PUTTING EMPLOYEES FIRST

As Covid-19 brought with it fears of salary cuts and job losses, companies went out of their way to assuage them and look after the well-being of their staffers. As part of the Forbes India-Kincentric Best Employers 2020 package, we look at 15 companies that led from the front to safeguard the physical and mental health of their teams during the pandemic

LESSONS FROM 2020: HOW TO SURVIVE, STRIVE AND THRIVE

By PADMAJA SREENIVAS, NIKHIL SHANKAR AND SREYANSHA BHATTACHARYA

2020 will remain in our memories for a long time to come. It is the year the world faced uncertainties and challenges at an unprecedented level. Individuals, communities, businesses and countries across the world plunged into uncertainty. The oft-used term VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world, became too real for comfort. As the world limps back towards some semblance of normalcy, business leaders are restlessly looking to shift focus from survival to growth. There is a need today, greater than ever, for organisations to reconfigure, reinvent, rethink and re-energise.

How to Survive in the VUCA world?

As businesses faced the new reality in the first half of 2020, their ability to be deliberate in their choices, rapid in their thinking and nimble in their execution was tested to the hilt. Most organisations demonstrated agility by acting quickly and adapting swiftly to the changing needs of the workforce. The Best Employer study of 2020 shows that in the race for survival, most companies did a splendid job of addressing their employees’ basic needs of safety, stability, and security during the first phase of the Covid-19 crisis. As those needs evolved, organisations adopted a more sophisticated approach to enter the next phase.