HALE was Infosys' response to counter the increasingly evident issues at the workplace like busy schedules that had long periods of sedentary activity and irregular working hours. HALE is a non-monetary benefit extended to all Infoscions and has been recognized as the best internal brand with great recall and participation. It has consistently helped in meeting the business objectives and has emerged as a highly acclaimed engagement tool, winning many industry awards as well.
Since its inception, HALE has done pioneering work in employee health (physical and mental), employee safety, encouraging leisure and creating and sustaining a healthy workforce that can balance work life and is productive.
As workplaces and workspaces are transforming around us individual and collective well-being have become the focal points with an enhanced focus on employee wellbeing and care. Given the challenges of today’s environment, employee burnout is a lurking issue and if not given immediate attention can significantly affect the productivity of the workforce.
A proactive approach to health and life enrichment aimed at increased awareness, and overall well-being resulting in good health, reduced stress levels, a safe work environment and improved productivity levels.
At Infosys, we believe in providing a holistic wellness experience to our employees where we focus on their physical and emotional wellness while also ensuring they have fun at the workplace and a safe working environment.
Physical Wellbeing
Programs include expert talks, web chats, myth busters, awareness, nudge programs for physical exercises, wellness podcasts, campaigns for Healthy Eating and its importance, yoga day programs, etc.
Emotional Wellbeing
Free Counseling Services to employees 24*7, the counselling services were also extended free of cost to the families of employees who tested COVID positive. Introduced self-help tools on our in-house app for employees to assess their emotional health on the go. Programs include initiatives to encourage employees to connect with their ‘buddies’, expert education series on quarantine, leader stories on emotional well-being, emotional wellness podcasts, peer counselling support, formal psychological counselling support, positive stories, mindful Mondays through meditation, etc.
Safety
Programs include constant communication on the continuing need for safety precautions during the pandemic situation.
Social Wellbeing
Programs include Lockdown Takeaway Campaigns, Virtual fitness events, Workshops by various employee clubs on Healthy Cooking/Dance Fitness/Photography and Guitar/Quiz Contests/E-story telling contests etc.
Post the pandemic, we created a 3-tiered model to help us navigate our wellness journey, which we believed would provide our employees, nothing short of a seamless wellness experience.
Self-Help Model:
Increasing the awareness quotient of employees through enablement, education, and continuous communication. Self-help tools, chatbots etc.
Microenvironment:
Our managers and teams are the ones who are steering the wheels of the organization, and for any big change to happen, it will only begin with the shifting mindsets of our managers, which will then create a ripple effect.
Macro Environment:
The central set-up will revolve around creating a great digital wellness experience, alliances and tie-ups, policy redesign, insurance, vaccination program, leave nudges etc.
Online self-help tools
Due to the onset of a virtual mode of working, we enabled employees with a host of self-help tools for them to assess their emotional health. These tools are available on InfyMe for them to access anytime and anywhere.
COVID Emotional Assessment Tool: An online tool (questionnaire) created for self-awareness that assists employees in identifying their stress levels during COVID and thereby seeking help or taking appropriate measures to improve their mental health basis the results.
Resilience Tool: To help employees assess their resilience levels. Resilience is the most important skill all of us need during these times and hence, this tool was created.
Support and Care
At Infosys, Support and Care for employees and their families have always been at the center of all that we do. We introduced various support measures post the pandemic to strengthen our narrative.
Infy Ikigai
Some of the key findings from our Employee Survey post-pandemic were a stark decline in the Work-life balance for employees, higher stress levels due to disproportionate meetings and no days off and managing the dual responsibilities of work and household. As a response to the survey, we conceptualized an initiative ‘The Infy Ikigai’, emphasizing the importance of stepping away from the physical and mental demands of everyday life and focusing on taking care of oneself.
COVID Care (Medical Support / CCC)
With COVID being one of the major deterrents to the health and safety of employees, we introduced a multitude of offerings to provide every medical support possible to employees and their families.
It has been our constant endeavor to ensure that our employees and their families are safe. We introduced vaccination facilities for our employees and their families so that we can embark on the journey of making sure we win this fight against the pandemic. We have comprehended the importance of the role that vaccines play in our fight to counter this pandemic. By working very closely with the government authorities and medical experts, we have put together various frameworks for the immunization drive to encourage employees and their family members to get vaccinated. The vaccination facility has been introduced for employees and their 3 family members via different mediums.
This has been very well received by our employees and family and we are now working with partner hospitals to safely vaccinate more and more of our employees and family and protect them from the pandemic. Enablement and awareness around the importance of vaccination.
Through our real-time employee surveys and focus group discussions, one of the concerns was the rising difficulties amongst our women employees to manage the dual responsibilities of home and work. Hence, we created an ecosystem for our women employees where they were provided a host of offerings to take care of their wellbeing.
Women Samaritans Network
We created a Women Samaritans Network, which focused exclusively on handling cases pertaining to women employees. Samaritans are our barefoot counselling network by the Infoscions for the Infoscions. Post the pandemic, since the issues amongst women employees were rising, an exclusive network was created to handle their concerns.
Virtual Wellness Coach
We have had a network of professional counsellors available for the past 2 decades and they have been traditionally providing professional counselling, both face-to-face and on-call, in times of crisis. However, post-pandemic, that wasn’t possible so we moved to digital counselling platforms where employees could get on video calls with counsellors to discuss their issues 24x7. We also provided one on one counselling facilities free of cost, to the families of employees who tested COVID +ve, to provide them respite during distressing times.
Samaritans on the go
Samaritans, our peer-to-peer counselling network was introduced on InfyMe for employees to reach out to Samaritans across locations just at the click of a button. 100+ Samaritans across locations.
A chatbot has been introduced for our employees on our in-house app as a self-help platform for them to be able to resolve any basic issues and queries they have at their fingertips.
Podcasts
Diverse topics covering facets of well-being are available at the disposal of employees at the click of a button. They can listen to these podcasts anytime and anywhere. These range from featuring external speakers who provide their professional opinions to the internal leaders and managers on their unique approaches to handling well-being in teams. We have launched 25+ wellness podcasts, for our employees to access on the go
Communities
We have been successfully able to transform the concept of physical communities into virtual communities, where our clubs and communities are now driving programs on different facets of well-being – physical, emotional etc. Such programs are being driven not just at a location level, but at the unit/account level too. Through these communities, we have been able to customize our offerings better. Currently, each location has close to 15+ virtual clubs.
The concept of fitness influencer teams emerged even before the pandemic, when we identified employees who were driven and passionate about fitness and wanted to create an impact in their little ways on more and more people around them. We identified 350+ influencers across locations to drive the message of wellness more effectively. Post-COVID, we have been able to drive multiple programs through these influencers like weekly workout sessions, talks etc., thereby creating a far-reaching impact.
Since Infosys is spread across geographies, it is pivotal for us to create an ecosystem where we maintain a healthy balance of localization and globalization. Different geos had different challenges post-pandemic, however, the one thing that stayed constant was the focus on Employee well-being.
