The fortnight gone by has had one big question out there in public discourse: “Who or what killed Anna?”
Anna Sebastian Perayil, a 26-year-old CA at Ernst & Young, died 4 months after joining the firm. Her parents indicated “overwhelming work pressure” as a cause of death. The case being discussed indicates a new cause of work- or overwork-related depression and death. Death due to work. And, in some ways, death due to the workplace.
The rest of the debate is out there in public space. An entire nation has discussed the case as one that typifies the high-tension workplace that India today boasts of. Grandmothers in every home with a grandchild in the workplace were involved in this discussion, just as parents and employees themselves were.
As the parents grieve their sad loss, the rest of the nation will cool down and move on to a newer issue. Public memory is really short. But must we? Should we not instead look at the cause and discuss ways to avoid such losses in the future? Must we not sit up and smell the burn?
India is today emerging to be the new workplace of the world. If in the old days the factories that produced physical goods were the production centres, today every corporate and commercial entity that produces both goods and services is a key production entity. In many ways, every company is a ‘factory’ that produces goods and services. The mindset at work has therefore the potential to become the same. There are a set of basic economic resources acquired. Land, labour, capital and entrepreneur (or enterprise) are put into play.
In a bulk of the companies, the entrepreneur is the business enterprise and its top management. In some cases, it is the owner and in others, the startup founder. Typically, the mindset is still that of a manufacturing play. The enterprise requires the best and optimal utilisation of all resources to garner the best profits. While land and capital are decidedly inanimate entities, the other two are really the alive ones.
The entrepreneur or business owner who drives work is at one end and at the other is the worker or employee. One drives work, and the other works to the diktat. The factory mindset therefore subliminally still dictates and milks work. And herein lies the problem.
While working hours are clearly defined, everyone is invariably expected to stretch themselves. The most junior employees in the organisation are typically the ones that stretch themselves the most. They are at the start of their careers, loaded with enthusiasm and ambition to grow, and are most certainly the most insecure in a corporate organisation. They need their jobs, they want to make the right impressions, they want to grow, and are vested with fire in their bellies. Must companies then avoid the “sweat factory” mindset of the factory-age we have hopefully long left behind?
I do believe this is the problem. Indian enterprise is still stuck on the manufacturing mindset. We still believe we run factories. To an extent, a fintech enterprise is a fintech factory and a consulting and management services firm is a consulting factory. We want to maximise the deployment of basic resources and achieve the best. Nothing wrong with that. Except we seem to want to treat humans as just another resource.
The Happiness Research Academy has just released a study that tracks the status of happy employees across sectors. The numbers are a worry in themselves. One of the big findings is that 54 percent of the workforce in India has an “intention to leave their jobs” at this point in time. That means more than half of our employees are unhappy at the workplace. The report goes on to say the happiest folk work in fintech. The percentage of people happy in this sector is 40 percent—which means 60 percent in fintech are unhappy. Ouch! The automotive sector claims 35 percent happy employees, banking and insurance 30 percent, FMCG 29 percent, media, entertainment and advertising 23 percent, and real estate and construction a low 20 percent.
We do seem to have an unhappy workforce. The key problem is just that. It is time we jumped out of our largely production-oriented mindset in managing people, their work, future careers and lives at large. The angst is everywhere. People in consulting, media and entertainment, banking and services of every kind, and in as many as 17 other verticals are feeling the stress. Managing stress is not everyone’s cup of tea. The “pass the poison” culture in corporate organisations—where the boss passes the chalice downwards till the point where there is no one else to pass it—is something to avoid.
The Indian enterprise needs to change its mindset from being a pure productivity machine to a more intelligently-managed entity that is less machine and more human. Know where to draw the line between work and work pressure. Businesses need to do a lot more in the space of work-life balance initiatives. ‘Pizza Fridays’ and ‘Movie Mondays’ aren’t enough. We need to go beneath the skin of it all and alter our mindsets. This is as relevant to a firm of lawyers, as it is to a strategy consulting firm, audit, and a whole set of 17 identified work verticals of high stress.
Lifestyle diseases among young employees is growing at a frenetic pace. Hypertension, diabetes, obesity, etc. are conditions that are striking employees in their 30s and can be postponed for now, if not avoided altogether. Depression and mental health issues are out here in our midst already. We have enough numbers of burnouts and suicides on the books.
As I am putting this column to bed, I am thinking of what I saw on the back of a truck in Ludhiana last week. A succinct piece of bad English that somehow makes eminent sense: “Do not disturb. Already disturbed.” Corporate and business India needs to learn how not to disturb what is already disturbed.
Harish Bijoor
Brand Guru & Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults
(Views are personal)
