India has been in shock over the sudden death of 26 year old Anna Sebastian Perayil, a chartered accountant working with Ernst and Young India who collapsed at home.
In an emotional, gut wrenching letter to the head of the company, Anna’s mother wrote about how much pressure her daughter was under with late hours at the office, meal timings haywire and a huge amount of stress. Since she joined the firm in March this year, Anna wasn’t sleeping well and had bouts of anxiety.
Her mother has detailed Anna’s over burdened workload, where managers assigned her tasks that went beyond her call of duty, where she often worked weekends and late nights and barely had time to catch her breath.
Anna’s death has again put the spotlight on toxic workspaces that have come to define many companies. Where juniors in particular are made to feel that they will not succeed if they don’t slog those extra hours, where there are no boundaries, no work-life balance, no respect for mental health and a general feeling that employees are like slaves.
Probe into working environment
EY’s conduct has been beyond reprehensible. No one from the company attended Anna’s funeral. It took an anguished mother’s letter to expose their hollow “human rights statement” and some motherhood and apple pie statements from Rajiv Memani, the chairman.
Bizarrely, he also regretted missing Anna’s funeral and said “it won’t happen again”. The government of India has started a probe into the working environment at the company.
The problem however is not with one Ernst and Young. It is a toxic work culture that is allowed to thrive. It doesn’t help when people like Infosys founder NR Narayamurthy talk about working 70 hours a week, justifying an existence that revolves only around your work with no time to look after yourself.
I spent nearly 24 years in a television newsroom. We worked long hours, sometimes 12 hours a day. Over the years I lost count of how many holidays and birthdays of family I had missed.
The importance of a work-life balance hit me only in my mid 40s when I insisted on taking a step back and committing to a 4 day work week. I was lucky to work in an organisation that supported me every step of the way.
Others aren’t so fortunate. Women employees usually face the brunt of things both at the office and then managing their homes. The stress is off the charts.
So what is the way out? In India, MP Shashi Tharoor has decided to push for a law that has a fixed calendar for all workplaces, both in the public and private sectors. Under that calendar, work hours would not exceed 8 hours a day 5 days a week.
'Inhumanity at workplace'
I think it’s a good idea but enforcing this across sectors won’t be easy. In the media for example, we often have to work longer hours if a big news story is developing. It would be better to ensure that those who do work beyond 8 hours, 5 days a week, are compensated immediately for the same.
As Tharoor rightly said “inhumanity at the workplace must be legislated out of existence, with stringent punishments and fines for offenders.”
Concerns over work pressure have been growing the world over. In May, a young banker at the Bank of America died of a blood clot. Leo Lukenas had been working there for just a year and was clocking in over 100 hours a week. His death lead to the bank capping how many hours their employees had to work by logging in details everyday.
An earlier ‘Wall Street Journal’ investigation had found that many junior investment bankers were often told by their superiors to lie about how many hours they worked so that they didn’t have to worry about the restrictions on working hours.
JP Morgan has also announced a cap of 80 hours per week for junior bankers and a “pencils down” policy from Friday 6pm to noon on Saturday. Even this is too much but it’s a start. It is time to push back against toxic work places. Mental well being deserves to be a higher priority for all of us.
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