 Hi there. My name is Abhijit Bhaduri. I work as an executive coach and I also am the author of this book, Dreamers and Unicorns, where one of the things that I've talked about is the importance of mental health in the workplace, which is going to become one of the biggest challenges we have ever faced and is probably going to be bigger than the skills challenge. And to talk about exactly this, I have Dr. Ashwin Naik, who's a dead fellow and an Ashoka fellow. He's also the founder of Vatsalya Health, which is a series of low-cost hospitals, which is available in the Tier 2, Tier 3 cities. And that's the work that I most admire him for. So, Ashwin, lovely to have you here. Thank you for joining me. And I must say that it's been such a privilege for me to partner with you in building this mental health awareness. And also, actually to start talking about well-being, moving beyond mental health. But first question that I wanted to talk about was, people talk about wellness and well-being. People talk about wellness and well-being as two separate pieces. They use it interchangeably. Is that right or is that wrong? Thank you. Thank you, Abhijit, for having me. I think this is a great conversation to have. And while the definitions themselves don't make a big difference, wellness or well-being, but it's important to figure out what is the fine distinction between these two. When we talk about wellness, it's typically associated with physical wellness and well-being is much more than physical well-being. It also includes your mental, spiritual, societal well-being, for example. Be what it may. I think the reason it is important to create this distinction now is because traditionally, organizations have focused on the physical wellness part. It's very usual over the last 10 years to see companies doing employee wellness challenges, which include yoga or marathons or fitness challenges, etc. But very recently, only very recently, organizations have started looking at the emotional well-being, which is the core element of the well-being piece. So I think that's the shift. So wellness focuses largely on the physical health side and well-being focuses on a more holistic, emotional, social, physical well-being, if you will. So that's the key difference. So one way I would remember this difference is to say when we talk about the human being, we are talking about well-being. So that's the more holistic way to do that. It just makes it easy for me to remember that difference. I also thought that you raise a very interesting point that physical well-being is just one element of well-being, but it's mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual, the four axes that you actually have to address. And when you look at that, one of the most important pieces that I have read in the recent times that more than 80% of the CEOs actually think that this has a direct impact on productivity. And even more interesting was the fact that more than 90% of the CEOs who were surveyed actually talk about the fact that they have sought out help in this particular field for themselves. What do you think is triggering this massive move towards people becoming conscious about well-being and what is driving that shift? Over the last 18 months or so, things have really shifted. We all know the way the world has changed. But if you ask today any progressive CEO what are the top three things that they think about in terms of their own organization and employees, my bet is they will say emotional well-being of their employees will be in the top three. And this not just corporate world, right? If you look at the sports world, the number of athletes who have come out and said emotional well-being is important for me, I'm going to take a pause, right? Whether it is Olympic athletes or even closer home, the cricket players. I think the conversation has tilted in the favor of accepting emotional well-being is a key component of well-being, so that's one thing. The second thing is the changing structure of work, hybrid work, remote work has also put a lot of pressure on employee well-being. And CEOs are recognizing that, that this is an important piece and we have to do whatever we can to support employee well-being. The third one is younger employees are also demanding from their employers that they want to be supported in their employee well-being journey. So I think these are some of the things that are coming together and our projection is in the future employee well-being will be a key component of what differentiates one employee, employer versus others. And the second prediction for us is that it will no longer be a benefit that companies provide, but it will be a skill that managers and leaders in the organization will be trained on and that will be considered as a core skill that they have to develop as they grow in the organization. So I think that's a big one that looking at mental health, not as a benefit that is offered that you can have an employee assistance program etc. But it's going to become a skill and I like the difference that when you start training the managers to look out for these signs then it's really something which is trainable and become part of the organization's agenda to drive this conversation. And the obvious question to then ask is, what are the big signs of trouble? What are the big signs of well-being issues that managers are trained to look out for? Right, Abhijeet, I would turn the question around a little bit and say if you are waiting for the big signs it's probably already too late. I think we have to look out for the small signs, the small signs of distress, the small signs of emotional turmoil, the small signs that managers should be trained to identify, flag, offer support and then point the person to the right resource. And it's even more important in a hybrid culture like work culture like this because it's not easy to pick up these cues. So how do we train your teams, your managers to identify these small signs becomes extremely important. And that's where I think this entire approach of building capacity, building the skills come in very handy. Yeah, I really like the way you phrased it, that it's not the big signs that you look out for because if you look out for the big signs it's probably too late. You have to look out for the small signs so that there is time enough to step in and make an intervention. So small signs could be a shift in performance, a shift in the level of engagement. You know, and one big parameter that I would sort of bring to the forefront is the dropping levels of engagement that people talk about. One of the manifestations is the great resignation, but it's not so much a shift in terms of the pay packets, etc. I mean, I think that's really a very simplistic solution that employers are looking at. There are lots of issues they should be addressing and well-being is certainly in my mind the top place to be looking out for. One other question would be that, are there organisations which are doing this well, they are like role models and what kind of organisations are these, the start-ups who are doing it, are these large organisations, are these Indian organisations, just give me a feel of what kind of organisations are working on this. Sure. I think that's an interesting question because we are seeing organisations across the board becoming very serious and committed to emotional well-being. We work with start-ups, we work with established companies, traditional organisations and also multinational. So I'll pick a few examples and just share what we do. So we work with a very fast-growing start-up and they came to us when they were hardly 20 people and they said we believe that well-being is an important component of what we offer to our teams and we want to commit and make sure that we have the systems in place. So we work with them, set up the entire program and the commitment came from the very top. The CEO himself was involved in the process but also utilised therapy counselling as a key support system and encouraged his team members as well. To the extent that about 50% of their employees utilise our services and which is a very high engagement rate considering in the global average is about 5%. And the reason they work with somebody like us is they believe that this is a key differentiator for them as an employer to attract talent. Offering well-being support is a key differentiator. The second company that we work with is a large multinational bank. They have about 4,000 employees in India and they said we are already doing enough. We have an EAP system. We have a support system for employees but we believe the only way we will move the sort of level up is if we can train our key leaders as well-being ambassadors. So we started working with about 100 of their employees 100 of their managers helped them build a well-being ambassador program where they are trained to recognise the signs that we just spoke about the small signs how to have a conversation. As a culture, we are not accustomed to having this conversation about emotional well-being. We are more used to giving suggestions Kiya, Karlova, Karlova and then things will be better. So how do you have a right conversation? What not to say and then how to point them to the right professionals. So we have trained about 100 of them and then the plan is now to train 200 more. So these 300 managers will act as a first level of contact within the organisation. I have to admit that they are not going to be a substitute for mental health practitioners but act as a first interface. The third company probably I'll share is a shipping company a traditional shipping business where 80% of employees are on ships and there's a lot of stress and tension away from home etc. And we work with that organisation to build a culture of well-being and it really started picking up steam when the CEO publicly committed that this is a key priority for us. We're going to participate and utilise the service and the shift there and this goes to your previous question the shift there was when the CEO publicly committed it moved from being a HR initiative to becoming a business initiative. So it was no longer something that the HR team had to push but the business leader were asking these questions how many people have been trained as well-being ambassadors what are we doing about emotional well-being of our team? So the entire conversation and the culture changes when the push comes from the top. Is there a measurable impact on the bottom line and productivity and all that because businesses always like to see that whatever I'm doing has a direct impact on the money in the bank. What's been your view? Yeah, I think it's too early. It's a little early for us to claim this but there are global studies to show that it has an impact on productivity and retention etc. But personally I feel that if we peg it only at retention productivity etc I think it will be a little bit of injustice. Transactional. Exactly. It becomes transactional. This will pay off probably in a medium to long term but most importantly I think these are hygiene factors. Providing well-being support at workplace is going to be the single biggest support system that you can offer considering that employees might be working anywhere across the world. I mean the entire concept of workplace is changing and how do we design this around well-being will be an important conversation. So I think from the conversation that we had today I'm taking away a couple of different things. One I think is that there is an overwhelming number of CEOs who believe that almost 80% of the CEOs in the study that I looked at actually say that it has an impact on productivity. 94% of them have actually sought help for themselves. Two, the other thing that I liked about what you said was that don't look out for the big signs because if it's a big sign of a breakdown or something then it's already too late. So when you look around and you see your loved ones you see your colleagues anywhere this is something that you need to be able to address early and it's not a benefit. Traditionally it's not a benefit like something that you do one off it's like bring your children to work day. It is something which is like a skill and you train your people and you sort of build it in the organization's culture. So I hope that the work that you do Ashwin as part of money wellness I know that you're working with a number of almost 50 odd companies is that right? That's right. So thank you very much and I'm really privileged to be able to partner with you in this journey and I hope to have many more such conversations and build that awareness. Thank you for all that you've done and thank you so much for joining us here today on the Dreamers and Unicorn Show. Thank you Abhijit for having me.