While Anna Sebastian’s death only led to her employer (Ernts & Young) assuring that employee well-being will continue to remain a priority at EY, Deloitte has decided to go a step further and take immediate and concrete action. One of the Big 4, Deloitte has been quick to constitute an external committee comprising three members—Tarun Bajaj, former revenue secretary, Manoj Kohli ex-CEO, Airtel, and Subodh Jaiswal, former director, CBI—to closely examine its work environment.
The committee will study the employee policies and workplace processes at Deloitte as per media reports quoting Romal Shetty, CEO, South Asia, Deloitte.
The company has already appointed a chief happiness officer to address work pressure and foster an open work culture. It has zero tolerance for improper behaviour. According to Shetty, Deloitte believes that building an open culture is the first step towards ensuring that employees feel free to discuss their issues and speak up without fear.
Deloitte believes in reassessing and re-examining the work environment so that work stress can be better handled.
While Shetty denied the possibility of a bullying culture in well-established organisations, he did reportedly highlight the need for organisations to be more sensitive to the emotional needs of employees who migrate from smaller towns and stay away from their families. Such employees may struggle to tackle tight deadlines and pressures at work without any near and dear ones to talk to. The workplace, after all, is where employees spend a lot of their waking hours, sometimes up to 14 hours. It is, therefore, up to organisations to ensure that this workplace is so comfortable for the employees that they do not hesitate to speak their minds.
