Quality of Life Division holds awareness talk with HR managers |17 September 2021

The session in progress yesterday (Photo: Louis Toussaint)

The Quality of Life Division under the aegis of the Family department hosted a third in a series of talks with the aim of having an awareness exchange with human resource officers.

The talk was held at the Children’s Ark, the headquarters of the National Council for Children, at Bel Eau.

Participants from the first two talks highlighted that in the past several years, the role of HR officers, especially when it comes to maintaining their workers' welfare, has blurred the lines of professionalism and assisting workers to overcome personal issues that indirectly or directly affect their job performance. The scourge of Covid-19 has made it even more challenging when addressing job uncertainty, budget cuts, and health restrictions. To address this issue, the talks hosted by the Quality of Life Division serve to equip the HR officers with knowledge to better identify, understand and address behaviours, most importantly to refer challenging cases to the experts at the Quality of Life Division.

Jimmy Petrousse, psychotherapist at the Quality of Life Division, explained that the main objective of this talk is to train the HR managers to accompany their staff on the effect of Covid-19 on mental health and how to help those suffering. “It is important for the HR managers and officers to know the needs and issues the staff are dealing with in order to accompany and help them. Covid-19 has disrupted the lives of many and there is a domino effect. HR is the key for making the staff feel reassured.”

Mr Petrousse noted that with Covid-19, the attitude of many employees has changed. “Many are scared to go back in the office, some procrastinate while others are frustrated. Even the personality and hygiene of some have changed. When the HR of the company is able to pick out these signs, they are in a better position to assist the employees. There are also some challenges that the HR managers cannot deal with and these employees need further assistance. Each person should make sure that personally they are standing on a solid platform and adopt a positive attitude as the country is getting slowly back to normal.”

During the talk, the HR officers/managers were able to talk about: Aspect of mental effect; Grieve; Restructuring; Work from home; Work performance; Vaccination; Stress; Expectation and confidentiality.

Yesterday was the third session and some 30 HR managers have attended this training.

Vidya Gappy