Employee well-being post COVID-19 pandemic

 

Post covid 19 pandemic employee well-being became area of concern in most of the organizations. The increase in stress, fear and uncertainty due to pandemic situation, social isolation due to remote working has decrease the employee productivity. Domestic violence, home schooling, working remotely has led to tremendous impact on employee mental health and well-being impacting on employee productivity and absenteeism. Due to these reasons, HR had to pay special attention to the well-being of the employees, enable them to deliver more productive output for the organization and for employees to have balanced work-life and more healthy personal life.

As per Grant et.al.,2007 there are three dimensions in well-being, psychological, physical and social. Let's look at each in detail;

1. Psychological well-being 

Refers to job satisfaction, presence of positive feelings at work, balance between positive and negative thinking, fulfillment of potential. 

2. Physical well-being 

Consists of both physical and mental health. Job safety at workplace, reduced burnout and work intensification, job strains as work overload and over commitment. Today physical well-being encompasses many areas such as exercise, sleep, overall lifestyle and food choices. 

3. Social well-being 

Refers the interactions that occur between employees both in personal and work life, such as trust, social support, reciprocity, leader-employee relationships, co-operation, coordination and integration. 

(Grant et.al., 2007 and Pipera, and Fragouli, 2021)

After covid 19, leaders have to work with empathy, openness and flexibility identifying what works best for the individual and group to enable employees to increase their well-being. In doing so most of the organizations have implemented Employee Assistant Programmes, Wellness programmes and mental health training. Even during the pandemic period, organizations in some countries have taken steps to protect employees by providing transport while commuting to and from workplace, some have given temporary accommodations, food, doctors and nurses to covid positive employees and taken care of their employees in return for the employees’ hard work. (Cooke et.al., 2022)

Accenture as a global multinational company has implemented Employee Assistant Programme where employees can 24/7 days call a hotline number given to get the assistant for counselling service. Employees can get the assistant of native language translator in calling this hotline removing the language barrier. Further after the 1^st call they will get the records of the employee and the nature of the issue and assign a native counselor to call back the employee which will lead to five counselling sessions. Other than that counselling champions are identified at the organization top management level and they are given trainings to facilitate employees’ mental issues. Further weekly basis company wide trainings are conducted by HR to keep the mental fitness of the employees.

To have successful EAP programs, organizations must conduct company wide survey to identify what issues employees are facing and what kind of EAP programs are needed for the people so that HR can intervene to improve employees’ well-being (Cooke et.al., 2022). Further for a multinational company, cultural differences also needs to identify prior formulating and implementing HR practices (Bartram, and Cooke, 2022). For an example Asia pacific region still take mental issues as things that needs not to be highlighted or get treated by taking medicine.

References

Bartram, T. and Cooke, F.L., 2022. Celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources: what has been achieved and what more can be done. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 60(1), pp.3-21. Available from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1744-7941.12320 [Accessed 17^th April 2022].

Cooke, F.L., Dickmann, M. and Parry, E., 2022. Building sustainable societies through human-centred human resource management: emerging issues and research opportunities. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 33(1), pp.1-15. Available from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09585192.2021.2021732[Accessed 17^th April 2022].

Grant, A.M., Christianson, M.K. and Price, R.H., 2007. Happiness, health, or relationships? Managerial practices and employee well-being tradeoffs. Academy of management perspectives, 21(3), pp.51-63. Available from https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/AMP.2007.26421238 [Accessed 27^th April 2022]

Pipera, M. and Fragouli, E., 2021. Employee wellbeing, employee performance & positive mindset in a crisis. The Business & Management Review, 12(2), pp.1-15. Available from https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/80570785/E_BOOK_ROGE_2021-with-cover-page-v2.pdf?Expires=1650198163&Signature=BxpyRtdG22KDDkPqWu5vRgPiN-yuRpaH~l-GqFNVpytbMGAcfxYV3a5TWMSO3mOqcmZ~OHsZYhx-~1fR-XNxafifuGTuWNpg4PS8xjuuhoj21yyHdZ68YN5Wyc32~z0vzxvqF8vZe5GY952~GdTQKD~W72onLo8GdnjILgZPEfeE-U5I38ePzWUqRDfnDxEPgMaP2PA7pUFY2XajnX3G39Z14aasSLQRZZ5ij2NQQjMP7nDtuhM8nNDn-Vm3iCnZhh1JO3tW3uAAoKaCkevKBpDlh46jUEbviVEOi9gL~Z0G72U2gy9PmrF9sjJmao549GD0GM7xOjIoz~kSertB0w__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA#page=9 [Accessed 17^th April 2022]