Living up to the name

Happiest Minds follows a 7Cs and 7Ws model to ensure the happiness of its workforce.

The Bengaluru-based technology company, Happiest Minds, does not claim that it makes its employees happy. Instead, it cultivates conditions, which make its employee feel happiness around them. It also organises mental training sessions for its people that helps them realise how a state of happiness can be achieved.

This technology company, which now has 1,250 employees in its team, follows a holistic approach to achieve the maximum satisfaction of its workforce.

With a deep-rooted belief in the philosophy that happiest people make the best team, the company does not refer to its employees as ‘workforce’ or as ‘resources’. It simply refers to them as ‘Happiest Minds’. In fact, every e-mail and communication addressed to them by the management makes use of the same reference.

But it is easier said than done.

After all, happiness is a relative term and every individual has a different definition for it. It is almost impossible to keep everyone happy.

The company claims to follow the 7Cs framework – collaboration, contribution, choice, culture, community, credibility and communication.

Happiest Minds asks its people, what makes them happy. Some refer to flexible working hours while a few want more of work–life balance. These small things are incorporated in its day-to-day activities.

“The framework guides us on the fertility conditions that would make people feel happy about the environment, the work conditions, the facilities and the people around them,” says, Gaurav Saini, associate director and head L&D, people practice team, Happiest Minds Technologies.

The company also boasts of having an open environment, where policies are co-created. Actions are proposed by the management on an intra-social media website before they are implemented.

On this platform, people have a chance to engage in a dialogue, make suggestions and actually have their inputs taken into consideration. With so many people involved, this process can be time consuming and exhausting. So, in order to make it more productive, the HR team decides a stipulated time period within which people need to send in their responses.

Every proposal is then carefully appraised before making amends in the policy. If a suggestion is not taken into account, the HR team makes sure that the person behind the suggestion knows why his input was not incorporated. The idea is to create a conducive environment for employees, to make them feel both safe and comfortable.

“People work together in this firm to achieve common end results. With strong leaders to guide them, they grow personally and professionally as the work culture celebrates their talents. The principal of ‘SMILES’ that the company adheres to, includes values like sharing, mindfulness, integrity, learning, excellence and social responsibility,” says Saini.

Happiest Minds also claims to follow 7Ws – a complete wellness programme for its employees, so that they grow in the organisation. These include physical, spiritual, intellectual, professional, social, emotional and environmental wellness.

Saini says, “I take care of his mindset, stress levels, emotions as well as body in terms of physical wellness. I take care of his complete wellness.”
He explains, “To ensure that an employee grows in the organisation, he has to have enough money, proper feedback mechanism so that he can grow and get a promotion in the organisation or he change his roles in the organisation.”

“And for this, the employee needs regular upskilling and intellectual wellness, which is focussed on his technical skills and soft skills and his leadership development programmes,” Saini adds.

The company claims to have a mechanism to evaluate the effectiveness of this programme. “We measure the happiness of the people from time to time,” says Saini.

There is a questionnaire which is sent to people, anonymously. It is an annual survey called Happiness Pearls Survey, and the number of people who respond to the questionnaire is an indicator.

There are some psychometric questions and some straight questions put to them.

“At the moment, what we see is that about 75 per cent of people claim that they are happy working with us,” says Saini. In the coming years, the company’s target is to increase this rate to 95 per cent.

While Happiest Minds does believe in greeting its employees with balloons and flowers, they are also treated with respect and responsibility. “We do not do different things, we just do things differently.”