How long will you stare at your wife? #WorkLifeBalance in Dismal Indian Corpo-Rat Culture!

 "Work expands as time expands" 

This Parkinson's law is in almost every management curriculum. It is a beautiful law that increases efficiency and productivity and clearly guides how work expands to fill its allocated time for completion.

Many people apparently take it the wrong way. They think the longer hours of work you clock in, the better your performance gets. Absolutely wrong unless you are into fine arts like Music, dance, painting et cetera. 

You may wonder why I am talking about this law. I have seen this law from both ends, but today, I am talking about the current debate on work-life balance, fuelled by a comment from L&T's super boss, SN Subramanya.

SN Subramanya [SNS] has recently made a brave public statement that almost all corporate bosses' hearts, echo and levies on their subordinates but not so openly in the media. Why brave? 

Working past office hours, late night or early morning meetings, working on weekends, and unhealthy work pressure have become the face of Indian corporations. The salaried employee has become a blue-collared version of a slavery employee. People are equating long working hours with work culture, even though the performance may be below par but hey they get saved by sycophancy and power politics. So, a large chunk of private cos are doing this with their middle management under the garb of jargon, but only a few leaders, to whom the world looks, choose to speak "directly" about it in public.  

SNS took this dagger after Shri Narayan Murthy, even after the recent news of a consultant committing suicide due to work overload and pressure. That news sparked a few debates, memes, and content, and is now resting in peace. What has become the new content for memes, debate, standup extra is his statement- staring at your wife.

It is raining memes on the controversial and of course, highly insensitive statements that have been made in jibe of the moment, which has now become the vibe of a new Internet movement and unfortunately will be limited till there. 

Some of the memes are really funny [maybe I will try sharing them at the end of this post]. After this debate, I am not sure whether work-life balance will be maintained or not, but many unseen content will employed or utilized as memes. That is a big revenue model for many Youtubers who are taking a trending topic and making a passive video that has clickbait titles but no unique content. Similarly, these days content is utilized less for the purpose or for the shows it created and, but works more efficiently for the memes. Their life span gets extended and sometimes immortal with these memes. I heard Instagram is removing the "highlights" as bubbles to a section next to reels. Probably social media websites should have another column viz- memes. Perchance that is called- Meme se Mohabbat.

Private sector profit at 15-year high but Salaries Stagnant

Chief Economic Advisor Shri Anantha Nageshwaran referred to the FICCI-Quess report in quite some corporate gatherings, suggesting that India Inc. look into the same, but what do you get? Increased GST in caramel popcorn. The actors who were instrumental in bringing the mango-eating styles to the public will now struggle even more to bring real audiences to their Instagram-promoted films. The aam junta may stop eating Alphonso, stop eating caramel popcorn, and reduce going to films but they can't cease working in corporates, cause no matter how toxic some are, they still need to earn their bread bhujiya and sustain a family that has curbed their many needs, now asked to eliminate the husband/father's physical presence too. Who said you pay only MRP to buy goods and services? 

While these corporations may be building a nation, building acres of personal properties, Villas, private jets, coffee estates, and deposits of profits including lower corporate taxes to fuel their power, they are giving you employment, giving you content to meme upon, right?

It is akin to saying domestic violence, mental gaslighting, and generational trauma are acceptable cause the man has married you into his family, given you a home, and provided for you. 

We as a generation are learning to feed enforcement, cruelty as obedience manifestation. Like we beat our speechless animals to cart, load, and fuel our objectives. 

Sorry, if am going overboard, no offense was intended to any person but the concepts and practices. 

Yes sir, since you are working on Sunday, withdrawing a salary 500 times over ours without staring at your wife's face, we shall also follow suit. But err, those who are not married? Maybe their matrimonial expectations will seek a new feature- looking for alliances not working in XYZ cos.

And who says there is a merit and reward parity?  While some people gain promotion by hanging balloons or doing Yes Boss, some don't have even job security. Group dynamics is another Pandora's box.  So is corporate tax vs GST. 

The world has everything for a man's needs but not greed

We have traded integrity for falsity, time for efficiency, and presentations for productivity. Sometimes remote judgment takes over a well-reasoned truth. My way or highway is the norm where a powerful fish always eats up a not-so-powerful whale and gets awarded on the burp!

Leadership is not about creating followers but leaders. I believe good leadership is not just creating leaders but good leaders. How many of us remember Indian PMs and Finance Ministers? If I ask to name a few, am sure a lot of people will definitely say Atal Bihari Bajpayee, Indira Gandhi, and Manmohan Singh. And that illustrates what great leaders are made of. Not the one that the PR factory runs.

So next time when you see the work is not getting done within a stipulated, fairly calculated time, do not increase the time, change, or re-align the process. There are enough politics in the world, please let the workplace be a temple where bigger goals should be achieved via honesty, merit, and for the lack of a better word- collective efforts. Even God says I do not need flowers, or veneration as long as you are dedicated or have your heart in the right place.  

Dear leaders, please understand the difference between need, greed, and sin. While you are earning approx 14 lakhs a day, and your employee might not be earning even 3000 a day net, you cannot ask him to make the same sacrifice that you allegedly are making by playing emails and meeting calls whatsoever it is with due respect. The right word is not empathy but good and capable management with a T. 

Wonder when the government will intervene into tax-income parity and adherence. When will the achche din of the middle -class be scheduled. As of now, I only see Memes.