Uday is an Executive Coach, HR Strategist, and strong believer in Normalizing mental health conversations. He has close to three decades of experience contributing to various HR & Leadership roles across various countries & cultures. He is Currently Leading People Care function for Nokia APJ. He is PCC Trained and a Master Coach at Nokia. As Executive Coach his focus is on solution-oriented approaches to work & life overall. He practices solution-oriented coaching method. His has many years of experience coaching senior organization leaders, first time entrepreneurs and sales professionals.
We are delighted that Uday will be speaking in Singapore as part of our Asia summit. We caught up with him to see how he’s feeling in the runup to the event.
Hi Uday, we are thrilled that you will be speaking at the Wellbeing at Work Asia Summit in March. Our first and most important question is, how are you doing today?
Doing well 😊 and in a very positive mood and looking forward to the summit.
As a leader based in the region, what are the main challenges you are facing when it comes to employee wellbeing and mental health?
I think one of the big challenges is that mental health is still considered a private topic and people don’t feel comfortable discussing it.
This is not an issue only for organisations but for society overall and it is important that we make it OK to talk about mental health problems.
What strategies have you seen developing over the past 6 months, both internally and externally, that are moving the dial on wellbeing in the workplace?
I think most organisations are doing very well on physical wellbeing but in past 6 months I have noticed more awareness around mental wellbeing.
Organisations are having different programs to support through council, coaching and mentoring around these topics.Â
We are working more towards building our leadership skills in the area of understanding emp wellbeing, motivating them to speak up and feedback both ways.
Why is employee wellbeing so important to you personally?
I am a mental health survivor and have faced burnout, anxiety and depression in my life so it is a personal mission to spread awareness, make it normal to talk about, helping people deal with burnout.
I am very passionate about normalizing mental health conversations and looking forward to the day when employees can ask for time off as effortlessly on a bad day mentally as they do when they have fever or cough.
Other than AI, are there any challenges that you are seeing for the first time and how are you addressing them?
I don’t see AI as a challenge but more as an opportunity.
Do you feel that investment in employee wellbeing in the region is increasing or decreasing and is that a direct reflection on HR leaders’ increasing ability to demonstrate effective returns of their strategies to leadership?
I think awareness about employee wellbeing is increasing in the region and HR leaders are playing a key role in it. Can we do more? Absolutely.Â
Uday will be speaking in Singapore at the Wellbeing at Work Summit Asia. Further details on the Summit can be found here.
