On 5th November 2020, the Indian government had removed the registration requirement for Outsource Service Providers (OSPs). It had also removed BPO’s from the ambit of OSPs’ rules. 

This welcome change follows in the wake of one of the world’s strictest lockdowns in India. It meant that companies could do the transition to remote-working smoothly. It also means that companies are free to look for talent outside traditional offices and infrastructure. The Indian government had put restrictions on OSPs and BPOs to prevent misuse of leased telecom lines. 

With a second wave — much worse than the first — ravaging India, it looks like working from home would be here to stay for a little while longer even though some leaders expressed views otherwise, particularly Goldman Sachs and Google.

Working from home has brought about its own share of problems. Back in 2020, SHRM has identified that people were working longer due to the transition to remote working. 

This worsens an already existing problem with the Indian professional space — work-life balance. Back in March 2019, Monster.com had started an ad campaign across India, the Middle East, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines to initiate a conversation about the work-life balance. They did so with a humourous video that has some dark overtones. 

How Does The Gig Economy Influence Work Life Balance?

With the flexible work environment gaining traction, the gig economy is emerging as an alternative to hiring employees on contract. Studies conducted between March 2019 and 2020 and published by the Institute of Public Policy discuss how gig workers end up making less than minimum wage. 

Even though the gig economy has a skill differentiator, the meagre income earned would require freelancers to take on as many gigs as they can. This would essentially increase the competition and further drive down the profit. While, in theory, the skill would trump quantity in getting the gigs, realistically, companies need to look at their bottom line too. Where the difference is slightly more than marginal, companies are going to look at who can provide a serve the cheapest.

What Do You Miss About Not Going to Office?

While the competitve bidding can affect the work-life balance of the gig workers negatively, the situation is no different for full-time employees either. HBS surveys have consistently shown that more than 95% of the professionals work more than 50-60 hours a week. In fact, several have pointed out that the easiest way they know how to climb the corporate ladder is by putting in additional work. 

In addition to impairing work and life balance negatively, this also harms peer-to-peer relationships. A survey by Michael Page highlighted that 98% of the surveyed professionals believe that positive colleague relationships are imperative to organizational productivity. When additional work threatens a healthy work and life balance and constructive relationships at work, professionals can find themselves burnt out easily by their work life.

As if that wasn’t enough, remote working is also causing increasing instances of mental health issues. A piece published in PubMed identified that, even before the pandemic, across many nations, mental health issues were the leading cause of workplace disabilities, high attrition rates, and more sick leaves availed.

How Have Presentation and Appearence Changed During Work from Home?

With work commute brought down to nil, companies expect professionals to put in the extra hours. Effectively, commute for work is replaced by additional hours in front of the computer. While the change in the work-life balance there is nearly negligible, what changes is how professionals used to indulge in recreational and leisure activities during the commute but now can’t.

Additionally, with the necessity to dress up removed (except maybe wearing a shirt over briefs), it is easy to sit in front of the devices as soon as you wake up in the morning. Psychologically, this can create a mentality that revolves around work entirely. Previously, home was intended to be a place where you left work behind. If you brought it home, you didn’t expect to continue working as you did in the office. 

However, with the lines blurred now, it is not uncommon to see people’s day revolving around work entirely. Electronic devices, in part, aid this. The same study by Michael that we quoted says that more than 93% of the respondents received some device from work. This removes any hesitant financial investment in furthering a smooth transition to working from home. 

This is an interesting infographic to summarise the study

What are People’s Mindsets and General Practices When It Comes to Work-Life Balance?

There is another interesting thing at play here. The general consensus seems to be that Indians tend to overstaff for a job. That means the degree of collaboration and group consensus required to execute tasks becomes significantly higher. When you have to get four people in a room for a job that requires only 2, you’ll have to make sure the schedules of all four align. This is harder than getting the two people to align their schedules.

This is particularly true for the Indian Millennials. One reason European nations have such an enviable work-life balance is that they tend to start work early. 

Of course, there are other reasons, but we’ll focus on this for a bit.

When you have a country as big as India, with offices spanning wide states, the commute will be a difficult part of going to the job. Additionally, it is not uncommon to see Indians arriving late to work. It is not uncommon to see employees arriving as late as 11 AM for a 9 AM work shift in government offices. 

This plays out because, at workplaces, for a lot of reasons, professionals find themselves staying back later and later.

Does Having to Collaborate Influence the Work-Life Balance for Professionals?

When you start early, you obviously need to spend longer to complete the same load of work. That means you end up going home late, tired, and unwilling to pursue your hobbies or spend quality time with your family.

Additionally, given how much people have to collaborate to get work done, it isn’t enough for one person to arrive on time to address the work life balance issue. How do you make sure everyone involved in the project and the broad company activities arrives on time? A feat of such scale can only happen with institutional changes.

Does Putting in Extra Hours Contribute to an Increase in Productivity?

Another issue that compounds this problem is that most executives believe that putting in more hours means giving more productivity. Consider 5 Star’s ad. Putting the inherent problems aside, we see that the ad capitalizes on a common occurrence. Of particular mention is the time of the day in the ad. The more people that want to outdo their colleagues, the more other people will feel that they should too. Effectively, it creates a domino effect.

Unfortunately, this workload isn’t always something that the employers are giving the professionals. Priorities matter too. According to the Deputy Managing Director of Toyota Kirloskar, Indians would rather work late and earn more to buy things faster than they can ideally do than take their time. Western counterparts would love to go fishing or hiking.” 

Now, this isn’t a universal statement. There is no generalization here. There will always be exceptions. It’s just pertinent to understand how domestic priorities can perpetuate activities that cause unwanted consequences — in this case, the poor work life balance.

Is There a Solution for Achieving Work Life Balance?

One solution that we can foresee is that leaders should set the stage. Imposing work hours on employees will not work because lower-level managers will still emphasise the number of hours and use that as a metric to guage performance and dedication. One way to counter this is for senior leaders to come in early and leave on time. This will, probably, help the junior employees emulate their bosses. Over time, we can expect a gradual shift in the company culture.

But this isn’t a fool-proof solution either. There will always be the “They are doing it after achieving that position and status. Once you do, too, we’ll let you follow the ‘prescribed time’.”

This just seems like a bad loop. Will counseling employees on the importance of spending time with their families help resolve this issue? Studies show that when you tell people something they are in denial about, they just withdraw into further denial. Clearly, that’s not the best way then.

How do We Conclude on the Issue of Work Life Balance?

Again, all of it begs the question: what does it take to achieve a positive work-life balance?

The simple answer is that there is no panacea. There is no one-stop solution to tackle an issue, especially when you have to tackle entire mindsets. As Adam Grant puts it in Think Again, it is easier changing individual mindsets than getting collective groups to align. 

However, with companies worldwide shifting to a flexible working solution, there is a possibility that we could make good strides towards achieving positive work life balance. In the end, it depends on how strongly the company wants to make sure its employees have a good work life balance and what they are willing to do to get it done.