasized the importance of our employees’ well-being and therefore our office-based employees are encouraged to and will continue to work from home until the situation improves to a great extent. However, being a part of essential services, we also shoulder the responsibility of being the Trade Facilitator of the nation and not all of our workforce can work out of the home. More than 17000 of our employees (direct and indirect) have been on the field daily (even during lockdown) to ensure continuity of the supply chain.

As we quickly adapted to the ‘new normal’ with the enforcement of the lockdown, we speedily redesigned and scaled our IT infrastructure to support this new way of working. We have also seen that working from home can be more stressful than working at the office. Our organisation recognizes that the blurring of lines between personal and professional compartments has caused a strain on employees, whether it be problems in the personal or professional front. Therefore, certain impactful steps have been taken to enhance employee morale and productivity. We have initiated some wellness and stress management programs for our employees and staff to improve their mental and physical fitness during this WFH phase. This has had a positive impact on overall employee productivity.

One piece of advice or message you would like to give it to the employees and to everyone?

As we have always maintained and emphasized especially during the current prevailing pandemic, our employees’ health and safety have been our first priority. We ensured that employees took all the necessary precautions for themselves as well as their families with regular sessions on immunity building, healthy habits to cultivate and maintain etc.

This pandemic has certainly brought out the immense importance of proactive steps that one has to take to boost one’s immunity and lead a good life. We continue to provide this message and encourage prioritizing health first during our morning huddles and I personally believe that the ‘new normal’ will need such interventions apart from swiftly and effectively action solutions to the problems. We need to continually motivate our employees along with educating them about their health and safety needs.

For brands and stakeholders, the pandemic created an imbalance across sectors and has turned out to be a critical leadership stress test. In this critical situation, having a concrete business continuity and contingency plan as well as an effective risk mitigation strategy will help resilient organizations find a durable solution. 

What changes did you witness during the lockdown?

At Blue Dart, our Business Continuity and Contingency Plan (BCCP) was set in motion across all departments. Our QRT – Quick Response Team was working 24x7 towards mitigating potential impacts while ensuring continuity of the supply chain across the nation. Our six Boeing - 757 freighters operated day and night across Indian skies and were prioritized to deliver medical equipment & pharmaceuticals amongst other shipments enabling the nation in its fight against the COVID 19 pandemic.

Commenting from a people front, I would say it has changed our perspective on not only how we can work but also on how we learn and collaborate without sharing the same workspace. One of the areas that we want to up-skill and invest more for all our employees is the ability to digitize and lead virtual teams. My team is also working on development modules that could be implemented digitally, collaborating on how best to help managers keep their teams motivated and engaged now that in-person interactions are rare. We are working on providing ‘relevant learning on the go’ videos to equip our Blue Darters for the future. We are now able to do all our recruitment and onboarding virtually. We are also looking at video conference-based training as a conscious choice in our colleagues’ learning roadmap.