Happiness is the default state of mind. – Chade-Meng Tan
While the entire world is celebrating the anniversary of the first COVID case, I think it is high time the organizations have to start thinking about rekindling their workplaces to make their employees feel at home again. As we already know that WFH has become the new normal, which also had its own set of issues that can be overcome only by going back to the workplaces. The big question arises now, is it safe to go back to the workplace post-COVID? Employees are great assets for any organization. Without them, the company cannot operate. You may ask, why not a greater or greatest asset? Because right now, Employee wellness would indeed become an organization’s greatest asset.
The only way to recover quickly and rebuild the economy to pre-pandemic levels is by changing the way organizations look at employee well-being. Along with employee wellness comes employee happiness. Tony Hsieh in his book, wrote that “Delivering Happiness” categorizes happiness into three types – pleasure, passion, and purpose. The integration of 3Ps with employee work will unleash employee happiness and performance. Hence, I believe that a happy and positive mind space will help in giving more productive outputs.
Going forward current health care policies should be replaced with better ones keeping in mind the current scenarios. Not just for the employees but also their dependents. At the C-suite level, Chief Well-being Officers must be appointed to overlook employee wellness and start supporting mental health. Diversity and inclusion is the need of the hour. For example, in the case of women, most women executives and employees need to tend to domestic chores and especially their children who are stuck with online schooling. It is high time that organizations should stop using the “one-size-fits-all” approach. Organizations need to start being more flexible and adaptable because at the end of the day we all know that Happy Employees = Happy Company. As Viktor Frankl said, “Happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself” and this cause is finding a new purpose at the workplace in these new normal times.