Issue 73: Can hardwork kill you?

A leaf from my consulting days, or maybe not

It has been a tough week for many of us in corporate India, particularly those who spent time as consultants or auditors or some such, in large and reputable firms.

If you haven’t followed the news, at the risk of triggering you, this is what happened. A young girl died on a stressful and strenuous job, possibly because of overwork.

If you have followed the news, I am sure at least some part of the news made you think about your own early years on the job, the travails of late nights and mindless stretching, weekend working and toxic bosses.

What has bothered me the most about the week, apart from the incident itself, is all the hot takes on the incident. And I have thought long and hard about what I can really say (it isn’t compulsory to say anything but I cannot ignore it and move on as if nothing happened - this substack is called Girl At Work for a reason).

Talking about my own consulting stories seems to be a travesty, making it all about myself, when it shouldn’t be so.

But here’s what I think we can do, as individuals, peers, managers, leaders.

1. Stop putting the onus of work-life balance on young people who join the workforce: Draw boundaries, don’t compromise on sleep etc. are all nice to write but hard to follow. Imagine a young 23 year old just entering the workforce for the first time with no playbook on how this plays out. You think the majority will have the wherewithal to draw boundaries and tell their managers off? Especially in a culture that reveres night outs and working weekends?

2. Stop suggesting that people look beyond the money and adopt the slow life: It is the most privileged, mindless take I have heard so far. People join the workforce for many reasons, most of it money. Each of us comes from different contexts, each of us needs, wants and desires money differently. Some of us have loans to pay off, others, families to uplift. Still others just aspire for a financially secure and wealthy life, and the first job is a pathway to fulfilling that dream.

3. Start behaving normally and question when others don’t: Are you the person who jokes when people leave at 6pm, “Hey!! Half a day??”? Don’t do it. Are you the person who stands around laughing when your colleague asks your other colleague, “Hey!! Half a day??” at 6pm? Do better and ask your colleague to stop it.

4. Try to build empathy in your daily life: No, this one isn’t facetious. If someone looks stressed or overworked, ask them what’s wrong. Or tell them it will be ok. Or just reassure them that you are here if they want to talk. My lasting memory from consulting was a Dairy Milk at my desk, a senior colleague saying “have that, you will feel better”. I had never till then felt as seen and as heard as I felt that day.

5. Step in where possible: If you are in a position of authority, a leader empowered to take decisions, don’t stand around saying “When I was your age, I worked 16 hours a day, it’s great you only have to work 14 hours a day”. Our job is not to recreate history. Our job is to make the present better than the past. That’s called evolution.

While we wait for the world to change, let’s acknowledge that change indeed starts from the individual. And that individual is not the 20-something young person entering the workforce. That individual is the seasoned careerist, you and me and others like us, who have enough power to make life a little better for our teams, because that’s what actually counts. Let’s make ourselves count a bit.