Keeping in mind the current situation, ICICI Prudential Life believes that aligned and skilled workforce is a key source of companies strength and competitive advantage.

1. What is your vision to ensure safety and security of employees during the transition to WFO from WFH?

Health and safety of our employees is our foremost priority and we have taken all necessary steps to ensure their well-being and provide best-in-class technology and infrastructure support to enable them to be productive. While most of our employees are still working from home, we have upgraded the physical infrastructure in office. We have installed HEPA ultraviolent air purifiers, plexiglass shields at all workstations and ensure that the office premises are regularly sanitized. Besides, to ensure proper ventilation and air circulation in office windows are kept open. Social distancing protocols are strictly implemented and wearing masks is mandatory.

To support employees to get quick diagnosis based on their symptoms we offer tele-consultation and tele-counselling with qualified doctors for employees who need access to mental health support. We have been nudging all employees to get vaccinated and have held vaccination camps for them at several locations. Today ~85% of our employees have taken the first jab and after the mandatory wait period we will begin the drive for them to get the second one. After this, we will begin rostering fully vaccinated employees who have their own means of transport. At the same time we will be sensitive to the needs of employees who may be living with family members with co-morbidities. In such cases we will give them the WFH option.

Standard operating procedures have been put in place to ensure that employees take all necessary precautions. Our in-house app ‘iWorkSafe’ which is linked to the Aarogya Setu app, captures the employees’ vaccination status and the bluetooth buzzer ensures social distancing is maintained in offices. We have enhanced the internet bandwidth for employees to support the hybrid model. Besides, a digital office has been set up through the employee app ‘ATOM’ and ‘PULSE’, the enterprise social network.

We are taking a calibrated call on how we will transition from WFH to WFO by using technology and will continue to provide a robust physical infrastructure that supports both high performance and employees’ safety, health, and security.

2. As the hybrid work model is here to stay, how will ICICI Prudential Life Insurance cultivate a culture that motivates employees to give their best?

We do believe the hybrid model is here to stay and clearly see three kinds of roles evolving. One, customer-facing roles which require employees to have face-to-face interactions such as servicing and sales. This set of employees will necessarily be WFO as the WFH model is not practical. Second, there will be certain roles that can be performed from home. This involves specialised individual contributors who need minimal supervision such as specialist underwriters and data scientists. We can move these roles to WFH.

Thirdly, there are hybrid roles where employees need to come to office for team meetings or where employees are working in cross-functional projects and need to interact with others. Here, we will develop a framework where employees can opt for WFH on certain days of the month.

In my view, while WFH is efficient because it rationalises commute time, it may not always be effective for certain roles where employees need to do influencing, ideation and innovation. Having face-to-face interactions clearly helps build trust between people which is essential for teamwork and collaboration, which in turn helps in problem-solving and innovation.

The option of WFH will definitely be given to employees who are caregivers, or have health conditions. We are currently in the process of framing policies that will give our employees the advantages of both WFH and WFO. The idea is to help them balance their need to save on commute and take care of family members. The WFO option will provide them with technology and infrastructure enabling them to focus on work without interruptions leading to higher productivity. It will also take care of their need to socialise and build relationships which is essential for lubricating the friction that impacts delivery of work due to functional organisation structures.

We are also ensuring that our technology infrastructure, and our policies are synchronised, so that employees can effectively WFH and WFO seamlessly with no loss in productivity while giving them the flexibility.

3. Many companies have reinvented their organization with new policies, practices, and frameworks in the digital world. What are the initiatives taken by ICICI Prudential Life Insurance to work smoothly?

Multiple digital channels have empowered our customers to conduct self-service transactions, eliminating the need for them to travel to an office or branch. Similarly, we have all the necessary technology enablements for our employees to work, engage, and learn seamlessly without coming face-to-face. The entire employee lifecycle is now automated. Employees can use the ATOM and PULSE apps to request for leave, mark attendance, manage team relocation requests, change team reporting, book official travel, get updates on medical insurance, etc. Various collaboration tools such as MS Teams and Webex too have been made available to conduct virtual meets and collaborate among themselves. To ensure productivity is not compromised we have offered to reimburse data charges to employees to encourage them to get higher bandwidth plans. Also, we now conduct virtual interviews with potential recruits and their entire on-boarding process is digitally-enabled. Even farewells for outgoing employees are conducted virtually.

