The ‘Happiness Index’ at work

“A state of well-being and contentment” is what defines ‘Happiness’ and in the recent past its impact on countries and how ‘happy’ people react viz their work and societal commitments, has been well recorded. Also, happiness related surveys have thrown back tabulations of happiest places to work and employee engagement. Corporates have also woken up to understand the ‘happiness quotient’ of its workforce that goes beyond ‘work-related’ stress but into overall employee well-being. Corporate Citizen spoke to Lalitha Shetty, Senior Director HR of Bengaluru-based Omega Healthcare that has devised its own ‘Happiness Index’ as an integral part of its MIS (management information system). The aim isto provide interventions wherever possible in accessing an employee’s emotional and mental make-up related to his/her work, supervisors, colleague and life as a whole

The objective of introducing the ‘happiness index’ is mainly to capture the overall happiness and the daily emotions of the employees. We are aware that happiness is a very crucial factor for everybody and understanding our employees’ happiness is very important for us to come up with some kind of developmental activity which can be customised for each employee”, said Lalitha Shetty, Senior Director HR of Bengaluru based Omega Healthcare.

With 10 offices in India, Omega operates with close to 15000 employees across India and with a current workforce of 5000 employees at the Bengaluru office alone. The Happiness Index has been developed as a pan-India programme for the company’s employees and was launched around 2016. It has since grown into an integral machinery to enable employees to stave off any emotional ‘downs’ that could otherwise hamper productivity.

This ‘happiness index’ becomes the base reference to a person’s well-being as well as helps HR or a supervisor to closely monitor and refer the cases if required, for extended support by professional counsellors. “The objective is the mainly qualitative improvement and gives the employees the platform for immediately exhibiting their emotions which helps the HR VP or supervisory levels to timely intervene and offer a positive working environment”.

“We track that as part of our MIS and have seen 70% to 80 % utilisation of this programme. While some senior-level executives do not participate, our intention is primarily to drive it at the individual contributor or people at the production level; not so much at the managerial or senior managerial level”, she said.

The ‘Happy’ Portal

Omega introduced the concept of capturing the daily emotions of its employees based on four different parameters. These are based on “How happy the employees are” (today/daily) in terms of their work, about their supervisors, colleague and their life as a whole. “These four parameters are the benchmark of the happiness index and is captured via our intranet. Every employee is given access to our employee portal where they are logged on daily. The portal also captures their productivity and performance details. “It is mandatory for every employee to go through this intranet platform daily”, said Lalitha.

When an employee logs on to the portal, a page pops up with three faces that stays onscreen for a couple of seconds. The ‘sad’, ‘happy’ and the ‘moderate’ expression of an emoji that appears on the screen draws an employee’s attention on how they feel in terms of work, supervisors, colleague and life per se. They can click and express themselves at regular intervals during the course of a workday.

“With the click of a button, employees have the option to capture these emotions any number of times in the course of a day; the idea is to understand their emotions in the course of the day”, she said. “I might have been happy when I started the day, maybe after some time something didn’t go well for me maybe, it could be work and I might become a bit sad with something at work”, she explained.

An employee thus gets the opportunity to ease up and express, including those that are related to their supervisor. “I can quickly go through the happiness index and I can also change my rating. It’s just an immediate feedback mechanism for an employee that captures and exhibits these emo-tions that can be monitored in the form of the ‘emotions’ that gets generated,” said Lalitha.

Happiness = Productivity

The idea cropped up through internal brainstorming as part of the company’s regular interventions towards talent development and talent management functions so as to understand and upkeep employee productivity. “Each year we try to bring in one new initiative or the other, and if some of the initiatives are accepted well by the employees it then gets continued for a year. Likewise, we keep bringing out new initiatives’ month-on-month and year-on-year”, said Lalitha.

The driving objective of the ‘Happiness Quotient’ initiative was to bring forth a positive work environment and employee experience. “It was not that employees were unhappy before this programme was implemented but, the idea enables to promote wellness and capture the happiness quotient in an employee in building a positive environment within the company”, she said.

Since its inception in 2016, Omega has gradu-ally seen some positive impact on the initiative. However, the response was not too eclectic in the initial days. “Initially, employee participation was not too high but over the past two years, focussed efforts rendered by the HR business partnering team in driving this has resulted in sending the ‘happiness’ reports to the management and their respective team leaders. This has enabled line managers to pay attention to an employees’ emotional make-up,” said Lalitha.

“Whatever emoji they choose on a daily basis becomes the base reference to their mental well-being this also helps the HR or the supervisor to closely monitor and refer the cases if required for extended support by professional counsellors”, she said. Then begins level two of in-house therapy as an when required.

"The ‘Happiness Index’ is based on the understanding that life problems are integral to all and it’s a natural course to be facing some life difficulties. But, what is important is there should be a mechanism to address these challenges"

Attrition blocks ‘consistent’ patterns

However, the high turnaround of employees in Omega makes it difficult to monitor the drastically changing ‘happiness pattern’ amongst employees due to the huge workforce inflow and outflow on a month on month basis. Omega has almost 700-800 employees joining on a monthly basis and these are not always the same people. Also, the same people might have been tracked last year. The company usually tracks on a year on year basis which may not be an accurate comparison. “We see the utilisation of the programme and observe whether the sadness to happiness or happiness quotient is increased the flow of talent is very high so that index pattern is difficult to track,” she said.

Nipping away ‘Unhappiness’

The ‘Happiness Index’ is based on the understanding that life problems are integral to all and it’s a natural course to be facing some life difficulties and as Lalitha said, “But, what is important is there should be a mechanism to address these challenges.”

Omega has a dedicated team of HR VPs available for each of its 5 to 6 business units who monitor the daily ‘mood’ changes on the portal at regular intervals. The reports emerging out of the monitoring can be accessed by supervisors and the managers. “Besides the individual, managers can also view and gauge the rating assigned by an employee viz their work or their supervisor, colleague or a life problem one or more of the 4 dimensions that we capture,” said Lalitha.

The HR VP’s or supervisors pick up any hint of employee distress based on how the person rates himself and if someone is consistently rating oneself low or sad more often, that is when the supervisors have the option to proactively engage and try and understand the issues bothering that individual. “However, we do not intervene for each ‘sad’ instance but take charge for those who consistently rate sad about work, or about life or supervisor or whatever may be the case.”

It is not possible for an HR head or supervisor to solve everyone’s life problems, that is when another layer of assistance is provided via an employee assessment programme ‘Parivartan’, wherein employees have an option to avail ex-tended support from professional counsellors or also for their overall wellness.

“Here, the happiness index comes into play extensively and the daily ‘mood’ captures becomes the base reference to their mental wellbeing; enabling the HR team or the supervisor to closely monitor and refer the cases if required for connecting them to external professional counsellors for support and assistance”, she said.

The Happy ‘MYTRAs’

Moreover, Omega’s indigenous ‘MyTrustedAlly’ or the MYTRA programme where MYTRA reps are stationed and available at particular locations within the company’s premises. These reps are primarily Omega employees who can be identified with their MYTRA badges and have been trained by professional counsellors or Assistance Programme Institution. “MYTRAS are trained on listening in to their ‘unhappy’ and troubled colleagues and provide a daily kind of support if and when required.”

These trained counselling champions or MYTRAS assist employees either as volunteers or could be HR business partners, operations managers who are more employee oriented and are people from the training functions who have more visibility. “They connect with the employees right from the onboarding process. Omega also handpicks people who are extroverts and are empathetic and those who have exhibited an interest in the past get nominated from their respective group leaders and are trained for this particular role,” said Lalitha.