Up to Every Individual to Find Work-Life Balance

Former Infosys CFO TV Mohandas Pai tells Deepsekhar Choudhury that managers determine how employees are treated in an organisationnot the CEO. Edited excerpts

What is your assessment of the EY case in which an employee died allegedly because of high workload?

EY is a very good company. It has a great reputation. It seems that in this case, the manager may have been lackadaisical and may not have behaved in the correct manner. The chairman should have been sensitive. The least the chairman could have done was to say, 'We express deep regret for what has happened. Our company does not accept this kind of behaviour by any manager. We will set up a small group to investigate it [the incident] and make sure to understand what happened. And if there is a problem, we will stamp it out. This is not our culture.'

Instead, he made a very insensitive statement and that further inflamed the public. It’s very important that all enterprises send a strong message from the top that ‘Look, we have to have a good work ethic and a good work culture’. And when people are in pain, you have to show sympathy and empathy.

Do you think a toxic work culture comes straight from the boardroom?

In my opinion, having seen companies for the past 40 years, there could be toxic managers who are driving the employees very hard and not treating them well. But a CEO doesn’t drive everybody in the organisation. Human resource [HR] managers have to make sure that employees are treated fairly. And there is no exploitation of an employee for getting work done much beyond certain limits.

Managers have to treat people well. They must ensure that if employees are sick, they can take time off…make sure their personal needs are taken care of and make sure they lead by example.

Should the government intervene with policy?