Happiness is going to be the litmus test that would decide the ultimate retention policy of your company, says Susheel Agarwal, Happiness Coach at Ethika Insurance Broking Pvt. Ltd. 

It is counterintuitive how it took an adversity – the pandemic – to enlighten us on aspects of life that are important to us, he adds. Staring death at our doorsteps during Covid made us reassess our priorities – what was important to us and what are we willing to compromise for.

Susheel can be considered a pioneer of sorts. He introduced value added services like Employee Engagement Programs, Employee Assistance Programs to the insurance broking portfolio that his company was traditionally offering. This was way before “the start-up” culture was in vogue. 

His latest offering ‘The Science and Art of being Happy’ seems to have come about at the right time. Employee dissatisfaction levels in companies are at their highest; employee engagement programs no longer seem to be working. It is as if he has peeked into the future and is creating a pathway for companies to adapt to it.

In 2020, when the pandemic struck, Mr Susheel Agrawal observed something unusual in the market. The market seemed divided into two sets of companies – ones that were using the pandemic to fire employees left right and center, at times despite making profits, and others who were barely surviving and yet retaining most of its staff. 

What was going on here? Wasn’t profit maximization one of the foremost business virtues? Why did some businesses appear to be extremely anxious, while others treated it as yet another day? 

He realized while he was equally anxious about how things would turn out, work was his sacred space, he looked forward to it, day after day, everyday. Even in those glib times, work was something that gave him the opportunity to help others and thereby a sense of being a part of a larger whole. As it turns out, this ability – to be able to be of service to others – is one of the biggest keys to happiness. 

Susheel also realized that his team at Ethika shared a similar DNA with him. All of his colleagues are self directed individuals with a service orientation par excellence. Susheels profound realization – When every employee behaves like a CEO, the job of a CEO morphs into that of an Human Resource Manager, is also thanks to his wonderful team at Ethika. 

Well, we couldn’t agree more. 

The growing startup ecosystem has brought about a spurt of white collar jobs, but the cost has been grinding mental instability; a sense of anxiety pervades the existence of millenials and Gen Z – the population that forms the largest employable chunk. It is as if this young demographic is spinning at full speed between the fear of missing out on life at one end, and the anxiety brought about by work, on the other. The sad part about all of this however is, by the time these folks realize the damning repercussions of the situation, damage would have been done. 

Stress, anxiety, and depression are commonplace today. The intertwined spheres of professional, personal and financial worlds overwhelm the hell out of employees. Technology, which was to bring us liberation has unfortunately pushed us further down this rabbit hole. Our inability to control technology’s impact on society has now seeped to aspects of life that can lead to gruesome circumstances if we continue down this road.

Two of the biggest sources of our unhappiness stem from our inability to stay married to the task at hand and our inability to stop comparing our material possessions with those of people we know. Technology ensures that we are pinged by some irrelevant notification every ten seconds and that most of these notifications are designed to make us feel incomplete in the moment – it could be a friend vacationing at some exotic beach or a sale you better not miss. 

Technology has also conquered newer peaks with its omnipresence – work hours seem to have become irrelevant as a concept. When the engagement hours of work have almost doubled, it was about time, the human resource department started channelizing energies toward employee happiness to ensure employee retention.

The increase in yield of India’s demographic dividend will ensure that the war for talent will only intensify in the future. If talent acquisition used to be a challenge, retention just took away this cake. And in all this insanity, happiness continues to remain the elusive kastoori.

But Susheel feels identification of the problem is a battle half won.

He thinks the current business environment would mark a paradigm shift in the way businesses treat employees. Businesses can no longer afford to offer mere lip service about employee wellbeing. If the employee isn’t being well, it is as much an employer’s headache as it is the employee’s. 

Prod him further and he reveals The Happiness workshop he had designed as a prototype has been tested on a couple of clients and the results have been encouraging. 

Some of the elements from the workshop that Corporates have benefitted from include 

1. Open architecture of policies – let policies be defined by don’ts rather than do’s. 
2. Once you have trusted someone with a certain piece of work, trust them with delivery – Micromanaging is a strict no-no. 
3. Encourage employees to change the way they communicate with themselves – A lot of our problems stem from the way we communicate with ourselves i.e. inwards. Our efficacy takes a natural hit when we demean ourselves. Changing this outlook, puts the choice of action in our hands, which inturn makes employees feel responsible, instead of being directed by factors out of their control.

In his own words “The battle for talent promises to transition into a war without an end in sight. The last man standing is going to be one, who is able to turn workplaces into places employees want to come to, and don’t feel compelled to come to. A happy employee is an engaged employee and a productive one.”