What is Swiggy's WorkNextPolicy?
"When we considered what "work" might entail during and after the pandemic, we discovered that a one-size-fits-all approach does not work for everyone, and that office attendance is neither a requirement nor a guarantee of success. And hence, we felt the need to shift to an employee-centric approach."
To determine the future of work at Swiggy, Girish Menon, Head HR, Swiggy and his team put together a study in mid-2021 with surveys and focus group discussions. With the participation of over 1,650 team members working out of more than 20 locations, they sought to understand the preferences and perceptions of business leaders and employees across different roles.
Introduced in November 2021, Swiggy’s Future of Work policy is a flexible working model for all employees based on their nature of work. This ‘Future of Work’ Policy is structured under three mandates taking into account the different roles and locations across the organisation. These mandates came into being when we started to think about what “work” would look like through and after the pandemic. We observed that employees were able to balance the needs of the organization while enjoying the perks of flexibility. Our aim was to maximize flexibility for employees in a post-pandemic world within the contours of their job nature and that's how we came up with the future of work mandates for our employees. The studies internally also pointed to the fact that we are diverse as a company and flexibility is a spectrum based on the job and the business you are a part of.
Currently, Swiggsters work out of 487 cities in 27 States and 4 UTs across the country. We believe that this policy offers employees the flexibility to build fulfilling
careers while balancing their personal life with great ease.
2. What are the various features/mandates of the work next policy? Can you please elaborate?
To determine the future of work at Swiggy, we put together a study in mid-2021 with surveys and focus group discussions. With the participation of over 1,650 team members working out of more than 20 locations, we sought to understand the preferences and perceptions of business leaders and employees across different roles. Using these learnings and guided by our commitment to ensure the holistic well-being of our employees, we rolled out a remote friendly hybrid work policy in November 2021. Swiggy’s Future of Work policy is structured taking into account the different roles and locations and empowers managers and business leaders to work along with their teams and choose what works best for them.
Mandate 1 -
Employees will come to the office twice or thrice a week and work remotely for the remaining days. Eg: Partner facing roles
Mandate 2 -
Employees will have the freedom to work remotely all through the year. These employees, who form a large majority, will come together in their base location for a week, once every quarter. Eg: All Corporate, Central Business Functions and Technology teams
Mandate 3 -
Employees will work all five days of the week from their base location.
Eg- Fleet managers
In the last two years, several employees have decided to completely relocate, some of them choosing to remain 100% remote permanently. We will continue to consider such requests if team dynamics and business goals are unaffected. This also means the doors for global talent have opened.
3. How has Swiggy prioritised the mental health of employees and what changes have been brought in to accommodate various requests from employees?
Aimed at strengthening the overall wellness of the entire Swiggy fraternity and their dear ones,
Swiggy has a wellness program for its employees called “Built Around You”, launched in 2019. The program is focused around the 4 pillars of Physical, Emotional/Mental, Financial and Legal Wellness
The ‘Built Around You’ program offers employees an array of benefits. These range from offering unlimited tele/video consultation sessions with independent experts (such as Doctors, Dietitians, Counsellors, Psychologists, Financial and Legal Experts) to customized digital and onsite wellness programs for the employees and their dear ones. This includes health check-ups, wellness workshops/ webinars and individualized sessions on addictions, diabetes management, maternity/ primary caregiver leaves, marital counseling, etc.
The program has a strong inclusion focus, ensuring that it caters beyond the traditional definition
of employees and dependents. Hence it has been uniquely curated for On-roll Employees, Off-roll Employees, Kitchen Staff and Delivery Partners. Benefits can be extended to family members, partners or friends, anyone who matters.
4. How does Swiggy's enable the empowerment of managers, business leaders, fleet managers to collaborate with their teams and to do what works best for them?
Managers play a key role in nurturing employees while also championing and role modeling our values.
