The death of a young EY employee is raising questions over India's 'always-on' work culture
The death of a 26-year-old EY employee has triggered a conversation about India's work culture.
The employee's family says that she was overworked — and that it reflects a wider problem.
HR experts say employees in India often have less support and more pressure than their Western counterparts.
Fourteen-hour work days, meetings during vacations, and no overtime.
To some, this may sound like a job from hell. But for many employees in India, it's just another working day.
India has one of the toughest work cultures in the world. In 2022, according to the most recently available data from the International Labour Organization, the average employee in India worked 46.7 hours a week, compared to about 38 in the US.
Not only are employees in India working long hours, but many are also doing it under intense pressure.
"The pressure is very, very high," Jennifer Hephzibah, a senior HR professional in India, told Business Insider. "If you don't deliver it at a particular time, you either lose your bonus, or you lose your job. It doesn't matter what you're going through otherwise."
A Boston Consulting Group survey of 11,000 workers in eight countries in October 2023 found that 58% of Indian respondents reported feeling burned out — the highest share of any of the countries, including the US (50%), the UK (47%), and Japan (37%).
'Glorifying overwork'
This always-on culture has come under the spotlight recently following the death of an EY employee, Anna Sebastian Perayil, in July.
Peryail's father, Sebastian Perayil, told The News Minute that he believed his daughter died of a combination of health issues, including work stress and acid reflux which triggered a lack of sleep. The official cause of Perayil's death, however, remains unclear.
"Anna was unable to sleep on most days and couldn't eat on time," he told the publication. "After a whole night of work, she would have to wake up at 7:30 the next morning and repeat the same cycle."
According to The Hindu, Perayil's mother emailed Rajiv Memani, the chairman at EY India, in the wake of Perayil's death, saying her daughter had collapsed four months into the job after struggling with "the workload, new environment, and long hours."
She also accused EY of "glorifying overwork."
EY told BI it was "taking the family's correspondence with utmost seriousness and humility" and called Perayil's death an "irreparable loss."
A 70-hour workweek
Concerns about India's workplace culture are not new.
Last year, the software billionaire and Infosys founder Narayana Murthy sparked controversy after saying that young people in India should be willing to work 70 hours a week to help the country progress.
"India's work productivity is one of the lowest in the world," he told The Record, going on to say that unless India improved several factors including its work productivity, "we will not be able to compete with those countries that have made tremendous progress."
"So, therefore," he continued, "my request is that our youngsters must say: "'This is my country. I'd like to work 70 hours a week.'"
The comments appear to reflect wider expectations in India, even among employers with head offices elsewhere.
Kavach Khanna, a former EY analyst in India, told BI that he believed he was expected to do more work than his US colleagues.
"We used to talk to colleagues in the US in the same roles, and their experience was completely different from ours," Khanna said. "They would get to go for client meetings, leave the office on time, no stretched workdays, and they weren't overburdened like we were."
EY did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cost centers and cheap labor
Huge multinational companies, such as EY, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Accenture, have set up cost centers in India.
These centers, also called Global Capability Centers (GCCs), manage everything from cyber security to product development. They can also manage human resources and accounting.
They are cheaper to run in India due to lower labor costs, and they help companies tap into a wide and hungry pool of tech-savvy, English-speaking talent.
An EY report in 2023 projected that India is set to host at least 2,400 such centers by 2030, with a market value of more than $100 billion.
An associate at the Indian office of a multinational banking and advisory firm told BI that even at his Western company, he believed Indian employees were expected to work longer and harder.
He said 16- to 18-hour workdays — including some weekends — were normal in his job.
"A lot of multinational corporations use India as a cost center because of the cheap labor," said the associate, who wanted to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. "Offices in other countries have boundaries and then dump their extra work on us."
Jeanie Chang, an executive coach who specializes in workplace mental health, said she had noticed such a trend, too. "It definitely exists that multinational companies tend to think, 'We love that the Indians work hard, so let's keep doing that.'"
Chang also noted that some Asian communities place a cultural importance on work ethic that can lend itself to exploitation.
"There's a word in Japanese and Korean," Chang said, "that literally means 'overworking yourself to death.' That should say something."
Fear of replacement
So what is stopping employees from demanding change?
Part of it might come down to competition. In 2022, according to the India Employment Report 2024, India's youth made up nearly 83% of the country's total unemployed population. With India's workforce thought to number well over 500 million, each job counts.
Hephzibah, the senior HR professional, said that the sheer number of available workers has contributed to a feeling that employees are expendable, and has held them back from saying no to unreasonable demands for fear of losing their jobs.
Perayil's mother's email, for instance, said her daughter "did not know how to say no."
"She was trying to prove herself in a new environment, and in doing so, she pushed herself beyond her limits," the email said,
Hephzibah said this was especially true for younger workers, who may not have enough experience to become critical within the company yet.
"In the bigger companies," she said, "if you don't deliver, that's it: You're replaced."
Cultural differences
Chang told BI that she's had Indian employees point out their lack of resources compared to international peers in the same company.
"They tell me, 'Jeanie, we don't have effective mental-health resources, but we hear the US does,'" she said.
In a Gallup State of the Global Workplace report published in 2024, only 14% of the roughly 2,262 Indian employees surveyed said they were thriving at their workplace, compared with 34% of the 128,278 employees surveyed globally.
Hephzibah, who has worked in both Indian-owned and multinational companies, told BI that multiple colleagues had left or requested transfers outside India in recent years — mainly because of the work culture.
She also found cultural differences when conducting training sessions for employees in India and the US.
When implementing the Indian training schedule for one company's American employees, Hephzibah faced pushback on issues like late session timings.
"They said, 'We're not going to work after 6 and they could clearly call it out without feeling bad," Hephzibah said. "The problem in India is that people get scared to speak up because their jobs might be impacted."
The way forward
In Hephzibah's opinion, overtime and vacation policies need to be strictly enforceable in India.
"Outside, we're very careful to communicate that we care because they have legal backing to sue," she said. "Over here, that entire system is missing."
She agreed with Chang that effecting systemic change would also be up to the leaders and middle management, and not just down to a country's laws.
"What is the leadership believing in? Is leadership overworking?" Chang said. "Because if they are, they're going to overwork their employees."
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