I have worked for a lifetime. I have worked for a living. All of us have and many of us are still doing it every living day. Even as we do it day in and day out, do we ever wonder if we are happy doing what we are doing? I am sure we do. But we let the answer quickly pass us by, particularly if it is not as comforting an answer as we want it to be. The answer really lies in the question. Do you work to live? Or do you live to work? In many of our lives, the answer tick moves from one box to the other seamlessly, depending on the circumstance, life-cycle stage, work environment, and even the mood of our immediate boss on the day we contemplate this.
I have been researching the subject of work, remuneration, work environment and culture. I do believe the answers to many of our questions lie here. Let me start with the dimension of time. How many hours do you work every day? The answer varies between a rather healthy 40 hours a week and an average of 70 hours to an extreme of 96 hours, which is usually needed in startups and enterprises that thrive and revolve in this ecosystem, such as in private equity, financial services and venture capital. Which one do you belong to? Are you the happy 9-5 kind of person who puts in those 40 hours at work and another 40 at home? Or are you the stretched-out and just about burning-out character who is burning the proverbial midnight oil, hoping this is the last year you are going to be doing it before a windfall?
Whichever of the two you are, the second and most important aspect of a work environment is equally relevant to you. And this is the overall environment you call work. It is about the office you work in, the physical work environment, and the emotional work environment that surrounds you for a large part of your life. If you are in the field, this is all about the way your company is treated in the many shops, offices or factories you visit to service every day. It’s also as much about the reputation and ease of work that ultimately results.
The work environment then is about the people you work with as well. Those above you, those at your level, and those below you. Do you have a boss who puts you before him or him before you? It’s all about empathy. It’s all about the sincerity of your boss as much as yours. Is your boss a wolf in sheep’s clothing? And is this a way of work? And are you expected to become that as well? And have you already become one? How are you with your subordinates? Are you a clone of your boss and his way of work, behaviour and life? Work, work environment and its many questions are disquieting for sure.
Even as you read this, you will recall your bosses and your subordinates. And even as you do it, you will do it with an ‘us versus them’ attitude. We need to remember that we showcase and thrive on our personal best images as bosses and employees, and equally berate and thrive on the worst images of our bosses and subordinates. The problem is that we are happily human. We just don’t seem to distance ourselves from our best images and our subordinates’ worst. How would it be if we turned this turtle and focused on our worst images as bosses and our subordinates’ best images? Would life be happier? More real? And would we very quickly correct the soft aspect of the office environment we create, live in and leave back for the company we work in? Think. Would we like to attempt this? Are we happy to?
Let me jump quickly into the subject of office productivity. I have an interesting piece of data we gathered between April 2023 and June 2023 from 46 companies spread across four sectors. We explored software as a service (SaaS) and core technology companies, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), and advertising. Each represented different work cultures and varied approaches—at times diametrically opposed even—to build a happy organisation to work for and within.
Among the many questions we explored, we asked that one big question: what do you do in office on a typical day? We did a literal time-and-motion study; half of it was asking questions and half was purely observational, shadowing workers in office on a typical work day. Needless to say, the data outputs from both were different. The responses to posed questions were politically correct, composed, as per standard operating procedures of the company and even aspirational. In short, they were lies. We therefore depended on the observational study more than anything else.
The many outputs of this exercise are interesting on their own. One more than all else. On a typical day, how many hours spent at the office had real work packed into them and how many were hollow hours that clocked presence but did not get actual work done? The numbers are striking. In the SaaS and core technology sector, the percentage of productive work time stood at 78 percent. It was a low 41 percent in FMCG. A higher 71 percent in BFSI. A rather lowly 32 percent in advertising.
This simply means that office time is really not all work. There is a lot of play as well. And this time that is all play seems to play a very important role in creating the culture you feel happy to work within. Who would want to work in an advertising agency that did not speak of an “agency culture” with as much pride as an FMCG company and without the work-life balance of an FMCG company? Let’s remember, work-life balance is not only between work and home, it is most certainly within work as well.
Let’s do one last jump. Let’s talk about the primary reason why people leave their jobs to hop onto another. Global research has readymade answers and our research across these limited number of companies concurred. While an American research study put it succinctly, “People leave managers, not companies; 57 percent of employees have left a job because of their manager. Further, 14 percent have left multiple jobs because of their managers. An additional 32 percent have seriously considered leaving because of their manager.” In the four verticals of work explored, our research found that 76 percent of employees left a job because of their manager. Ouch. This data applies to you the subordinate just as it does to your subordinate. A simple dictum to follow then. I paraphrase a Mahatma Gandhi quote to arrive at a rather simple dictum: Be the person you want to work for.
Harish Bijoor
Brand Guru and Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc