As India globalised, companies quickly adopted American corporate culture staples like 12-hour workdays. (File Photo)
The mid-1990s were a heady time to be a fresh graduate from a premier business school. Economic liberalisation had just set in; a new set of multinationals had arrived on Indian shores and were recruiting MBAs in large numbers. Our parents, most of whom had worked in the public sector, watched in awe as high starting salaries and credit cards were offered even before the convocation. They swung between approval for the monetary windfall and a vague unease about too much happening too soon.
A couple of years later, a multinational finance company did in its Mumbai office what we had only seen happening to Tom Cruise in the movie Jerry Maguire. Overnight, the company cleared the desks of some new MBA recruits, put their belongings in a box and handed a “pink slip” to each of them when they arrived for work the next day. We then learnt that “pink slip” refers to a notice of dismissal from employment.
As India globalised, companies quickly adopted American corporate culture staples like 12-hour workdays. Not having a family life and submitting one’s entire being to the employer became a badge of honour and a sign of “doing well”. Once we stepped into the age of the internet, logging off from work began to be viewed as professional suicide. Weeks after ex-Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan said that he strictly did not work after 6 pm, he was ousted, prompting many to join the dots and conclude that it is yet another example that working in a large company is like being in Hotel California — you can check out from the office, but you can never leave.
Combined with the fact that we are a deeply feudal society that genuflects to the “maalik”, no matter how oppressive the conditions, corporate culture in India has arguably grown even more toxic than it is in the US. Staying late only because the boss has not yet left, managing optics to be always seen as busy, and sacrificing weekends to the laptop is the norm. For women, such an environment in a usually male-dominated office is doubly challenging since their responsibilities at home are at odds with the expectation to work late in the office or attend after-hours networking events.
Let’s take the aspect of long hours. The International Labour Organisation (ILO)’s 2022 global report on work-life balance defines long hours as regularly working more than 48 hours per week. According to the report, globally, 31.1 per cent of employees (as opposed to self-employed) worked more than that, and the proportion was the highest among the occupational groups of “sales and service workers” and “managers”. When regions were compared, South Asia was at the top spot with a massive 70.3 per cent of employees working in excess of 48 hours!
Yet in India, industry pitamahs like N R Narayana Murthy call for 70-hour work weeks, and younger start-up Turks like Ola’s Bhavish Aggarwal offer thumping support, saying it should be increased to 140 hours, while other honchos have stated that refusing to work on weekends is not acceptable. A finance company head has even made it seem like a noble cause, exhorting this generation of Indians to contribute to the country’s economic growth by working 84 hours a week like the South Koreans did.
Damning evidence that the demands of corporate life and its inherent competitiveness can be physically and emotionally draining is that an entire generation has come up with its own subversive strategy to deal with this. Tired of what they see as unreasonable pressure, Gen Z workers are practising “quiet quitting”— a term used for deliberately adopting a minimalist approach to work, putting no more effort into their jobs than necessary. A working population that is unhappy, stressed and views employment conditions as exploitative cannot possibly power the engine of economic growth. It would, in fact, be a squandering away of the demographic dividend that India has been banking on.
Institutional mechanisms are needed to bring wholesomeness to working life in the private sector. It is time to take cognisance of the numerous studies which show that continuous and unreasonable work pressure extracts a steep cost in terms of health and diminishes the quality of life. South Korea, mistakenly held up as an ideal, introduced a new labour law in 2004 following the adverse effects of its brutal work ethic. The revised standards mandate a five-day working policy, with Saturday as an official non-workday and set a 40-hour work week as the legal limit. Europe is deliberating the “right to be disconnected”(R2D) to prevent the blurring of boundaries between time allotted for paid work and family time.
After a 26-year-old CA working in a leading consulting company in Pune, died in July, her mother’s heart-rending letter to the chairman of the company, widely circulated on social media this week, implicated overwork, lack of leave and late nights to chase deadlines for her death. The incident is one more wake-up call for India Inc to reflect on the organisational work culture. The ILO’s Declaration of Philadelphia asserts that “labour is not a commodity”. Workers are human beings with hopes, dreams and aspirations for themselves and their families. Paid work is not only about meeting employees’ economic needs but also enabling them to lead fulfilling personal lives.
The writer is Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP), New Delhi. Views expressed are the writer’s own and not those of CSEP