We have institutionalised a digital engagement architecture based on the 3i framework of Inform, Involve & Invigorate, where we are using technology to communicate, connect and engage employees through virtual Town Halls and Coffee and Connect sessions. We celebrate important national festivals and days through virtual events, for instance the Diwali celebrations with employees and their families and a webinar series on World Mental Health Day. A panel discussion on enabling success in sales as a career saw participation from over 1500 women. Besides, we also celebrated our 20th Foundation Day with a unique employee celebration. For the gala evening, we created a virtual auditorium and a grand stage to resemble the physical event. Our Chairman addressed all employees across the country as the entire event was streamed live.

We have an established digital learning framework which is multi-platform, mobile-first and offers customised learning that caters to the needs of employees across levels. ‘Learning at one’s pace and time’ is enabled through our learning management system – Learner’s Box. This is the ‘go-to’ platform for all domain-specific programmes that enable testing and certification. Our AI-based learning app – ‘My Coach’ facilitates improving sales pitch skills with machine generated feedback. In addition, in FY2021, we tied up with LinkedIn Learning and offered role-based learning journey to all managers. Last year employees completed digital learning programmes totalling to a million digital learning hours.

4. In the current time of uncertainty, what are your views on the world of work today? How do you see it evolve in coming years?

One thing we definitely see is an accelerated shift towards digital. It is unlikely that the pandemic will end soon. We believe there will be a spike in cases at times, and it is entirely possible that traveling freely will be a challenge. In our opinion, the key to managing uncertainty is to embrace it in order to thrive.

We also see social media acting as an amplifier of mass sentiments globally and building communities and interest groups. While social media channels can disseminate information quickly, it can also be a powerful agent of change both on the positive and negative side. We need to learn to live in a world where both information and disinformation is democratised. The pandemic shall surely create momentum and awareness for health, safety and well-being. Mental health is now part of the general discourse and there is a heightened sensitivity towards diversity and inclusion and WFH will surely give a fillip for hiring and retaining women, people with disabilities (PWDs) and creating more inclusive organisations. One of the attractions to join a startup is because they are less hierarchical, more agile, and offer faster opportunities to grow, learn, innovate and impact. Mature organisations can definitely learn from this and create a culture to attract and retain high quality talent.

5. According to you, what are the key factors that differentiate successful companies in the transition to the post-pandemic workplace?

I think the most important differentiator is whether the organisation delivered in times of crisis, when it mattered the most to its employees and their families. Employees will always prefer organisations that are sensitive to their needs and provide infrastructure, technology and support to help them manage the challenges of the pandemic. The test of an organisation is whether they put people first when it mattered and we would like to believe that we did. This is also borne out from our scores in our Voice of Employee (VoE) survey where we received top 2 box score of 94% on sensitivity & support we extended to employees on health, safety & well-being through multiple initiatives.

We have well-defined organisational cornerstones of Fairness & Meritocracy, Learning & Growth and Supportive Environment. In a bid to assess employee engagement, the VoE survey was rolled-out to seek employee feedback on the delivery against these employee value propositions. The focus of the survey was to capture the perception of colleagues on our cornerstones. Over 90% of the employees believe ICICI Prudential Life is a good place to work and they would like to recommend it to their family and friends. They also felt they had been kept well informed and connected through various learning initiatives and engagement activities during the pandemic.

During the pandemic, we assisted our employees to adopt working remotely. All employees were equipped with required devices – laptops, tablets and internet dongles and applications were migrated to provide secure remote access. We also enhanced life insurance coverage of our employees by over 100%, initiated vaccination drives and offered them the option to voluntarily enhance health cover for themselves and their parents.

6. What is your opinion on good HR practices with regards to a hybrid work environment? How is ICICI Prudential Life Insurance working to achieve or to maintain the same with its employees?

