COVID-19 has completely changed the world, upended the lives and well-being of people. Not only global markets and businesses suffered, it has also robustly affected global mental health.
This is as the pandemic has increased anxiety for many due to fear of losing jobs, source of income, movement restrictions and quarantines among others. A recent survey by Hays showed that 37% of workers say their mental health and wellbeing has been negatively impacted during the pandemic.
VISTA Eye Specialist (VISTA) – one of the leading eye specialists in Malaysia providing laser vision correction – recently implemented an upskilling programme to help staff reflect, develop and prepare for 2021 using experiential learning and gamification methodology
The objective is to create a positive workplace environment where staff will experience ‘10x More Fun, 10x More Learning and 10x More Staff Engagement‘,” said VISTA’s chief human resource Monica Wong.
The upskilling programme was based on the award-winning Netflix docuseries – ‘Next in Fashion‘, a fashion design reality TV competition.
The programme focused on three key areas:
- Mental wellbeing: To distract staff from the stress of the COVID-19 issues;
- Self-discovery: To allow staff to reflect their year in 2020 achieving self-realisation and planning for 2021; and
- Edutainment: To educate and train the staff with a fun and entertaining programme
Monica added that throughout the whole programme, they discovered many creative ideas and hidden talents. Also, they saw many staff started to stand up and take leadership roles, motivated others and whole departments seemed to have somehow awoken from the deep slumber of just daily work and repetitive tasks.
“It was an amazing journey for us. The programme certainly built up the staff and created tremendous teamwork, excitement and energy to tide us over the COVID-19 crisis and got us prepared for 2021,” Monica commented.
“In fact, when it comes to planning, motivating and alignment of the staff with the company’s directions – it may ultimately be a new normal to incorporate experiential learning and gamification to engage the staff, while keeping it fun and exciting,”
Most importantly it keeps our staff positive and out of the possible traps of mental disorders, while at the same time help unravel creativity, new ideas, hidden talent and together propelling the company forward.” – Jan 3, 2021