We started with acknowledging the fact that managers need to be enabled with toolsets, skill sets and coaching for nurturing the right mindset to manage hybrid, distributed teams. We rolled out internal tools to understand employee pulse which acts as a barometer of the team needs, helping managers custom stitch their approach to the varied needs of individuals in the team. Through talent reviews and regular feedback sessions, we enable managers to leverage the collective wisdom and resources to focus sharply on talent development needs. We also have org-wide and BU-wide recognition programs which are leveraged by managers to appreciate and recognize good performers. To enable managers help with individual learning needs, we rolled out a learning wallet which is a personalized learning wallet for employees that they use for reimbursing expenses incurred for their own learning needs as approved by the leaders.
An important step in enabling managers is enabling support for them. We rolled out focused managerial development programs such as Step Up, Level Up which helped managers with key skills and safe spaces to upskill themselves, learn from internal and external experts guided by a coach during the journey. We ensure that our leaders are enabled to be role models and we run the Unlock program towards this objective.
5. While Swiggy is a diverse company, what policies and benefits do you have for your women employees?
Over two years ago, Swiggy realised the need to design policies that provide a holistic experience to employees and created policies that are inclusive and that cater to all employees.
Here are some initiatives around Swiggy’s Gender-neutral parenthood policies:
Primary caregivers can avail 26 weeks of leave while the secondary caregiver can avail 15 days of leave. This includes adoptive mothers, single parents and caregivers, irrespective of their gender and sexuality
Range of benefits through an employee parenthood journey to ensure a stress-free experience. This includes wellness session reimbursements and ongoing bonding leave for upto 15 days
For a section of employees who may need to visit office/travel, Swiggy provides ergonomic seating, reserved parking space, support for domestic travel (for child and caregiver), travel reimbursements, Benefits for adoption, fertility care and surrogacy, which include 5 days of leave in a calendar year in order to take up counselling sessions and fulfil other legal and medical procedures
Support provided to employees through some of the challenges that come with parenthood such as miscarriage or medical termination of pregnancy. Apart from six weeks of miscarriage leave for the employee, 1 week of paid leave is provided to partners who support their spouses
Additional gender-neutral policies, to support employees in driving their career aspirations:
Swiggy’s IJP and rehire policies provide employees opportunities to move to the role of their aspiration/choice and to ensure talent is always welcome back
Employees during different stages of life have different needs. We provide short term sabbaticals
to employees to take a break/ spend time with family, loved ones/ rejuvenate and return to work (4 weeks to 16 weeks). In addition, long term sabbaticals are provided if employees want to go for higher education or start their own venture
To also help employees set up their own workstations at home as per their comfort, we provides
a one-time allowance to its employees
6. Could you please share some employee anecdotes on what work looks like for them at Swiggy now in this new environment of hybrid work culture?
Here is what Swiggsters have to say about what work looks like for them now-
1. Sharmishtha works in the Product team at Swiggy, and the new policy has allowed her to truly work from anywhere. She’s currently on a workation in Europe.
“Tbh, I hate(d) WFH in theory. But over time I began to realize the benefits of remote working and so far I have had the best time (the best time is because of all the traveling, yes.)
2. Sandeep Singh - Leads Procurement as part of the Supply Chain team at Swiggy and oversees a complex system with a team of reportees.
Due to the nature of his role, he comes to the office twice a week and works from home for the remaining days.
“I have been really appreciative of the stance taken by the company to give work from home option during the pandemic and moving to a flexible working model. This really gave me the opportunity to explore life beyond the four walls of the office. This helped me to solidify relationships with my spouse, my children and my parents as well. Thanks Swiggy for making this happen. Proud to be part of this employee friendly organisation.”
3. Shruti Singh works as a Restaurant Excellence Manager at Swiggy.
Her role includes working with restaurant partners helping them work seamlessly with Swiggy. The Swiggy WorkNext policy has given her the freedom to work remotely through the year.
“As every new mother, I was going through the same dilemma, if I will be able to continue my work or should I take a break. But thanks to the childcare policy of Swiggy, post maternity when I resumed my work, things were pretty favorable for me. My peers and managers were supportive, I had the freedom to log-in & log-out as and when required depending upon my baby’s schedule. This has given me an opportunity to witness my child’s first word, first step and other priceless moments. I am happy that I could manage my work-life balance while juggling the joy of life as well as doing complete justice to my job.”
