HALE
The Health Assessment & Lifestyle Enrichment
Introduction:
Over the last few years, there has been an increased focus on the health and wellness of employees across the IT industry, with companies increasing their investment in enabling a healthy workforce. At Infosys, we recognized this need and began the journey early on. The Infosys Employee Relations team anchors activities which involve constant employee engagement and understanding of people issues. Through their experience, the team found strong evidence of an early onset of physical, mental & psycho-somatic illness in a young workforce. A sedentary lifestyle coupled with high work pressure and stress was resulting in heart ailments, blood pressure, cases of depression and mental disorders, cases of suicide, attempts at bodily harm and many cases of marital discord. Medical research corroborated the findings and showed that proactive early interventions that lead to early detection, coupled with treatment options and lifestyle changes can contribute significantly towards enhancing the active working age of an individual as well as directly impact workplace productivity. A twin focus - on the Infosys commitment to provide employees an emotional value proposition as well as on the company’s adherence to its core values, led to this innovation labeled HALE - The Health Assessment & Lifestyle Enrichment plan at Infosys.
HALE, is a non-monetary benefit extended to all Infoscions and has been recognized as the best internal brand with great recall and participation. It has consistently helped in meeting Business objectives and has emerged as a highly acclaimed engagement tool, winning many industry awards as well.
Since its inception, HALE has done pioneering work in the area of employee health (physical & mental), employee safety, encouraging leisure and creating and sustaining a workforce that is healthy, can balance work life and is productive.
| Objective of HALE | Pillars of HALE |
| “A proactive approach to health and life enrichment aimed at increased awareness, overall wellbeing resulting in good health, reduced stress levels, safe work environment and improved productivity levels”. | With clear focus areas driven towards employee well-being, all the initiatives, campaigns and events under HALE are categorized under FOUR main pillars.
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1. Health Interventions – “Greatest Health is Wealth”
| Health Camps: An opportunity for employees to avail attractive discounts on health checks right in the comfort of their campus. These camps are sometimes extended to families too. Over 20000 employees availed health checks in the last year. |
Health discounts and benefits: Various offers on health and wellness are collated through the employee benefits program and communication on this is shared with employees |
| Engaging with family: Many health checks and camps, expert sessions, workshops and leisure facilities are offered to family members as well. |
Online Wellness Solutions: To provide employees a variety of information through articles and health and wellness trackers through a third party website that is designed for Infoscions. |
Health checks / camps:
Regular health checks and camps are conducted at all our locations at frequent intervals. Most of these are employee paid while the rest are free. An annual health week features master health checks and other large offerings on a co-payment basis.
Meditation/ yoga classes:
All our locations have regular meditation and yoga classes after office hours to help employees manage stress. Apart from this, there are also special interest groups for yoga and meditation that are very active.
Pre-natal classes:
Mothers-to-be at Infosys can avail of the pre-natal classes that are conducted during the day to help them interact with professional over pregnancy related yoga and other fitness classes.
2. Communication – “Striving for a healthy mind & heart”
Blink O Wink Widget – A desktop widget providing regular health tips to users. We have received feedback that simple things like – Take a sip of water or blink your eyes – have made a difference to employees desk habits.
Radio shows: We were the first coportae to have an internal radio channel for communication called InfyRadio which has turned out to be one of the most sought after channels of communication. . Health tips, snippets from doctors are popular among the 20,000 tune-ins we receive in a quarter.
Infy TV shows: Our in-house internet TV features health and wellness related videos, experts are featured to spread awareness. The advantage is that employees can view the shows at their convenience and also refer to the repository of older videos.
HALE Safety campaigns – Awareness on road safety, fire safety, cyber safety, financial safety, holiday, personal safety, food safety, travel safety and festival safety. The campaigns included blogs by leaders, employee experiences and entertaining performances.
3. Tech Interventions – “HALE On-the-Go”
- Infosys Emergency App: An in-house app that employees can use at the press of the panic button that will trigger an alert to the security helpdesk and employee’ emergency contacts during emergency.
- Stress Audit Tool: A tool that assists employees identify their stress levels and there by seek help or take appropriate measures to improve their health
4. Enablement – “EnABLEr for a better tomorrow”
HALE Awareness Mailers:
Bringing updated information of Health to the employee’s desk top on a regular basis.
Interactive sessions on health related topics:
Experts are called to speak on specific health and wellness topics to promote employee health and well-being.
Self-defense and safety sessions:
Free and paid programs are available for men and women on a regular basis.
