One of the challenges we’re constantly being asked is: how do we get our senior management to buy-in to Health and Wellbeing? We put this question to Executive Vice President at Bosch, Arun Srinivasan.
He is an advocate for employee wellbeing having done different types of training himself, such as work on resilience with consultancy Awaris, which transformed his thinking and approach.
This work looked at the results of a resilience assessment in which four key themes were identified to strengthening collective resilience and handling of stress:
- connection to purpose
- attention and focus in a fragmented world
- positive outlook
- connection and wellbeing
We spoke to Arun for more on his views on the Health and Wellbeing function…
How do we get Senior Leaders to buy-into things like training which focuses on Health and Wellbeing, and understand their importance?
Health and Wellbeing is an integral part of business.
We have an open style of leadership here, which means that often teams take the initiative themselves, facilitated by HR, and take on the training they believe is necessary for them.
It makes sense to ensure that your people are able to take on the stress of a job but also, at the same time, you’re motivating them and ensuring they’re able to deliver to their potential. Why else would you pay someone a salary and recruit them, but not give them the tools they need to be successful?
As a leader, when it comes to people and how to help your people thrive, what’s been the most useful training or experience you’ve had?
Over a period of about a decade, we worked with a psychologist to understand the implications of organisational behaviour and politics. It was about understanding people and character, which was extremely useful for the leadership team.
Why was it so useful for the leadership team?
I suppose we learned a lot more about ourselves.
We looked at why and how people talk. It’s helpful to understand what kind of person you’re speaking to and how your message is landing. It makes you think about how you would deliver a message so it makes sense to the other person.
And we had to be very honest as a leadership team, amongst ourselves, examining our own characters, motivation and prejudices. We had to ask ourselves questions like: am I doing this to support my ego, or is it the right outcome for the company, or the situation?
You have to create a safe environment for those questions or people will find a way of avoiding them.
It’s been brilliant as it’s given us a language of conversation within the leadership team.
Even a senior person will stand in front of the mirror sometimes and ask: am I doing the right thing?
It’s important to be able to have honest conversations that require a certain understanding that the relationship is steady and there is a certain amount of resilience among the individuals involved. That is where you can make real progress.
We write a lot about psychological safety and creating an environment where people feel comfortable making mistakes. What do you think about this idea?
It’s critical to be able to say ‘why did that happen?’ and ‘what could we have done differently?’
Humans are not like software packages. They need to grow into their roles and challenges and for that they need a safe environment to try things out and make decisions on their own.
A mentor or a coach can also really help in this process. This has also worked well amongst the leadership team.
Can you tell me about your work with Awaris?
I watched Chris [Chris Tamdjidi, Managing Director, Awaris] do a session in Germany with some of our senior leadership and I reached out to him.
The thing about Awaris that appealed to me is that you can get a lot of this information from things like reading books but, for me, it’s the experiential aspect of learning that really gets the message home.
It’s personally going on a journey that makes all the difference. You can, of course, watch lots of content and collect knowledge, but it’s not the same as an experience.
We did a lot of work on how you pick up issues that may be going on in your organisation, or with a colleague.
How do you believe you achieve cultural change in an organisation?
Organisational transformation of magnitude is driven by people much more than processes. It’s important to understand the human side and you have to bring your people along for the journey.
So often companies focus on getting the financials right, then the product right, and then the process right… Almost, as an afterthought, businesses consider the people side. But that is the wrong way round.
The power of any transformation comes from people.
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