Work-Life has become a thing of the past. The Toxic Culture of Imbalance and Overwork being Preached by Corporate Leaders parching from the top is really annoying.
Recently there was furor created by the comment of the chairman of L&T Mr S.N. Subramaniam when he said that the employees should work on Sundays also, while responding to an HR question. Moreover, he said that the employees should work 90 hours per week. The meeting video got leaked and went viral, raising many questions.
Just a few months back Chairman Emeritus of Infosys Mr. Narayanmurti made a compelling remark about working for 70 hours per week
Also in another incident, the Oyo CEO Mr Ritesh Agarwal quipped that he keeps working for 16 hours 7 days a week making it 112 hours a week (more than 100 hours per week)
What all these incidents say and what is common about them is that they are asking the employees to work for hours much more than they are billed for. The joining Contract never says anything about the number of hours. The billing of the hours is done with ration and a lot of work is added to the number of hours where as these hours are never billed. This is a common practice in corporates and consulting firms.
Work-Life Imbalance for Top Leaders
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My take on this is that the chairman of Oyo takes a megre yearly salary of 1.5 Cr and his net worth is 110 crores. The CEO of Infosys had a salary of 30 crore in 2014 which rose to 66.24 in 2024. Whereas the salary of the freshers remained at 3 – 5 lakhs from 2014 to 2024 The salary of the CEO of L&T in 2014 was 13 crore which rose to 51 crores in the last 10 years where the fresher salary again, in this case, remains the same as 3 – 5 lakhs this is extortion.
Four Aspects of Work-Life Imbalance
There are four aspects of this scenario and their effect on society … 1st The founder, 2nd the employees, 3rd the networking society & friends, and 4th the network and family:
Founder:
If you are a founder you have signed up for all profits and losses and decided to take risks and create wealth. You did not account for the number of days in a year or the number of days in a week for the salary that will be drawing and finally how your net worth will be rising
Employee:
if you are an employee you have decided to limit your life and be content with the salary that is given to you in the contract and the understanding that there are a limited number of hours that you will be given to your work as you want to maintain a better work-life balance
Network:
The third aspect is the friend’s network. if you are surrounded by someone always busy with work; obviously after a few disappointments you will leave the person to his work. The work becomes life and when the work goes for one reason or the other… the life goes away and the network of friends keeps estimating where they got wrong with such a pang of guilt..
Family:
The last one is family Which is most badly hit I have seen families and videos of families were small children knocking at the door of the so-called home office of the father or mother asking them to come out. The boss is shouting without understanding that the child has not entered the meeting at the office; the office has entered the home. I have seen old parents waiting for their children till 11 and 12 in the night to have a glimpse of their child and when he or she flips back the laptop, they drop exhausted.
Between Work-Life Imbalance, the life should win
How can you expect any sensible human being to live this kind of life where work is not part of life but becomes life itself? In this case, when the work goes away due to any reason…the life goes away. These kinds of people die on the desk or commit suicide.
So, the CEOs and founders parching and preaching should think twice before making these controversial remarks.
