Investing in employee wellness: The key to sustainable hospitality

In the current era of competitive business scenario, dynamic lifestyle changes and robust technology advancements, human mind has been constantly evolving as an ‘architect’ in both professional and personal walks of life. Subsequently, adapting to change has become one of the critical behavioural competences required for people to enable the organisations, career and personal aspirational journey to sustain. Here is where the concept of wellness has evolved across business sectors, and post the Covid19 pandemic, the significance of wellness has multiplied geometrically in terms of employee wellness, start-ups based on wellness, service-centric wellness initiatives and independent wellness consultants. Gradually, wellness has transformed from being a welfare need to a sustainable progressive need across sectors and even as peoples’ personal means to adapt wherein the change has been constant. 

One such sector wherein the need of wellness has been critical as well as exponential is hospitality and considering the economic factors involved in the hospitality sector, both employee wellness and service-centric wellness initiatives have taken a lead and been built in several brands associated with hospitality. 

It has been specifically developed by nurturing internal competence, investing in new talent pool and improving infrastructure to meet wellness standards. This ensures a reliable and viable environment to deliver and sustain it for all stakeholders. This has even enabled and ensured that these brands secure their cost model, employee productivity, talent retention, constantly improve their service model, sustain quality model through professional and empathy driven service to the guests and position themselves efficiently as “Architects of their Own” in the hospitality sector. Subsequently, wellness initiatives has grown as a valuable tool in building employee work engagement and culture in the hospitality sector and beyond.

Before we dive into the highlights of wellness initiatives in the hospitality sector and its impact, let us navigate through the six vital factors to ensure and sustain wellness and what we gain as a value-add to our professional and personal aspirations. And we have to be mindful of one aspect, that is if we ensure our personal wellness proactively and keep it intact, then only we will be able to deliver efficiently and create a positive impact at our professional space:

1)    Mindset: Keep a positive, proactive and healthy attitude. This is the foundation to discipline your wellness routine and our mindset matters the most to be consistently focussed in what good we do efficiently with determination and what better we can contribute with collaboration
2)    People connect: It is the most vital driving force and strength to understand the wellness generic and specific needs. Driving this need with care generates trust amongst all stakeholders particularly the employees and guests. Simultaneously, wellness initiatives are backed with science and thus creating awareness through positive social interactions among employees and employee-guest enables better emotional understanding and align on how they benefit out of it
3)    Emotional Balance: Balancing our emotions is crucial while driving wellness initiatives as our emotions determine our approach; and our approach build relations, relations sustain with trust and trust evolves winning teams. Hence, it is crucial that our emotions are progressively balanced ensuring desired wellness outcomes to the stakeholders
4)    Lifestyle: Healthy lifestyle and vital nutritional balance is a must. Exercise regularly as our body can correspond better to the science behind this wellness. Eat healthy and well-balanced meals, get enough rest and sleep, being healthy brings in synergy amongs our body and mind and evolves confidence to our wellness practice.

AUTHOR BIO: Dr Pooja Grover is Head – Human Resource, Gitam (Deemed to be) University