Essilor strengthens employee welfare practices to safeguard against Covid-19

Bangalore: Essilor, world’s leading ophthalmic optics company and has been a dominant player in India's ophthalmic lens market has initiated a series of activities to ensure its employees, and their families, are protected during the second wave of COVID-19 that has hit the country. Essilor has deployed multiple initiatives for those who are working as front line responders and care givers of COVID-19 pandemic.

To ensure safety and security until the last mile, a 24X7 helpline created to support the infected employees and their family members to ensure a timely help. Online medical consultation and pathological tie-ups initiated to limit the need of employees to go out and meet the doctor or get themselves tested.

Speaking about the initiatives, Sress PP, Group HR Head, Essilor South Asia, said, “During these unprecedented crisis, it requires a collective and collaborative effort from all to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in the best capacity. Few initiatives undertaken at the early stages have helped in reducing the cases in the company. Very early, we encouraged our employees to get vaccinated and provided half a day leave every time they supported their spouse and parents to get vaccinated. Even before the surge in the number of cases, we allowed all comorbid employees, women employees and bachelors to WFH. Before the lockdown was announced by the state governments, wherever possible Essilor proactively closed down their operations and kept the human involvement to minimum to reduce the risk of employees getting infected”.

The company ensured that at each major locations, the Oxygen cylinders used in the manufacturing process were available to the employees for emergency use. A good number of oxygen concentrators were procured and distributed at all major locations. Safety kits in terms of masks, gloves, sanitizer have been shipped to each employee’s home to ensure that they are well prepared when they step out after the lockdown.

As people first organisation, Essilor also believes in standing in solidarity with its team members. Employees though covered under the company sponsored medical insurance tend to get burdened by the spill over of the cost of medicines and other treatment during the recovery phase from COVID. Essilor has announced special financial support initiatives to help them overcome the financial crisis during this period. All employees and their family members will be vaccinated at the company cost. Essilor has tied-up with service providers to provide on-site vaccination. To encourage the employees get the Covid test done at a very early stage as they start showing related symptoms, we have tied-up with the pathological labs and are reimbursing the cost for the test. This has helped in reducing the cases and treating them early.

Essilor has also identified mental health as one of the key priorities of its employee wellbeing programme and has started online sessions for employees and their families with special focus on mental health and handling stress. Besides their usual tasks, they are putting in the time and efforts to connect with the employees and their families. If anyone from the organization gets infected, the team provides them the assistance to connect with desired medical support and are in constant touch as a moral support.