Work-life balance

In India, over 11000 people (about the seating capacity of Cameron basketball stadium at Duke University) in the private sector committed suicide in 2021. In 2007, 40% of the divorce cases filed in family courts involved at least one partner working in an IT or ITES job.  

Work-life balance is a problem. 

Sandhya, a working mother, screwed up on a project and the problem was found a day before her two-year-old daughter was to go in for minor surgery. A conscientious worker, Sandhya was mortified at the screw up and promised her manager to work from the hospital room and have it fixed. Her manager asked her to calm down and pointed out that while he had 10 other people who could step in to fix the issue, her daughter had only one mother. He asked her to forget about the problem for the next couple of days and to take care of her child. If the problem became urgent, he assured her, someone would step in and fix it. If it didn’t, she could come back and fix it.  

Amartya, a product manager at an IT company, promised his 12-year-old son that they would go to watch the latest SRK movie on the first day. The boy was thrilled. He watched and rewatched the movie trailer on YouTube. The songs from the movie played on continuous loop. Each evening, Amartya was bombarded with every nugget of information on the upcoming movie. It took him back to his days as a young boy and the excitement of watching a movie on the first day. On the morning of the big day, Amartya receives a meeting invite from the founder for 7 pm that evening. The meeting had all the top leadership too.  

Work-life balance and wellness are two very misunderstood concepts in the corporate world. Most organizations claim to want to give this to employees, but most fail because of hubris. The first thing to understand about both these concepts is that the goals posts are constantly moving. It is like trying to play a football game without knowing where the goal will be when you take the shot.  

WLB means different things to different people – someone just out of college, a newly wed person, a person with a school-going child in the lower grades, a person with a school-going child in grade X or XII, a person with sick parents who need care. There is no one size fits all solution.  

Instead of targeted initiatives, organizations and managers must work towards creating a safe space where people can balance their work life and personal life without feeling that they are missing out in either one. 

Going in to solve the WLB problem with the narrow focus on activities can lead to the initiatives becoming the butt of jokes within the organization.  

What would this look like? 

Let’s take a company that has offices on the west coast of the US and in India. We could have a policy that says all meetings across the two offices must happen in only two windows – 6:00 to 8:00 PST and 18:00 to 20:00 PST. This would allow both sets of people to block off a specific time on their calendars only for cross-office meetings.  

Another method would be instead of a specific set of leaves that employees can avail the company could have a generic pool of leaves. This would allow employees to take the leaves they need instead of trying to bucket them. For instance, a woman with painful periods might avail the leaves on the days that it is physically hard for her to work. On the other hand, a woman who has mildly painful or painless periods can avoid taking those days off. A man with a sick parent who needs regular doctor visits can use his leaves for that purpose. Someone who likes to travel can use it for that.  

WLB is not a set of specific benefits but an ethos. Companies must sensitize managers around this concept and the culture should begin from the top. From the CEO onwards, every employee must be aware that what works for them may not work for another and they must appreciate that diversity of needs.  

Going back to Sandhya’s story. A few months after the incident, she attended and got through an interview with a well-known multinational. But she refused the offer. Her reason – right now, more than I need an MNC on my resume, I need this guy as my manager. In Amartya’s case, there was no winning. If he declined the meeting and went to the movies, he would be unhappy. If we attended the meeting and skipped the movie, he would be unhappy. 

At most companies, WLB is a bottom-up approach. We start with a benefit and try to fit it into the company’s culture. But I feel it is most effective when we start by spelling out the company culture. This leads to WLB policies that fit within the framework of the company’s goals and aspirations.