In Conversation With Harshvendra Soin, Chief People Officer & Head - of Marketing, Tech Mahindra

How would you define employee experience within your organization? Is there a quantifiable measurement tool like a happiness index within your organization to gauge employee experience?

At Tech Mahindra, we believe in ‘wellness before business’, and employee wellbeing continues to be among our topmost priorities. We believe in keeping the conversations going and communicating with all our stakeholders, whether it is our associates, customers, or society at large. The aim is to celebrate each moment and empower everyone to Rise.

We have rolled out several #WellnessFirst initiatives for a happier, healthier, and more productive workforce. For instance, our Wealth of Wellness (WoW) program ensures preventive, personalized, and proactive holistic wellness across all 8 dimensions of wellness - physical, emotional, financial, occupational, intellectual, social, spiritual, and environmental. Empathetic Managers: AMIGO Program and People Care Manager Program was rolled out where 80+ Training & Learning sessions were conducted. This included trainings for Managers (sensitization & to equip them with handling employee’s wellness concerns) and Employees (building resilience & develop coping strategies) to build psychological safety. 

Further, as a leading digital transformation provider, Tech Mahindra has always strived to leverage its digital prowess to establish best practices for its employees, clients, and partner ecosystem. Along these lines, Emotional Wellness Self-Assessment Tools like Emotional Wellness Test are made available, where more than 8500+ employees have assessed their stress levels to self-care. Curated Webinars/Interventions are provided for employees to relevant insights on manager sensitization & building psychological safety, and managing personal and professional stressors to have a good work life balance. So far, 10000+ employees have participated in these interventions.       

Tech Mahindra has received a Gold Stevie for innovative use of HR Technology and a Bronze Stevie for being the most valuable employer across Asia Pacific. This recognition is a testament of how we adapted our HR systems to the new normal to create positive experiences for all our employees. In future too we will continue our focus on the safety and well-being of our employees as well as the society, truly reflecting our spirit to be a ‘Company with a Purpose.’

What initiatives or programs does the company have in place to transform the employee experience?

Across the globe, four in five HR leaders report that mental health and well-being is a top priority for their organization. Many companies offer a host of wellness benefits such as yoga, meditation app subscriptions, well-being days, and trainings on time management and productivity. At Tech Mahindra, “Wellness before Business” is our Mantra since a workforce can only be productive if it is healthy.

In tandem with this belief, we were amongst the first in the industry to appoint a ‘wellness officer’, to institutionalize holistic wellness of all associates, and to ensure access to medicine, hospitals, and other medical supplies. We have rolled out several initiatives to transform employee experience at the work place. While Mhealthy, Wellness 101 Challenge Via Fitness app – A global wellness challenge,  vaccination drives, and a 24/7 Emergency Response Helpline take care of the physical health aspect of employees, an ‘Associate Welfare Trust’, is designed to provide financial assistance to those in need and ease off financial burdens. We have also designed & installed Chat-bot Yoga buddy called Aasana on every desktop to help employees perform yoga while working from home/office.

Furthermore, to enhance employee mental health, an AI driven tool that uses positive reinforcement to nudge Managers to improve- frequency of communication, reduce negative tone, reinforce positive vocabulary and recognize good work – with their teams as well as improve their managerial effectiveness, was launched. This was aided with Empathetic Managers program with experts guiding managers on building psychologically safe workplaces. Programs like TechmighTea connected random colleagues for virtual coffee/ tea meetings which often lead to serendipitous innovation. 

Additionally, during the pandemic,  virtual ‘water-cooler’ moments through initiatives like All Hand Meets with CXO, Lockdown Contests, Location Connects etc. along with family-aided strong bonding between teams and people in general.  

We believe wellness programs can improve individual performance, build resilience, address mental and physical health issues, provide job satisfaction and can complement efforts to build a strong employee experience and enhance organizational performance; and this is what the company shall continue to strive for in the future as well. 

