Intas Pharmaceuticals Ltd

Creating healthy competition for better engagement: Intas Pharmaceuticals Ltd.

Intas Pharmaceuticals Ltd. is a leading multinational pharmaceutical formulation development, manufacturing, and marketing company. The company’s iCARE wellness programme helps employees and their families with specific COVID support measures such as partnerships with hospitals for priority admission, 24x7 medical support and ambulance services, and meals for families in COVID distress. It also includes support for critical medicines, oxygen, and diagnostics, access to a 30-bed COVID treatment centre, vaccination, and care of surviving family members in case of demise. In addition, employees recovering from the infection received daily check-ins, support, and medical supervision to detect complications. The company also operationalised a 24x7 call centre to provide the required information and support.

To complement this, the company also has the iFIT programme that encourages employees to cultivate behavioural changes and be physically active. Participants competed with each other in teams under different categories such as walking, jogging, or running (steps), cycling (kilometres), and cardio skeletal exercises (minutes). The company’s CRS division pledged to donate INR 25 for every kilometre, 1500 steps, or 10 minutes of exercise completed. To focus on the health of women employees, the company started ‘Desk to 5K’ wherein participants received training by a professional triathlete to walk or jog 5km at the end of the 90-day programme. With these interventions, Intas integrated health and wellbeing into its work culture and encouraged employees to live a healthier lifestyle. With more than 16,000 employees participating in these programmes, the company donated more than INR 79,30,000 to help children fighting cancer due to the recorded steps, kilometres, and minutes of activity.

Technology played a vital role in implementing these wellness measures at Intas. For example, the company’s global crisis management team connected virtually every week to prepare and update the status for the iCARE programme, which involved live tracking COVIDpositive employees. In addition, an internal platform helped employees get live access to medical help, resources, and advice. A particular vaccination portal also displayed the vaccination status of all individuals and their family members, which helped plan meetings, site visits, and other events.

With rich experience in medical support, Intas was able to choose the right intention, design, and approach to implementing comprehensive employee well-being measures that helped employees improve their wellness, engagement, and trust in the company.