'Work-life balance' is not just a catchphrase

My wife’s brother had emigrated to Canada. At the time, Canada wasn’t welcoming people in ragged clothes. He proudly took us around Toronto in his new Mercedes SUV. That’s how we saw the city, and also Ottawa, the capital, and Quebec, where they speak French.

One day, he drove us to a place we hadn’t identified beforehand. He wanted me to take a picture of him standing in front of the (then) Ernst & Young building, and took pride in telling us he’d worked here for a spell. I knew it was one of the world’s largest multinational firms, operating in many countries. I know many people who started their careers there but soon left to join other companies.

One of them now holds a senior position at Federal Bank. Another has struggled to decide what to do since leaving. A third sat for the civil services exam and is now a diplomat. I should also mention a friend’s son, a chartered accountant, who is now the vice-president of the company, based in Dubai.

I never asked any of them why they’d left. But a relative told me about the difficult work conditions there. All of this might explain why Ernst & Young has always fascinated me.

Are you wondering why I’m writing about EY? Well, the reason is a certain headline that caught my attention in the Free Press Journal of Mumbai, which I read daily.

The headline was catchy, but the story painful: ‘The Killing Schedule of a CA, Young & Earnest’. A good headline tells a story in just a few words. I think this headline, filed from Pune, captured the essence of the story.

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It recounted the tragic tale of a young chartered accountant who had joined EY’s Pune office in March this year. She couldn’t handle the work conditions, and less than four months later died of stress, even though an ECG had shown her heart was in good shape.

I discussed the case with a doctor, who explained that the human body does not always behave predictably. Different people have different thresholds for pain. Some can’t endure the prick of a needle while others withstand labour pains. Similarly, stress hormones affect people differently.

The FPJ story was based on a letter written by Anna’s mother Anita Augustine to Rajiv Memani, chairman of EY India. After reading the report, I received the whole letter via WhatsApp.

It was beautifully written and brought tears to my eyes. Syrian Christians in Kerala are so interconnected that I soon realised that Anita Augustine is a friend of a friend. My friend knew Anna from childhood. Anna was a bubbly, loveable child, adored by her parents and relatives. She excelled in school and passed the CA exam on her first attempt.

The letter described the punishing conditions at work. Anna would come home and collapse into bed without even changing her clothes because she was so exhausted. Her supervisor assigned impossible deadlines. On one occasion, she was given a task to complete overnight and submit the next morning. Even on her CA graduation day, she had some work to finish.

Unlike in the past, when people worked from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., companies like this don’t expect employees to work set hours. Instead, each person is given assignments to complete by a deadline, regardless of whether it takes 10 or 20 hours a day.

Most work is done by teams headed by a supervisor, and periodic assessment meetings are dreaded for various reasons.

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Not everyone can withstand the pressure, so they leave. One of my friends, John Samuel, posted on Facebook how the punishing schedules take a toll on employees.

Often, they are unable to spend time with their families. The situation for couples where both partners work under such conditions is pathetic. Their lives are miserable because they cannot leave their jobs, having become prisoners of the EMIs (equated monthly instalments) they must pay for their new car, new flat or a foreign vacation.

When I joined the Tribune in Chandigarh, I was allotted a bungalow with about a dozen rooms, a lawn, fruit-bearing trees and a small plot of land to grow vegetables. I had a colleague, L.H. Naqvi, who warned me that the Tribune houses were like ‘coffins’ one couldn’t escape. He was trying to explain why he stayed in “soulless” Chandigarh, where the company had given him a commodious flat.

It’s like that with these MNC employees — and burnout is common. ‘Burnout’ is a state of complete mental, physical and emotional exhaustion. If you are experiencing burnout, you may find it difficult to engage in activities you normally find meaningful. You may no longer care about things that are important to you or feel an increasing sense of hopelessness.

In the case of Anna Sebastian Perayil, burnout came within a few months of joining EY. She could no longer attend to her personal needs. Why does this happen?

We Indians take pride in companies like Infosys, Tata Sons, and Wipro getting contracts worth billions of dollars. These contracts come from giant multinational firms in the US, Europe and Canada.

Once, I visited an American bank’s office and addressed all the employees on one floor. I wondered why the bank needed so much manpower to handle a few branches in the metros. That’s when I realised the Gurgaon office managed the needs of the bank globally, including the US, where the corporate office is located. The bank likely found it cheaper to employ people in India than in the US.

I checked online and found that a beginner at EY might earn Rs 6 lakh p.a. or Rs 50,000 a month. But let’s say EY pays an entry-level CA Rs 1 lakh a month. If EY were to employ a similarly qualified person in the US, they would have to pay $5,000–10,000 a month, or more. In rupee terms, this would be Rs 4.5–10 lakh.

Besides, in the US, UK or France, you can’t be expected to sit at a computer for 10 hours or more. It’s a misconception that our people are doing great work; they’re doing the work people in these countries won’t do. This applies to most IT firms in India.

From what Anna’s mother says, EY’s apathy is staggering: not a single person from the company visited her or the family to condole the death of her daughter. Not on the day she died, nor afterwards. For the company, presumably, Anna Sebastian Perayil was just one of 370,000 people on the company’s payroll globally!

What do our industry icons have to say about any of this? Well, not so long ago, Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy was heard advocating 70-hour work-weeks!

Courtesy: Indian Currents