Employee well-being has no longer been just a box for HR to tick. Pandemic has brought this issue into sharper focus and more relevance. Organizations, including our Bank, are increasingly looking at it in a holistic manner and taking a 360-degree approach to make it a 24/7 mission. Our Bank has also been striving consistently to work on several facets of well-being of its employees viz; physical, intellectual, emotional, occupational, financial, spiritual, social and environmental in order to measure the ‘happiness quotient’ of its workforce.
It is a fallacy to mistake physical health for wellness. Mental and emotional health has been the most ignored aspect of people’s life. The pandemic gave people pause (considering the relentless pace of life) to discover their hidden emotions. They have been able to realize what really mattered to them. Emotional imbalances and mental patterns are the causes or inputs which manifest into Physical health as an output or effect. The pandemic has made people discover the purpose of their life……..find themselves and be themselves.
Systematizing one’s tasks and life is very important for a productive life cycle. One should also have the caliber/character to create space which helps to maintain equilibrium between work and personal needs. Work-life balance is an important ingredient of a healthy work environment. Maintaining work-life balance helps reduce stress and helps prevent burnout in the workplace which directly affects the productivity of an individual.
Taking breaks from the workplace for planning your holidays well with your family, for giving appropriate time to your family, for taking out time for yourself, for taking care of your health etc. go a long way in boosting your metabolism and concentration which are sine-qua-non for a healthy body resulting into happy minds. A break also enables us to begin and look within if the break is taken with the purpose of purging/setting right one’s emotional and mental asymmetry.
A super enlightened guy (Lord Buddha) had said humans are pre-occupied with four buckets of mud—pleasure/pain, gain/loss, fame/disgrace, praise/blame and we ping pong all over the place. We hope for—we chase-pleasure, gain, fame and praise. We fear—we hide from-pain, loss, disgrace and blame.
A walk through your inbox or Facebook and Instagram feeds will make Lord Buddha’s clarity clearer to you. It is obvious that clicking, replying, commenting, skimming make you more and more ‘wanly’ as well as ‘fearful’. You lose your awareness and get lost in a dizzying maze of keeping up, doing, doing and doing. You want this and that repeatedly……a never-ending cycle. Every mouth-watering chocolaty recipe makes you crave the pleasure of tasting something sweet. However, suddenly and simultaneously, the disgrace of becoming overweight tinkles in.
There is this pit-of-my-stomach churning too, a general ‘I need to do more, I need to do better’ feeling. It comes from fear. You run away from fear and pain. The idea of sickness, or rejection, or feeling like I am at the bottom of the barrel, is unpleasant. Anything unpleasant is unwanted—run the other way! The idea of falling flat or failing is unacceptable so you book more tasks, more meetings, more targets and keep chasing success by all means. What do all these lead an individual to? All these lead to a person’s mental and emotional disequilibrium unless a break is taken to begin within. Success stories do shine on Facebook and Instagram, do not they? Some photos, even unfiltered ones, ooze a feeling of ‘I have made it’. Also, we are constantly falling for other people’s success stories and it hurts. Then we do something to compensate —–start building our own success story, running wildly in the general pursuit and direction of success. Plan, plan, plan. If you brood over all these, you will realize that you have become a ping pong ball. But this is not the way to live. Where is your center. Being a ping pong ball sucks.
The system/device of circumventing pain and pursuing pleasure have kept us from being eaten, kept us from freezing to demise in winter, kept us unravelling how to get food and how to clothe ourselves. This worked well for our ancestors, but it is not working as well for us anymore. We are like ping pong balls being bounced back and forth rapidly by our aversions and insatiable desires and so we are way overdue for trying a fresh alternative.
So what to do then? Ping-ponging seems to be natural to us. How do we evolve then? I think the first step is always just seeing things as they are. You need to do acknowledging and take a break for beginning within. What would happen if you stopped acting on your cravings for pleasure and your fear of pain? What if you stopped playing ping pong and became a spectator?
As a spectator there is a place mid-way i.e. in between, a resting place. Like that spot in between inhalation and exhalation. In this-in-between, middle space, there is no destination. There is no arrival. There is no top of Everest. There is only watching that ping pong ball, the habitual swinging from ‘I want’ to ‘I do not want’. Awareness is born during the break if taken with the purpose of looking/beginning within.
Awareness brings lightness. ‘Just be’ for your own sake. You just come back to this moment to see that all are walking the same path, everyone is moving back and forth rapidly. Nothing is permanent. There are no success stories, only stories. Being human is treading on a path, not for a moment arriving. Just walking on. The break from playing ping pong is the closest thing you will ever feel to freedom as well as emotional and mental happiness. Taking a break and beginning within during the break will enhance your energy level and ecstasy.
One of the most important factors for a sustainable performance of an organization is having possession of happy bunch of workforces. Happy and contented employees work harder, work better together in teams and are overall more productive. Happiness enhances productivity as it induces higher engagement and, therefore, happy employees are also more present. They pay more attention to the needs of customers and they are more alert of the organization’s processes and systems. All these factors come together to bring organization’s increased productivity and profitability.
Employee satisfaction and overall happiness is proven to be a sure-fire way to motivate employees to be productive for their organizations. Employees who are convinced that their management cares about them as a whole person and not just an employee only—-are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. Contented/happy employees mean pleased customers, which leads to profitability.
Employee empathy and customer-centricity are two sides of the same coin. A break taken with the aim of looking within brings workplace well-being which in turn helps in improving the overall health and productivity of employees. Enhanced energy levels boost overall employee morale and, therefore, result in a more engaged workforce. From a longer-term perspective, this improves an organization’s ability to attract and retain people as well. Let us, hence, promote taking breaks and coax our employees to utilize the breaks to begin within.
Sanjay Kumar Singh
Chief Manager (Faculty),
State Bank Institute of Learning and Development, Panchkula
