Employee wellbeing is a core part of your business culture with Novartis

The new shape of work interview series addresses the challenges and uncertainty brought by the coronavirus, and how to transition to a more agile workforce for the future.

COVID-19 has compelled everyone to quickly shift to a new shape of work. As a result, we’ve seen a natural focus on the health well-being of our people. Organizations had to quickly assess whether they have the right programs in place to support employee health and well-being, and certainly mental health and resilience has been a hallmark for the last 18 months.

This is part one of a two part conversation with Tripti Jha, Chief Talent and People Solutions officer at Novartis about the future of work. In this conversation, we discuss the shift away from seeing well-being as a benefit, as well as how the unbossed culture journey that Novartis started prior to the pandemic has allowed them to focus both on understanding and meeting employee needs, and working toward their vision and purpose for the future of working.

Interesting moments from the interview:

Employee well-being is not benefit. It's not positioning it as a benefit. Employee care, employee well-being is the responsibility as an employer, as an organization. Yes, it is self-responsibility; it is also the responsibility of enterprise companies. This is where you know the workforce connect with the organization.
Choice with responsibility is all about how do we give that flexibility and choice to associates to take care of themselves, to organize their work and life, to organize how they work in the teams, with the responsibility to take self-care with the responsibility to perform. And with the responsibility to help Novartis you know reach its vision and purpose, which is to reimagine medicines for our patients.
If you look at the history of HR, the workplace has not recognized mental health, until very recently, as a form of care. And it's the world over so it's not one place or one company. We started our focus on mental health and emotional well-being a few years back. During pandemic, of course, this has been one where a lot of associates have given us feedback in a very gentle way.
When we look back if there's one thing which was a key differentiator that really helped us strongly come through this pandemic has been our culture. And that culture has a few parts, because it enables us to focus on the purpose of the company, what is most important, you know, which is to reimagine medicine for our patients.