The CEO Magazine India Interacts with Abraham George, Board Director at Ennoventure Inc, on the World Health Day.

It's time to get real with workplace well-being

Workplace well-being has changed dramatically because of the unprecedented realities we have been through in the last two years. Pandemic, remote work, burnout, mental health issues, and great resignations were the new, trending realities at the workplace.

World Health Day on April 7th is an opportunity to rethink, reset and implement workplace well-being measures.

What is well-being?

A state of well-being is a state of comfort, health, and happiness. Let's dissect this definition -

1. State of being - It is not just about creating but encouraging and sustaining employees' wellness.

2. Comfortable, healthy, and happy
   

These terms get complex when we view them from an organizational perspective.

• It's multi-faceted as it involves physical, financial, and mental well-being.

• Comfort, health, and happiness are contextual and personal and dependent on the person and their surroundings.

So, how do we institutionalize and sustain a concept successfully that's multifaceted, contextual, and personal?

Fighting the fake

We at Ennoventure are solving the decades-old problem of fake counterfeit products. The only way for our business to succeed is if we are innovative, open, and courageous. Our goal is to make our employees feel safe, happy and do what's right and honest. There is no doubt that workplace well-being must be woven into our DNA.

Let's face it; workplace well-being has to become a priority.

When you look up workplace well-being examples, some of them are aspirational from larger organizations. – Nike, SpaceX, Google, Netflix, and so on. Well-being at startups can be challenging if we benchmark larger organizations.

We need to look at it holistically for well-being to be meaningful to us.

We wrote the 'Ennovenger Code" based on our core values as a first step. This is a guide to help us make the best decisions and navigate complex situations where the answer isn't always obvious.

a. Being comfortable

Typically, professionals work 50 hours a week. They must spend their work time comfortably and feel valued.

• Financial - As Naval tweeted, "Money doesn't buy happiness, but it solves the money problem." We make sure that our workforce is financially comfortable to meet their financial needs and feel secure with our wealth creation plan.

• Work – Our team acts as problem solvers, providing them with stimulating and challenging work. Furthermore, we allow them to be themselves, make mistakes, ask questions, express themselves, give feedback, be curious, and build solutions. Staff can arrange their schedules within their team and work from any location they choose.

• Team -Trust and companionship are two of the most significant comfort factors in our team. A culture backed by processes, tools, and technologies facilitates seamless communication and enables easy collaboration.

Being healthy

Wellness at work means creating an environment that promotes physical and mental health. It is never a one-size-fits-all solution.

Meeting fatigue is something we try to avoid. We partner with agencies that provide wellness solutions. We encourage people to take sufficient breaks to refuel.

Also, in our organization, we don't limit the sick days for employees.

Being happy: It's hard to figure out what makes employees happy, but it's even harder to change the structure of your daily work schedule, so you prioritize their happiness. Some of the things that we attempt are

• Reward and recognize their ideas, efforts, and output

• Encourage and support them in learning and growing

• Cognitive Behavioural training to heal and grow their inner self to reach their true potential.
  

Healthier Happier Tomorrow: We have profoundly changed how we define work, teams, health, and well-being in our lives. As for workplace well-being, here's what we know:

• Isolated wellness perks and programs (like gym memberships, free food, pool tables, and yoga classes) fail to address the current issues of stress, burnout, loneliness, and work-life balance.

• Well-being is not the responsibility of one function (e.g., HR) or one category (e.g., leadership team). Any holistic approach has multiple stakeholders who need to work together to make it succeed.

• Let's reiterate – that there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

Work and workspace are changing forever, and power dynamics are shifting. Workplace well-being will come from a place of empathy with an emotional bond. We need to aim at sustaining an organization that thinks positive where employees are in control, feel good about own self, can make rational decisions, be in touch with feelings, and know how to look after own self.