Mental Health at Work: The Foundation for High-Impact, Resilient Teams

SatJ: How did you go about creating Anyo and of course, any mobile app is always exciting to hear about, so we’d love to hear that story. 

Vamshi: I come from a corporate or an investment banking world. I did seven years of investment banking with Goldman Sachs and Barclays. And I did five years of lending with a lending company in Chennai, which was a startup then called Vivrati Capital. I was the chief credit officer there. So with 13 years of banking background, I’ve seen stress firsthand, right? With six day work weeks, work pressure during month ends collections, every part of the regulations etc. So every part of the organization goes through stress day in and day out. So that’s where I spent most of my initial days and good 13 years. So for me to create impact meant to do something more in the wellness space, I thought I can make a difference to people’s lives if I was in the wellness space. And I also thought technology is not as used in the wellness space as compared to say something like lending space, right? So that’s where I thought I could make a difference. In my personal context, I had extensively benefited from having a coach. For me to be able to talk to somebody about what I was going through without being judged was a great thing.

Most of the time it was not about the responses that the person gives me. It was about being able to share your vulnerable or my vulnerable moments with a person. So I really felt impacted whenever I had a conversation with my coach. And therefore, when I was thinking about starting up, I wanted to do something very similar. And therefore, we chose the name Anyo. It’s inspired from the Sanskrit word Anyonya, which means being there for the other person. So we wanted to create an ecosystem where people can lean on and support each other. The term mental wellness came much later, right? So we still call ourselves a support system and therefore being there for the other person is our mission.

SatJ: Off late we’ve been reading a lot of literature about workplace stress, burnouts, and so on. 

How do you think employees and organizations should protect themselves from this high pressure environment and what steps should they as well as organizations take to ensure that we are able to manage these high stressors in the workplaces because today’s fast paced world brings with it high levels of stress?

Vamshi: Sure. Just on the lighter side, I run a mental wellness company and we are stressed too, so people in jobs experience stress. And of course there’s real competition. You know, there’s somebody who’s probably better than you to do the job and you’re there and therefore you have to do it at your best. So all of us go through significant competitions, questions and dilemmas. Doubts as well, right, which makes us want to be there and do despite what we are going through internally. I think awareness of tuning inwards, whichever practice you choose to follow is important. 

Earlier, it was called prayer. Now we’ve moved away from it. It can be journaling. It can be affirmation, any wellness practice that helps us tune inward where we really know what we’re seeking for. And therefore, though we are running, we are clear about the purpose and why we are running makes it a little better. For the newer ones joining the companies right across most of them being here issues around not wanting to communicate being afraid if they will lose out just because they communicate what they think. Also particularly for women finding it difficult to be assertive – these are issues that we see, right?

As a company that works in the emotional wellness space or mental wellness space, what we keep doing is to just pump up the self esteem of a person and teach them to communicate. So if they are able to stand up for themselves and tell what they think as long as they feel they’re right, it is okay. And I think it’s for the employees, employers and the managers to create that environment of trust, where people can openly talk about what they feel and ask for help. So that’s something that people these days generally avoid. They probably post on Instagram and they will not talk about it in their office.

So if you’re able to seek out help, build that kind of community, it can be a peer set, it can be a mentor. All of us had mentors, and I don’t know how many of the employees today think about having mentors. I think having anchors in and out of the workplace is very important to identify what we need out of work and what we need out of ourselves.

SatJ: In your opinion what makes a mentally healthy workplace? From an organization standpoint, what are some of the practical steps that organizations can take to create a mentally healthy workplace? And you know, what will also help Vamshi is if you can share examples without naming companies, of course. I mean, these days we have great places to work certifications and so on. Right. So Are there certifications that certify an organization to be a mentally healthy workplace? 

Vamshi: Sure, see, what according to me makes a mental, a good workplace is a workplace where people trust each other. I think that’s the bond that’s broken. When I speak to HRs and talk about mental wellness, there’s a real age gap, right? Like I work for 12 hours, six days a week. And I’m so trained to doing that, that I feel it’s okay. While that population that’s joining the workforce today has seen a lot of different things. They’ve seen COVID happen. They’ve seen wellness taking a beating. They’ve seen people around them really die. And they have also seen companies letting go of people left, right, and center because, you know, companies were not able to keep so many employees. So somewhere deep inside them, they feel that when things go wrong, they’re just going to be by themselves.

And why should they go the extra mile? So I see this constant imbalance between the ones driving the teams and the ones joining the teams. And that trust is what I think has to be built. When we go and talk to companies, we’re only trying to create the bridge. So we can be a bridge where we’re talking to people, hearing them out and then saying improve these factors so that your company gets better.

Conscious effort by the managers or by the senior management to build that place of trust, I think is important. While we may all have our own styles of working and hours of work, et cetera, I think being a little more open to new things or, the different styles of work is again becoming very, very important. Like I said, I come to the office by 9 am because, you know, the banking world expects that kind of login and I’m so used to it. When I see people walking in at 11, it is difficult. I wouldn’t say it’s easy. I also have doubts about, you know, how much they will be able to do – is five hours enough, six hours enough, et cetera.

These are the challenges that we go through as managers, but I think somewhere we’ll have to understand that you know, the world is changing and we have to get better with our being open to different styles of work. So for me, trust is the primary factor and I feel it is broken across organizations. Anyo or any other wellness player can be a bridge as long as we’re able to communicate to the company on the overall issues without having to disclose the identity of anybody. So that’s again, trust for the system, right? So tell the company what is going wrong so that they can fix it. 

In terms of examples – I’ve seen two examples, one in which HR really thinks that you know, I can’t do much in this company. Whenever people have issues, they will post on Instagram. They will not come and tell me. So if you’re in that mindset that nothing is going to change, this is how the newer workforce is, and there’s a problem with them. And this is how I’m going to be versus a workplace where the HRs are okay, listening to them, right? So they want people to use the app. People have a hesitancy to use a product if they think the data is going to go to the HR, right? So there’s a lot of effort in communicating that we’re doing this for your benefit. Use it. We don’t want to track you. It’s not to track what your problems are, but it is to address it more meaningfully. So when HR or companies take that effort and build that kind of trust, we see great success with the product. And I think that that makes the difference. 

SatJ: The point you raised about what trust is, is bang on. Maybe it’s a good time for you to talk a little bit about the product. Our listeners would love to know what Anyo does and how organizations can benefit by using the product. 

Vamshi: Anyo is inspired from the Sanskrit word which means being there for the other person. We wanted to create a support system that will help people for all their day-to-day wellness needs. So stress sleep, stress nutrition and emotional wellbeing. And we see all this connected, right? Somebody doesn’t sleep well. It directly impacts their emotions and performance or the other way. They haven’t had a great day. It impacts their sleep. Food, the most abused thing whenever you’re not great or the other way around, right? So we don’t know how to handle food and that’s like our go to behavior whenever we want to cope. And that results in a lot more problems than we usually think. So managing nutrition, sleep ofcourse, stress on how we can handle stress better and emotional intelligence is what we do.

We wanted to keep the platform more engaging. We wanted to ensure that people come and open up. So we have created circles, which is a community where people come and post and we have our own experts posting in the community on a daily basis with tips and suggestions on what people can do. The most attractive feature for many of our users is our venting platform. We have it open from 9 a. m. to 11 p. m. in the night. It’s a no name platform, almost works like a church confession model where you can just come and talk about whatever you feel like, right? We’ve had people telling us that they felt bad because there was a cat on the road which was starving and they couldn’t help it, two people talking about real issues that they’re facing with regards to their relationship, etc.

So the vent platform as an idea has seen a lot of traction. And we have connected with therapists and packages, which was a little more holistic. Somebody coming with anxiety we thought doing more than psychology usually helps. We have psychologists who directly talk to them. Like I said, they always have difficult sleep patterns. They always have difficult food habits. And if you’re able to address anxiety as a package, right, with emotions, sleep and nutrition in one go, then the recovery rate is much faster. So that’s what we try to do – we try to provide holistic solutions by combining experts across various fields.

SatJ: Okay. And this is largely a B2B kind of a platform right now, or it’s a B2C where I can just download the app from a site.

Vamshi: Yeah, you can download and use the app from the app store and play store. We are distributing through the corporate channels because it’s easier for employees to use when it’s free.

SatJ: Can you share some common themes that get discussed in these therapy rooms? I’ve heard about the therapy rooms and as a place to discuss your workplace stresses and your wellness. So can you throw some light on what these rooms are and how do you go about solving problems?

Vamshi: Sure. I’ll give you a few examples. Right. First is burnout. I’ve seen cases. So the symptoms of burnout probably are picked up much later, right? So what results in burnout or the common behavior that we see causing burnout is this thought process that is for the next two months, three months, I am into a project. I will finish this and things will get better. I don’t have to talk now. I will talk about it a little later. So you postpone communication. You want to do it for some more time and see if things change. And if really things don’t change beyond the timeline that you’re expecting then people go through burnout. More often than not, things don’t change because the other person has never got the signal from you that you’re tired. People on the other side think that you enjoy doing it, you’re okay doing it because you’ve never communicated. And it results in them offering more work because that’s how we all work, right? If I’m not doing it, If I don’t tell people what I’m going through, there’s very little chance that the other person will know. So that is a clear sign of burnout, we have the best performers coming and telling us that I thought it’ll get better in six months, but that never happened. And I’ve been waiting for a year. So that’s one common theme. 

Second concern that we’ve seen is anxiety around appraisal time, right? That’s like the difficult phase. So two things happen. One you overworked, you think you’ve overworked and you think you’ve not been appraised well that’s a possibility. The second one is that you are unsure of what to expect from an appraisal conversation because the communication on your performance has not been consistent right? So surprise elements, suddenly somebody, your manager tells you that you’ve not done well and you’re not expecting that kind of results feedback. So that again becomes a period of heavy anxiety where people feel cheated or they feel that the company has been unfair to them. So that’s a period of anxiety and stress or reasons that we have seen. 

Then there are few cases where people are afraid of their managers. They’re just afraid to say anything to their manager because they believe that the manager is the person who the company is going to listen to and their voice may not be heard so the manager relationship with the manager and the importance they see that the manager receives in the company impacts the way they’re able to talk about their issues in a company.

So these are things that we commonly hear about and see what we can do to help all of them is first improve their self esteem, that is you know, work is something that you have chosen to do and therefore, for us to give our best at any workplace, we have to be confident about ourselves. So a lot of people forget their strengths after a few days and especially when you go into that negative zone, you don’t remember what your strengths are and why you were chosen for that work in the first place. So, to be able to bring back their idea, I mean for them to be able to think about their strengths and work towards improving on their strengths, it still builds self esteem. And once self esteem is sort of under control, then it’s about, you know, ability to communicate, right? So, this is what largely happens and in a few cases, it could be related to things beyond work. I may have had something that has happened to me in the past and what’s happening in my work is bringing back old memories of trauma, etc.

Vamshi: So, those are cases that have to be dealt with in greater depth, depending on what is causing the issue. 

SatJ: We spoke a lot about trust issues within organizations and employees may also not be very open to raising specific issues that impact their wellbeing to, let’s say the HR community for the fear of being judged or for the fear of their managers coming to know about it and so on. 

If an HR organization were to ask you, how do we break this barrier? How do we build that confidence? And are there ways in which I can integrate the philosophy and the concept of mental wellness into our HR policies? What would be your recommendation? How will you go about doing something like that? 

