Mental health is still a dominant risk

Sunder Natarajan, CRO at IndiaFirst Life Insurance, deep dives into risk associated with WFH, startups & emerging technologies and people issues

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Ravi Lalwani: Risks associated with WFH – how has been the actual experience vis-à-vis the expectations?

Sunder Natarajan: Every risk has two sides to it, not necessarily with a 50% chance of upside or otherwise. The degree keeps varying with changing circumstances. WFH is no different. It has seen a rapid rise with easy access to mobility and has of course got accelerated during and after the pandemic. For a 360 degree view on this, we can classify this by key stakeholders which could at a bare minimum be the employer, employee, and the customer. There could be larger stakeholders like the supply chain, industry, regulator, nation, and the world at large. In light of this target audience, we will restrict the perspective to BFSI and key stakeholders.

Employer: Most measurable risks would fold up to the risk of attrition and productivity lift or dip from a people point of view. In a connected world, a good chunk would be information security and data leakage and privacy related risks.

Employee: The biggest measurable risk would be net savings which would depend upon a personal productivity lift or dip and drop - in travel time and cost. The biggest elephant in the room is blurring of personal and professional timelines and goal posts leading to a strain in relationships all-round, and an eventual impact on physical and mental health. And this could work both ways.

Customer: The king/queen is the eventual beneficiary irrespective of where the goods or services are manufactured / offered with a distinct possibility of initial teething issues. The relevance of NPS has only gone up in the WFH world.