Mr. Rajan Aiyer, Chairman – Tamil Nadu Chapter, AMCHAM, chaired the Executive Committee meeting on September 16th which was held on MS Teams. After the welcome, he mentioned he would be meeting with the new Consul General Judith Ravin, U.S. Consulate Chennai, on the 22nd to give her an overview of AMCHAM. Mr. Aiyer highlighted that the subject for the monthly meeting for September would be mental health and wellness, given that most employees were now working from home. This has caused extra stress and hence the session would explore practical difficulties of how to handle multiple domestic tasks and also office work. He talked about the fact that as people WFH, it is misunderstood that we are available 24×7 and are expected to attend calls or respond to email at all hours.

Most employees have unable to handle this and unable to demarcate office hours from personal time off during the day. And with homes being small, fixing office furniture in a 2BHK or a 3BHK would be rather difficult, especially when one has small kids who need attention because the parent is at home. Sometimes, they want to go out, the whole family wants to join in as they feel constrained to the house. So, mental health and wellness has been the need and employees need to be advised how to handle such situations.

Mr. Ashwin Ravindranath of EY volunteered to suggest a few names as speakers for the webinar. Mr. Iqbal Sait agreed it would be a good topic. It was decided that the next Executive Committee meeting could be on October 10th. Mr. Aubrey Daniels, Regional Director – Tamil Nadu Chapter, AMCHAM, mentioned that AMCHAM was organizing many interactive webinars with important GOI officials as speakers and encouraged members of the Executive Committee to participate.