In an interaction with CIOTechOutlook, Ritesh Arora shared his views and thoughts pertaining to physical and mental fitness in the Tech Industry. Ritesh has over 25 years of industry and consulting experience in the manufacturing sector, focusing on automotive. His expertise spans digital strategy, business development, complex program management, large-scale transformations, innovation, and business process re-engineering.

How do you define fitness? What are the benefits that fit employees bring to an organization?

Fitness is a holistic concept; typically when we talk about physical fitness, which is not only about fighting obesity; actually, fitness encompasses physical fitness, mental fitness, and emotional fitness. Physical fitness basically means that we are able to do the activities of the day, whether work or personal life with energy. Mental fitness is something where we can think clearly and not get brain fog, and then we have emotional fitness, which is essentially about how we express our emotions. 

If the employees are fit, organizations have many benefits. Productivity is a direct benefit that if an employee has fitness and a better focus, the productivity would be higher. If the employees will fall sick less often, the sick leave illness incidences would be lower because the emotional fitness is there. And finally, all these things lead to happiness. If we are happy, we will get job satisfaction and our overall sense of well-being also goes up. From that perspective, our loyalty with the employer also increases.

The tech industry is known for its fast-paced and high-pressure environment, how can organizations in the tech industry create a culture that encourages a balance between work and wellness, ensuring long-term productivity and employee satisfaction?

This is not only for the tech industry but actually for the corporate world, because most of the workers are now tech-enabled, and most of the time they are in front of a screen. For encouraging a balanced perspective, many companies have a defined policy. It may not be there in India, but at least in the Western world, no emails can be sent after office hours. The mandatory leave concept has also come to India, where employees have to avail of their leaves.

Typically, many companies have leave on the last week of the year from Christmas to New Year, which is compulsory. Many companies are encouraging this, and the big tech firms like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, etc. have on their campuses sports, gyms, yoga centers, and spas, and they have memberships for their employees. All those things are available. So, a lot of companies offer this balanced lifestyle but the culture needs to be built up.

Just having the facilities is not good enough, and typically, I have seen culture trickles down from the top. Most of the organizations right now have outsourced this job, and many companies feel that, if we do webinars on various topics related to fitness, that is good enough, but the overall format needs to be thought over. These days, people have moved on to podcasts. People listen to podcasts. We have to understand what kind of formats and what kinds of things will work for various communities. It is important to create awareness in a way that is fun and does not seem like work. So, a lot of work needs to be done around building this culture of maintaining a good work-life balance and focusing on fitness.

With the rise of remote work, what innovative strategies can tech companies adopt to ensure the physical and mental well-being of their remote employees?

From the fitness perspective, working from home is an interesting concept. Because, as we all know, working from home became popular during COVID times, and post-COVID, many people became fit because everyone had time. Several people focused on fitness, whereas other people gained weight and developed more problems because they did not exercise, and they were sitting at home all the time, their movements were reduced, and they became less fit than before. In the context of working from home, it's a double-edged sword. For some people, it can work well. For some people, it can be a bit challenging to force themselves to move around.

Those who are working from home and sitting in front of the laptop for eight to ten hours are super sedentary. So to counter that, taking breaks is really important. There are some simple protocols that one can do, like take a break for 10 minutes or walk on the grass. If you have a lawn, walk barefoot, look at the sun for 5 to 10 minutes. These are the things that reenergize us. This can be done in a short time by people working from home to ensure that they maintain the work-health balance better.

As the tech industry continues to evolve, how do you foresee the approach to physical and mental fitness evolving in the tech industry over the next decade, and what steps should companies take to prepare for these changes?

We are a generation that is overfed and undernourished. There is a crisis of abundance. Nowadays people are eating more junk food, which is all unhealthy stuff. So, in my view, we are running an extremely high risk; we have to dig deep to identify what kinds of foods are really good and which are nutrition-deficient. Metabolic dysfunction is on the rise. According to the stats, I think if you take the account of diabetics and pre-diabetics in India, at least one-third of the population is on the borderline. So, we are potentially looking at a health crisis at a national level unless all of us take charge of our health as well as corporate health. We have to change the culture. It is not only employee welfare; corporations also have benefits because if employees are fit, productivity also goes up.