What challenges have you faced in creating the right employee experience amid a hybrid model of work?

Holistic wellness and creating enhanced employee experience has always been at the centre of our talent strategy and Tech Mahindra has always taken steps to protect employees and empower them with flexibility while concurrently ensuring business continuity. For us, the concept of working from home was not new. Even before the crisis, we had a formal ‘work from home’ policy and guidelines for our associates. However,  to enable work from home at this scale and all at once, was indeed a challenging task but our associates and leaders stood up to the challenge and responded at war footing. 

In all of this, technology has played a key role in enabling work from home and ensuring business continuity. It also empowered us to communicate regularly with our associates through employee resource groups and other corporate communication channels to mentor and motivate them at all times. 

Resultantly, we have seen high productivity levels and even the creativity and innovation levels are at an all-time high during work from home. This new way of working has enabled greater flexibility for the employees as there is no commute or travel required. Also, while the hybrid work model is certainly allowing us the flexibility to save up on hefty real estate costs, it is also enabling us to onboard skilled talent from tier two and three cities.

To this day, Tech Mahindra continues to have the flexibility to work from anywhere and the trend of hybrid work. With technology as the enabler, our very effective work-from-home solutions run on a platform that is extremely secure and that makes use of the Mahindra's operational procedures and techniques to make sure that international standards are being followed. Additionally, customers are also gaining from a talented workforce and workforce that has received specialized training through self-learning modules and virtual classrooms. We have witnessed the advantages of establishing a successful work-at-home model including employee happiness, a highly motivated staff, and greater client flexibility. 

Professional growth and development opportunities are important indicators to provide a holistic experience to employees. How should organisations address the challenges of employee redundancy at work?

Our people have been our biggest champions in shaping not just the brand experiences for our global and diverse set of clients but also our internal culture. Hence, we strive to cater holistic growth opportunities to them. 

Tech Mahindra has developed unique upskilling platforms to create an ecosystem for higher scale and speed of skill development – which is the need of the hour to evade redundancy at work. The intent of the upskilling platform is to empower the employees and associates with skills that will enable them to identify their goals and aspirations and make them future-ready.  Such learning interventions and accelerated skill-development initiatives are empowering employees for a seamless transition to digital jobs. Employees are being provided with a holistic learning experience across multiple domains — technical, functional, behavioural and professional. Based on their current and relevant skills, they are being guided toward career paths and suitable opportunities. Additionally, we have also curated policies and programs that focus on developing skills and forging career paths for each of our associates.

As a global digital transformation leader, we continue to leverage digital technologies to enhance human experiences and talent development to meet changing business and market requirements. Upskilling/ re-skilling is empowering our associates to identify and pursue their career aspirations at a speed of their preference, while also giving the tools to work with renewed passion and confidence to create future-ready workforce ‘today’.

How does the company address aspects like work-life balance and employee well-being in the new normal?

We, at Tech Mahindra, believe the future of work is ‘Human-Centred’. Our focus has been on providing ‘meaningful work’ and creating an enabling environment where our employees feel trusted, respected, recognized and empowered. As a mega employer, having a dispersed and large workforce, we have leveraged technology to create hyper personalised experiences and Moments of Truth that embedded ‘People Engagement’ in our core business strategy, TechMHRNxt. 

We focus on providing a workplace culture centred around driving positive change, celebrating each moment, ensuring work-life balance and empowering all associates to Rise. TM . Embarked on an HR transformation journey called TechMHRNxt, Tech Mahindra is empowering its associates by providing them with opportunities of connecting, co-creating, and celebrating at work. Through a myriad of wellness programs, upskilling options, reward and recognition efforts, progressive policies for diversity and inclusion, Tech Mahindra is fostering an environment where learning, growth and innovation is promoted. Under its latest #lovetobeTechM initiative, the associates are encouraged to share anecdotes, stories and testimonials on – celebrating good times, surviving the tough times and preparing for the future – together.