Fundamentally, good HR practices is about having a robust policy framework, systems and processes which are consistent and equitable for all employees. This will not change in a hybrid workplace. Perceived fairness is key and our focus is to ensure equity between people in different teams and across geographies. Fairness and meritocracy are two sides of the same coin and getting the balance right is key. For us, it involves having policies in place for everything that we do and administering the same uniformly. We do not discriminate based on level and when it comes to matters of health and safety, every life is precious and priceless. We do everything possible to support our colleagues when there is an imminent threat to their lives.

Our HR practices are built around the cornerstones of fairness and meritocracy, learning and growth and supportive environment and we endeavour to deliver on these by enabling employee health and safety, enabling workplace productivity and creating an agile and engaged workforce. In a hybrid workplace, a well-articulated WFH policy is essential to get the balance right between individual flexibility and workplace productivity and investments in technology and infrastructure to mitigate the challenges of a hybrid model.

7. What challenges did you face while transitioning to a hybrid structure of WFH and WFO?

We recently concluded an internal survey on ‘Remote Work Effectiveness’. The top level feedback we gathered is while employees did not face any challenges in functioning digitally, team leaders did feel constrained in bringing new recruits up the curve.

In the physical world, face-to-face interactions are key to building trust and relationships. Interpreting non-verbal cues are key for building understanding, influencing and mobilising stakeholders and team leaders often struggle to engage their colleagues in a virtual medium. Attending office and interacting with colleagues builds camaraderie but in a virtual workplace the chance to interact and access informal communication channels get restricted leading to silo-centric behaviour and loss of meaning and identity of the organisation as a whole. This is the very reason why we will opt for a hybrid model. We intend to maintain a fine balance between WFH and WFO to have best of both the worlds.

8. What is the major change expected in the role of HR in next five to 10 years?

HR has to play the lead role in championing inclusive human values and propagating equity because these are the two things that are central human concerns. HR also has to take the lead in creating, and championing the cause of diversity and inclusion that is increasingly gaining traction. We are proud to say that ICICI Prudential Life is a truly inclusive organisation. Currently 26% of our employees comprise of women and in the process and support functions it stands at 47% and 40% respectively. We have around 40% intake of women during campus hiring.

Taking the diversity beyond the women gender ratio is also an area where HR intervention is required for further extending it to diversity in skills. Recruiting people with physical disabilities, unseen minorities, and providing infrastructure support to them and integrating them in the workplace should be another priority. While HR is expected to lead this movement, they also have to encourage line managers to champion diversity & inclusion, because they are the ones with whom these people will work. This is the only way for it to get traction.

The adoption of technology needs to grow and organisations will need to explore some good use cases of AI in HR. It also begs a pertinent question of privacy which needs to be addressed with utmost sensitivity.

We believe that technology plays the role of an enabler to make the lives of employees simpler. It is to enable productivity, flexibility, make the routine parts of the job hassle-free and to provide access to digital learning platforms so one can learn anywhere, anytime and in the medium of their choice. The world is always changing and employees and organisations will have to anticipate change ahead of the curve, stay agile and remain competitive. HR is uniquely positioned to drive alignment to culture, business goals and strategy and facilitate this change & transformation agenda. Capability building and building and investing in future skills shall be a very important dimension for HR to future-proof organisations.

9. How does the hybrid work model impact productivity favourably?

Employees may be present at work, but actually not working at full capacity due to a stressful commute. If we can eliminate or reduce commute we can give people the extra time which can be gainfully utilised to enhance productivity. In the hybrid model, if an employee is unwell they can opt for WFH which will be more productive since they will have access to everything from home just as they would from office. Also, team meetings have become sharper and shorter, with not much time spent on tea or coffee breaks and informal discussions. So, we believe the hybrid model gives employees the required flexibility and all of us do need it to be more productive. But, it needs to be balanced with interactions with colleagues so that the socialising needs, and mentoring and coaching support of employees are taken care of. This transcends their role and provides people meaning and identity.

(The responses enclosed within this interview have been solely given to BW People Sr. Correspondent Ms. Sugandh Bahl by Mr. Judhajit Das, Chief – Human Resources, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance)