As the pandemic surfaced and became the prominent trend, as an organization, our initial focus was to ensure the well-being of our employees and provide them with a support system that was so needed at that time. We had to ensure that all our employees had the tools to operate from home seamlessly. We also wanted to ensure minimal disruption to our ability to provide our customers with the best services during the pandemic continuously. While ensuring continued quality support and services to our customers; we ensured the operational framework support and technical assurance for our employees.
Even post pandemic effects continue to affect many lives, with untimely deaths of members and bread earners. At Birlasoft we wanted to not just have a reactive support but ensure a ‘Long-term’ pandemic plan. The benevolent fund was introduced to support our employees’ families in times of need. After losing employees and their family members during the pandemic phases, we wanted our employees to have a stake in everybody’s collective wellness.
To support the immediate family, of the deceased (during services) employees, in their livelihood, we structured this benevolent fund as Employee Welfare Program IKSHANA (a Sanskrit word that means to care deeply) . The program provides a lump sum to the family to help them cope with tough times, such as paying for the deceased employee’s medical expenses that were covered by medical insurance and supporting children through college or professional school. The program also helps employees pay for their children’s congenital disease treatment if medical insurance doesn’t cover it. It is funded by nominal contributions made by the employees and the organization. This ensures that all the Birlasoft employees have a stake in each other’s safety and security.
SDGs impacted here
Setting up this fund and extending this benefit to the impacted employee families is a great value statement on behalf of the Birlasoft Employee Collective. We also restructured our variable compensation plan to increase take-home pay during this time due to inflation and rising living costs. This helped people manage inflation and rising medical costs.
We have supported our employees and their families during the pandemic through our special COVID-19 Insurance policy. As far as this fund is concerned, we have supported multiple employee families since its inception in April 2022.