Sony Pictures Networks and Royal Rajasthan Foundation urge women to speak up through #KhulKeBolo

To explore the campaign's impact on corporate India and SPNI's in-house initiatives for women employees, we chatted with Manu Wadhwa, chief human resource officer, SPNI.

 

Edited excerpts: 

 

What inspired the launch of the campaign #KhulKeBolo and what impact do you expect viewers will take away?

 

The opportunity to create a voice for women's well-being can never be a good or a bad time. Internally at SPNI, we have been at the forefront of pioneering many initiatives that create equal and safe spaces for women. 

 

We aim to armour women with the personas of strength within the organisation and the societies they live in. 

 

Over the years, many aspects of our employee value proposition have offered women employee assistant programs and have created vulnerability amongst leadership to talk about sensitive subjects. We realised that we were creating impactful work within the organisation but wanted to translate the message of women’s mental health issues pan India. 

 

So, when the Royal Rajasthan Foundation reached out to us we found that it was an opportune moment to take this message of women’s mental health to the corners of India especially tier two and three areas. 

 

These women in these remote areas who are active viewers of our channel face issues of ostracisation, stigmatisation, and inability to speak on an everyday basis. 

 

We hope that through this campaign women speak their hearts out, their minds out and more importantly acknowledge that they need help and get that.

 

What measures is SPNI undertaking within the organisation so that women employees have safe spaces to #KhulKeBolo? 

 

We aspire to not just encourage women within our organisation to speak openly about their mental health but hope that other organisations in corporate India to be able to follow this pathway and be vulnerable. 

 

The campaign will help women realise that beauty doesn’t come from the perfection of playing different roles but is in persistence and being one’s true self and embracing imperfections. 

 

We already have in place an employee assistance program, which has a group of psychologists who can at any given point of time provide discreet counselling to employees and their dependents. The matters could be financial, societal pressures and legal challenges. We have seen an uptake of 55% since we launched it. 

 

With 'Mind-Aid', we aim to create awareness and give leaders an outlet through experiential storytelling to speak about their vulnerable side to our employees. We once had PT Usha, who went through a lot of challenges to get to where she is, to narrate that side of herself to our employees. Usha’s learning encouraged an audience to talk about what they are facing internally. 

 

Postpartum depression is on the rise and is gaining a lot of awareness. We encourage women returning to SPNI with our program ‘mom you are wow’, to highlight that they are the same beautiful women they were and do not need to worry about the new ecosystem of motherhood they are venturing into. 

 

To have a larger conversation on women’s mental health, men should also be sensitised about the challenges of the other gender, what initiatives does SPNI have in place to spread awareness within its organisation? 

 

Male counterparts need to understand that there are subconscious biases in the workplace that have to be addressed. We have active workshops on these issues with our male employees to sensitise them and educate leaders when they are hiring and mentoring female employees. 

 

When aiming to create safe spaces, is SPNI planning to launch or has initiatives for LGBTQ+ employees as well?

 

For SPNI one of our mottos is BYOS (bring yourself). This philosophy not only includes gender inclusion but also beliefs and preferences inclusion. We actively acknowledge that the LGBTQ+ community is an active provider of creativity in the entertainment industry and a driver of many initiatives we curate behind the screen. We aim to be inclusive with our workplace practices and we have done that through gender-neutral washrooms at our office.