Owning Collective Physical and Psychological safety at Obvious

As we grow and mature as an organisation, and as we continue to work remotely/hybrid, is it essential to review, redesign and recast how we interact with each other. A common set of guidelines on what respect looks like on a daily, interactive basis is required to set us up for success.

We hire diverse folks very intentionally and outline that as part of our process everywhere. But for true inclusion, everyone needs to feel safe and welcome. And for that to happen, we need to start at the basics, which is, ensuring physical and emotional safety, and gradually working our way up to psychological and intellectual safety.

Our first port of call for getting on the same platform and having a common understanding of what is acceptable/not at Obvious is Conduct. All new folks are needed to sign up and complete the 12 sessions (This in total should take you 60 minutes) within the first 2 months of coming on board. Everyone needs to go through the exercise once in the year.

Here's why Conduct is mandatory and why we adhere to the platform's training modules:

Irrespective of whether we meet in office daily/occasionally/ not at all, we all interact with each other and make acquaintances that sometimes turn into friendships. Irrespective, we need to watch out and be mindful of our behaviour, because sometimes it can inadvertently make the other person uncomfortable.

One way to do that is to familiarise ourselves with what the statutes of law say about boundaries, respect and recourse if the above are not in play. We have said this elsewhere, but it bears repeating, that we are a no-tolerance workplace when it comes to harassment, bullying, abuse of power of any kind. To make sure that these are no concepts differently understood by different people among us, a unifying factor is the annual mandatory learning about POSH policies and conduct within the organisation. The first step in this direction is to get on the same baseline. Conduct has 12 short sessions on workplace conduct building that set the same baseline and a common understanding of what is considered appropriate behaviour, where the boundaries lie and what constitutes a safe work space for everyone.

Psychological safety paves the way for people in teams to feel safe to speak up with their tentative ideas, and allows creativity to flourish. For this, the first pillar is understanding nuances of conduct; and to understand it uniformly across all of us who occupy this space. And the second is how we give and receive feedback.

For instance, what languages do we speak in (hint: Any other language except the language in which we do business in can be seen as exclusionary), how we navigate conversations around potential divisive topics like politics, religion, caste etc. (hint: don't open these conversations as we don't know others’ comfort level. Even if someone says they are okay, assume just asking creates an environment of peer pressure). Here again, Conduct helps us in self-paced learning of concepts like workplace misconduct, biases, quid pro quo, role of a bystander, and so on.

All full-time employees at Obvious are covered under an annual medical insurance and a personal accident insurance policy.

The medical insurance covers everyone (spouse and children can be added) for a value of Rs. 5 lakhs annually. What this means is that anyone covered by you under this policy can avail of any medical hospitalisation taking place each year, up to a value of Rs. 5 lakhs. This is relevant for any hospitalisation for a minimum period of 24 hours. At this point, the insurance coverage does not include parents. The policy is issued through a company called Care.

The personal accident insurance policy covers everyone for any accident, to the tune of Rs. 10 lakhs. This policy covers employees only, and not families.

Everyone has a login to our insurance platform, Plum.*

Once there, you will see details of your medical insurance policy. You get an online healthcard, which has your name, the policy number, your healthID, validity date, and other specifics you will need, should you find yourself in a situation of needing to avail insurance. It is a good practice to keep a copy on your phone in a favourites folder, and share a copy with family/ family + friends you are likely to call in case of urgency.

If you have questions on coverage of a specific treatment you might be electing for, e.g. Lasik, etc., the first point of checking is the chat option on the Plum site. You speak to the folks who will be processing the claims, and so are the most informed folks to answer your questions.

In case of an emergency: In situations where you need to get insurance support externally (Say, emergency surgery or there is no time or mind space to have conversations with the insurance folks on the Plum site), call Jaya or Monica and we will interface with the folks at Plum and get you the support you seek.

*If you are in doubt, look for login credentials for Plum in your Obvious email ID. If still in doubt, please reach out to Jaya or Monica to get this sorted out.