Sarthak Advocates & Solicitors Takes Another Step Towards Promoting Mental Well-Being At The Workplace
Sarthak Advocates & Solicitors
Sarthak Advocates and Solicitors have become the first Indian law firm to sign the Mindful Business Charter (MBC). MBC is a collaboration between leading banks and law firms to promote mental health and wellbeing at workplaces by removing unnecessary sources of stress. The signatories to MBC include institutions such as Barclays, Goldman Sachs, Clifford Chance, DLA Piper, Allen and Overy. The complete list of signatories can be accessed here. As a bilateral collaboration between both the service providers and the clients, MBC seeks to create an eco-system that facilitates the reduction of needless stress at workplace.
This comes on the back of an active attempt by Firm to focus on creating safe, secure and stress-free work place for its professionals and other staff. The Firm's Partner, Ms. Mani Gupta has also co-founded 'Samvedna' with Mr. Satyajit Gupta to discuss mental health issues facing lawyers.
'We feel proud in being associated with the MBC. In present times, law firms cannot avoid long transactions and hectic work hours. Hence, an initiative to resonate with the circumstances was the need of the hour. Commitment towards mental health and wellbeing of the lawyers working with the firm has always been our priority, and signing the charter has only re-emphasised our priorities. The charter embodies the idea of the wellbeing of our lawyers and staff very seriously, and we hope that the other stakeholders of the industry show the power of collaboration to foster change.' says Mani Gupta, Partner at Sarthak Advocates & Solicitors.
To manage mental and emotional wellbeing of our colleagues at work, the Firm had also taken several initiatives such as:
· Organising sessions with a life coach to manage Covid related stress.
· Implementing work from home/ flexible working arrangement for all our counsels and staff - these policies have for the present been introduced till December, 2020 and are being reworked for the longer term based on the learnings during Covid-19.
· Organising virtual get togethers and fun activities with all the counsels participating through online mode.
· Introducing Earthmiles for our counsels and staff on a pilot basis. Earthmiles is an award-winning app based platform for collectively engaging the employees of an organization in focusing on health in general through several activities, including team challenges.
The Firm is also in the process of implementing a policy for mandatory breaks for its counsels and staff and other policies for mindful business communications based on the basic tenets of the Mindful Business Charter.
The Firm hopes to be able to create a workplace which makes practice of law a joyful profession for our colleagues, and look forward to support from professional colleagues and clients, by encouraging them to implement similar steps.