Indian multinational public sector banking company, Bank of Baroda declared that they had organized free and anonymous psychological counseling for their 8000 odd employees on a pilot basis. The intention is to control the stress level among the employees during the situation of COVID-19 pandemic.
Prakash Vir Rathi, General Manager (Human Resource Management) of BoB commented that the coronavirus pandemic had increased the stress level of employees to a great extent. In such cases, expert counseling will be a good solution to provide timely support to employees. The employee assistance program was initiated to reduce and control the stress among the bank’s employees, especially the younger employees. Around 60% of the employees in the bank are aged between 18-35 years. They had a total of 84,000 employees nationally. The program aims to cover all BoB employees in the Mumbai zone.
Sanjiv Chadha, Managing Director and Chief Executive of BoB conveyed his viewpoint that the counseling service offered by the bank is absolutely safe, non-judgmental, and highly confidential. It will be available to the employees and their family members 24/7. The program is being carried out in association with a specialized service provider, EAP India.
Bank of Baroda is the third-largest public sector bank in India with a network of 131 million customers, and a global presence of 100 overseas offices. To motivate the employees and make them stress-free, the bank had found that it is necessary to give counseling to the needful. Because mental wellness is of utmost importance for an employee to complete their work efficiently, especially during this pandemic. Lack of mental health among employees can have a crucial negative impact on their personal life and also affects business growth.
For businesses to develop and sustain, employers must pay attention to the mental well-being of their workforce. From this insight, BoB has initiated to provide well-being programs for their employees. The free counseling offered by the bank will advise the employees to control their stress level, simple techniques to sort out their issues, guidance to face the problem in any kind of uncertainties, etc. Through this, the bank aims to motivate its employees and in turn increases the productivity of the organization.
