The generational gap in leadership ethos: The work-life balance debate

At the Bengaluru Tech Summit 2024, when asked if he believed in the need to work 70 hours a week, and his views on work-life balance, Rishad Premji, executive chairman of Wipro, said that work-life balance is significantly important which learnt during his early days before Wipro.

"Work-life is something that you have to define for yourself. Organisations always are never going to work at it for you. You have to define for yourself, what that means and what it doesn't mean, and draw boundaries. Also, the concept of work life has dramatically changed,” he said.

Rishad Premji, a 47-year-old who leads a workforce of 2.33 lakh employees from 146 nationalities, believes that the concept of work-life balance has evolved. Rishad asserts that today, it’s less about the number of hours worked and more about how employees utilise their time at work when not actively working.

“Maybe in my generation, it is what time you got to the office and what time you left it. Today it may be, (for employees) that, “Look, don't take away my Instagram access at work." And that's my concept of work-life balance ” he added.

This comes just a few days after co-founder of Infosys 78-year-old Narayana Murthy at an event recently held in Mumbai, stood firm on his belief of putting in 70 hours a week at work which had caused a huge uproar on social media. “I don't believe in work-life balance. I have not changed my view. I will take this with me to my grave,” he said at the event. Further, he said that throughout his work life at the company, he would be at the office from 6.20 am to 8.30 pm, and worked six and a half days a week.

The other young leader at an IT firm, 43-year-old Roshni Nadar Malhotra, chairperson of HCL Technologies has also been vocal about women being an important part of the workforce in the sector and the need for companies to ramp up efforts to bring back women with STEM backgrounds who have fallen off the bandwagon. This includes companies providing flexibility and being able to create a supportive environment for work-life balance.

Suppose one has to look at the IT industry revenue model over the last five decades, which has also evolved. From T&M (Time and material) where companies would charge for the number of hours and people deployed on a project, to the fixed price where a definite sum was committed and it was the discretion of the service provider to deploy resources, today's global clients are embracing outcome-based model and is seen as a win-win for both parties.

Also undeniably the workforce skew, at the IT companies the scale is tipping in favour of those in the 20-40 years bucket, who are more open about their need for mental and physical well-being. Rishad at the summit expressed his openness towards talking about mental health, and training managers to look for signs.

“I talk about my mental health. I talk about my journey of sleeping right, exercising, eating right is helping me in my mental health” he said

Interestingly, Wipro’s latest annual report stated that over 20% (47,000) of its employees were engaged with Wipro Care (a not-for-profit trust) both in terms of volunteering and monetary contributions which among other things works on the Access to Education Program, Education for Children with Disabilities, Community Ecology Program, Community Healthcare Program. So should outsiders perceive this as work simply because it is associated with a company or a part of life given that it is a voluntary act of engagement by employees?

By the looks of it, the IT industry seems to be far away from standardisation of definition for work-life balance or there never might be one, however, the younger leaders are undoubtedly ushering a mindset change. In the coming times, this could well define the talent retention abilities of a company as the age demographic continues to change for the sector.