Zomato has now initiated steps to offer psychological help to its employees, particularly the delivery executives. The food order and delivery unicorn has hired a professional psychiatrist to offer counselling to the staff, reports Economic Times. While the focus will remain with the delivery executives, employees manning the other functions will also be included in this programme to sensitise the staff to the needs of the business. Zomato has confirmed that one Dr. Rohit Garg has been hired for this purpose.
This step by Zomato follows the outrage caused by a viral video on social media where one of its delivery boys is seen consuming food from the packets he was about to deliver to customers.
There have been diverse reactions to the video of the delivery boy consuming customer’s food. Depending on the person’s perspective, people mentioned how Zomato doesn’t take care of its employees or how they were paid so low and overworked that they cannot afford to spend on their lunch or didn’t have the time to eat. Then after it came out that Zomato had sacked that Madurai-based delivery boy, after which more backlash followed on social media.
From the business perspective, the company has said it is now resorting to tamper-proof packaging to eliminate at least one aspect of such an act being repeated. But the employee-related issues remained unresolved. The hiring of the psychiatrist to do this regular counseling might be one answer to ensure that the frontline staff understand their role in the business and how their appearance, behaviour and other actions can affect the image of the organization and the business itself. There were also reports of these food delivery boys violating traffic on their bikes trying to reach the customers’ places without delay.
Zomato has 150,000-strong workforce across the country engaged in delivering food from the 75,000 partners in the form of hotels and restaurants.