Interview with Shafali Goutam and Nonita Mehta, Co-founders of Corzeal Solutions
About Corzeal
Corzeal Solutions was formed in September 2016 by Shafali Goutam and Nonita Mehta in Mumbai, India. The word ‘Corzeal’ stands for core passion, which we believe, is the leading asset of an organization i.e. their human asset. Therefore, looking after their health and wellbeing is of utmost importance to the value of our organization. Corzeal Solutions is India’s first wellness aggregator firm. We believe in focusing on providing the right wellness fit for all our client’s. Therefore, we customize wellness interventions in the space of Physical Fitness, Mental Health and Nutrition to incubate and engrain a wellness strategy within organizations. Our focus is to understand the company’s goals and align them with employee needs. We conduct health campaigns, fitness classes (either within the premises or externally) and position drivers internally to motivate employees and the senior management to adopt a healthier lifestyle, leading to higher productivity and efficiency.
Corzeal’s Motto: Healthy Employees = Happy Employees Happy Employees Better Organizational Performance
Q.1 What motivated you to take up a niche field like employee wellness? Any specific trigger/ incident?
Having resided both overseas and in India, we have comprehended a drastic disparity in workplace culture. For most working professionals, their people managers play an imperative role in forming lasting impressions of the work culture that surrounds them. In an ideal scenario, that would mean that all people managers should account for key sensitivities like employee health, wellness, ambition, career prospective, personal relationship trauma’s, etc. when leading their teams. Furthermore, these managers should hold an unbiased view on employee performance keeping factors like deteriorating health or maternity sabbaticals aside while focusing on factors such as efficiency and productivity. However, the ugly truth always comes to bite us in the back when their approach is in fact not as unbiased as we had hoped. Unfortunately, we have too been on the receiving end of the stigma that surrounds the wellness sphere in India. The feeling of fear and anxiety at the thought of taking a sick leave still daunts us. Being judged for not keeping well despite the long working hours, insufficient wellness resources, and the high-stress environment didn’t seem to sit well with us. It formed the foundation on the basis of which we decided to break free and focus our hard work and dedication towards ensuring better health and wellness initiatives for corporates across India.
Q.2 What is the need for employee wellness programs at a time when most organizations are investing in engagement programs?
The Employee Engagement index is typically derived through three key factors Say, Stay and Strive (as per the Aon Hewitt Engagement Model). It seeks understanding on whether employees are willing to say positive things about their organization, whether they display a sense of belonging and willingness to stay with the organization, and whether they are motivated to work at their optimum efficiency levels. While these aspects may account for the engagement index of an organization, all three factors of employee engagement are defeated if an employee is physically or mentally unhealthy. Therefore, it is imperative that we first focus on fundamental health benefits rather than focusing on organizing engagement off-sites or official outings. Furthermore, employee wellness could also be seen through an engagement lens itself.
Q.3 How crucial is an employee’s well being for an organization?
India has witnessed a major transformation due to Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization in the tail end of the 20th century. The outcome of such policies has led to the advent of a corporate working style in the country. Our corporate culture stresses upon excellence, efficiency, and sustainability. Such an environment has been one of the primary factors responsible for creating a workforce high on stress and lacking various physical health parameters. As per an ASSOCHAM survey, around 42.5% of corporate employees are suffering from depression or general anxiety. Further, Optum’s survey found out that around 43% of Indian employees have skewed BMI (body mass index). On the other hand, almost 60% of Corporate India does not have a strong wellness strategy in place. Therefore, it is necessary to bridge the gap between the current wellness scenario and the current wellness need of Corporate India.
Q.4 What are your key focus areas within employee wellness? Are they limited to physical and mental health alone?
We believe in focusing our interventions towards prevention rather than cure. Employee Wellness for corporates is not only about providing a gym or holding yoga classes, rather, it is about ingraining wellness within the culture and HR goals of the organizations. We provide a customized roadmap for Indian corporates that focuses on first understanding the organizational needs along with their key development areas. Based on our organizational analysis and key demographics, we provide them with a solutions suite that covers various employee wellness factors like health campaigns (mental health and nutrition), physical fitness classes (within or outside of their premises), a wellness coach, a nutritionist specialist, health tips based on the industry type, and strength and flexibility assessments.
Q. 5 Is organizational performance closely correlated with employee wellness programs? Could you cite a few examples to prove the same?
