HEALTHCARE MANAGEMENT
BEHAVIOURAL HEALTH Our behaviours define what we consume and how. The pandemic has had deep rooted effects on our psyches and this is bound to impact consumer behaviours. We all need to closely watch the changes wrought about during this time and re-strategise what we do and how, as we reach out to strengthen and expand our businesses. Gurrit K Sethi, Founder, Miindmymiind
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e are all defined by our behaviours, quite literally so. Our behaviour affects how we engage with not only the external world, but also reflects on how we engage with ourselves. It is this engagement that drives the world around us… Yet we hardly ever consider this fact. Ain’t this true? I am neither a behavioural health expert, nor a mental health expert. However, there are many who practice without many credentials. In fact, the rulings and regulations around the required credentials for counselling in India is still nascent. But since I have been a business professional, and worked through people behaviours and also suffered business behaviours, and because I now work in the mental health and well-being space, I am taking the liberty of expressing the opinions of a minion from this field. As per Wikipedia, the word ‘behaviours’ extends itself to not just individuals and human beings but also to all other living beings, systems or artificial entities in conjunction with themselves or their environment. How we react or our mannerisms, as they play out have been ensconced under the apparel of behavioural sciences.
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A SI A N H O S P I T A L & H EA LT HCAR E M A N AGE M E N T
This ‘science’ of behavioural sciences is studied not only with respect to human beings, but also cultures, systems etc. So much so that a lot of research today happens on the behavioural side of economics as well. Ironically our behaviour’s are being studied for their effects on the growth of economy, and for many business professionals, for how to use these behaviours for economic gains for the business. To understand what created these behaviours, I researched various elements of our environment that surrounds us. And hence I came upon the need to understand culture and if it shaped our behaviours. The discovery that both cultures and behaviours do get driven and impacted by each other came upon with some apprehension. It is so said that human behaviour is affected by both genetic inheritance as well as experience. This is quite a deep-seated aspect. And a very critical part of our mental frameworks. This leads to the belief that to support our behavioural health, it is important to understand the culture to which one belongs and, maybe, similar aspects need to be applied to the behaviours of other abstracts of our environment – our work culture especially. The culture
IS S UE - 55, 2022
and employee behaviours impact productivity of the organization. Many studies ascertain that work life imbalances and work stress impact mental health of the employees and this leads to loss of productivity. The WHO statistics to this effect are overwhelming. And these ‘effects and loss of productivity can definitely be minimized by the right interventions. If we look at the world as one large community and one large economy, it is invariably driven by basic human instincts and colored by the effects of the various cultures. These in turn are determined by the geography, the resource availability, the climate and many other natural factors and how overcoming challenges arising of these for survival have evolved over centuries. As the world got knitted together, not just by the expanse of the earth, but more through transportation and communication channels. As a result, new patterns of expected behaviours have evolved. Many of us in the corporate world undergo trainings on managing cultural diversity for better work output. As the global communities have come together to expand the economic gains, it is imperative to understand the different cultures of different geographies, and