Vamshi: Sure. See, I think a lot depends on the leadership team, right? So we run a specific program called train the trainers or train the managers. That’s more for the leadership team to understand a lot of things about wellness and mental wellness, work styles, etc. Like I said, some of us carry baggage of what we have done in the past and therefore think that, you know, this is the right way. So there is a lot to be done in terms of getting the leadership team open up to a lot of new ideas. I think there is no other way out because the majority in future is going to behave the way today the ones who are entering the workforce are behaving, right? That’s like the style that’s going to be there for the next 10 years, 15 years. It is for us to open up. And then once you open up and listen to them , maybe they’ll be willing to adapt to the ideas that they propose. I mean, the senior management wants to propose. So for us, it is about training the leadership team to be more open about ideas of emotional wellness. And I think somewhere people also don’t believe that this is real, right? Whenever I talk to the management team the usual response that I get is we never had such issues. We never had to go through this. It’s not like we work less, etc. While all of this may be true today the reality is slightly different. To see this as a genuine concern and to be able to equip managers to address it in the first place is what every organization according to me has to do.

SatJ: Now before we wrap up we’ll get into the segment, which is kind of our audience favorite. Let me put it that way. Essentially, this is like a rapid fire round Vamshi and what we are looking for are short, quick and impactful responses from your end. And so let me start by asking you our first question.

If you could introduce one wellness practice to every workplace, what would it be? 

Vamshi: Gratitude journaling. So that’s about writing what went well each day. And I think that makes a lot of difference. If you find one thing that you can be happy for in a day, I think that’s what we look for.

One wellness practice you cannot live without and your favorite wellness app other than Anyo, of course. 

Vamshi: I like apps like Calm. There have been days when I’ve not been able to sleep and I think the idea of diverting to something like sleep stories to sleep has always impressed me.

The unique combination of technology and wellness. Is it a boon or a bane according to you? 

Vamshi: See, I don’t find another alternative to scale, right? Technology is the best way to be able to scale. Now, the question is we are preaching to people to reduce screen time. Yeah, and that’s one point, how people can avoid burnout despite their day to day being demanding. I think trying to at least find an hour for yourself without screen time. 

So, I think there is no other alternative to scale than to use technology. If Instagram can pull a crowd with video content, can a wellness app pull a crowd with video content that is around wellness, like you’re seeing wellness every day, will that benefit? So, if we can use whatever is working for wellness and make it positive reinforcement of habits. That’s like a great place to be. And that’s what we’re trying with Anyo. 

SatJ: Pardon me for asking this, I’m just taking a slight detour because this question just popped up in my mind. When it comes to, you know different genders, you feel that their requirement from a wellness app is different or does Anyo cater to all genders as such?

Vamshi: We cater to different genders. I will stay with male and female and for now regarding men and women, the difference that I see is men complain more about workplace issues when they think they don’t get paid well. So, usually the conversation ends with, I don’t think I’m getting paid well despite the kind of work I’m doing.

Women complain less about pay but about how they’re treated in the organization, how they feel about their role in the organization, etc. So, somewhere I’m surprised by this distinction myself but I feel that you know, this is something that’s come as a data point. I don’t have validation on why it happens, but this is what we see.

SatJ: Your personal mantra or affirmation that you live by? 

Vamshi: I’m a little more spiritual in that aspect. I think I’m always taken care of. That’s what I tell myself. And that’s what I really think about myself. 

SatJ: What is your best book on mental health that you’ve ever read, and are there a set of books that you would like to recommend to our audience?

Vamshi: Book recommendations are okay. Well, I think the philosophy of psychology – I like Alder’s psychology, which is more about individual psychology and how everything is related to people and relationships. So that’s something that I really like and of course the Western psychologists and they are thinking fast, thinking slow. These are books that all of us have to read. And some of this I think has to become a curriculum so that we genuinely understand how the most important part of our body functions and therefore we’re able to handle it better.