With the onset of a globalized economy, employees increasingly find themselves in the midst of unprecedented working hours and cramming into weekends, leading to considerable strain on employees and their families. However, it has been seen that wellness initiatives in such situations create long-lasting results with work-life balance. Therefore, corporate organizations need to ensure wellness practices are incorporated in the policies of the organization to realize increased organizational performance. Although, there isn’t abundant research done in this sphere in India and there is inconsistency in the research available, which can be due to cultural and lingual diversity across the country, corporates are skeptical. Nonetheless, as the growing research overseas in the corporate wellness space and in the personal health and wellness sphere is a silver lining, Indian organizations are slowly adopting employee wellbeing programs as a mandate.
- Drivers in employees: Corporate wellness could be any workplace health promotion activity or organizational policy designed to support healthy behavior in the workplace and improve health outcomes. According to Health Enhancement Research Organization, more than 90 percent of business leaders say that promoting corporate wellness can affect employee productivity and performance. Business leaders believe that these wellness programs heavily influence the drivers like productivity (62%), performance (60%), Employee engagement (41%), benefit cost reductions (30%) and safety (29%).
- Cost-saving for employers: Business leaders also viewed ‘health’ as an investment in human capital or as part of the organization’s core business strategy. This finding is important to us because it broadens the value proposition for investment in corporate India. According to Research and Development (RAND), such initiatives reduce the employer’s average health care costs by about $30 per member per month. We, as an employee wellness start-up could not have entered at a better time. While the organization’s movement is directed towards a desire to control healthcare costs, interactions with the employers helped us believe that there is more at play than meet the eyes and that all employers are realizing greater, long-term value of good employee relations.
Q.6 What are the best practices in employee wellness space?
Most organizations have prioritized drivers that they believe are needed for extracting the true potential of their employees. These drivers could be as simple as communication or as complex as diversity and inclusion of the employee base. After conducting research, we came across some of the major trends in wellness programs evolving in different organizations. We could put them into following brackets:
- Incentive management: Incentive programs generally offer two different communication opportunities- set up messages that relay guidelines and eligibility; and celebratory messages that recognize and praise winners. As unique as it might sound, here we recommend a third communication- surveys that help shape the ultimate program. Surveys provide an understanding of employees’ preferences that enable to maximize participation and, in so doing, have the most influential and biggest potential health impact.
- Public recognition: a cultural communications tool that reinforces a wellness program’s values and helps drive up future participation. People thrive on recognition. They get motivated by recognition, and not just financial recognition but also communication to the rest of the company that somebody special has done something good for the employees.
- Wearables (Pedometer programs) have made large appearances in quite a few MNCs. Investments in walking-based challenges, ultimate stair challenges, weight maintenance programs and other physical health initiatives to name a few. Our research reveals that companies like Zappos and Motley Fool have even invested in subsidized fitness accessories and company-wide challenges to start with. Investments in spiritual and emotional initiatives drive wellbeing.
- With time we are hopeful that corporate wellness programs will start to incorporate more fun activities that motivate employees to participate in many such programs. The most avid technology, according to us in the horizon includes gamification, competitions and other similar ideas. Greater returns are expected if we can integrate gamified applications into such initiatives. These applications incorporate game elements such as social interaction and sharing with rewards for completing challenges.
Corzeal aims at being the country’s first such aggregator platform which will launch sophisticated wellness initiatives for corporate organizations. Our feedback loop and rating approach is going to be the unique feature of the company which will help understand inclination of employees/managers and monitor their health on a real-time basis.
Q.7 Which companies offer the best wellness programs?
Realizing the importance of Employee Health (Physical and Mental), many companies have stepped up their game by introducing various wellness initiatives. However, some organizations have been able to do an incredible job in this context are Apollo Life, JSW, Tata Consultancy Services, L&T Infotech, Johnson & Johnson and RMSI.
Shafali Goutam “Co-Founded the employee wellness company, Corzeal Solutions. Previously worked with Aon Hewitt, as an associate consultant in the talent and performance practice focused towards leadership enhancement, talent selection and assessments, and organizational effectiveness. Pursued her education from the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom in business management and organizational effectiveness.”
Nonita Mehta “Co-Founded the employee wellness company, Corzeal Solutions. Previously worked with the Australian Government within the Education and Training Department, under the Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP) as a Case Manager for Migrants. Pursued her under-graduation in psychology from the University of Queensland, Australia and her Masters in Management from the University of Sydney.”
