Should 12-hour workdays be the norm as suggested by Narayana Murthy? Teamlease’s co-founder answers

Rituparna Chakraborty, Co-Founder, Teamlease, says “a country's productivity is not essentially just about individuals or youth slogging it out for 12 hours in their workplaces. Essentially, it is a combination of the different aspects which unleashes productivity of that individual as well as corporate organisations and so on and so forth.”


Performance involves high levels of work and Narayana Murthy is saying that 12-hour workdays should be the norm. Do you think it can be the norm? Will longer work hours, according to you, translate into higher productivity? What does the trend show?
In a way, of course, one cannot help but agree with Mr Narayana Murthy's view that India is one of the least productive countries. There is something called a productivity index study. India is actually one of the bottom few. However, what I probably will not be able to agree is essentially that there is a direct correlation between the number of hours you work and the productivity that you render for the organisation. I am not at all for a minute saying that I do not understand or comprehend what he is really trying to say.


He essentially is saying that India has to really work and everyone in India has to really work smart, hard, constantly on our toes to get to the level of productivity that some of the other countries have. But the point is a country's productivity is not essentially just about individuals or youth slogging it out for 12 hours in their workplaces. Essentially, it is a combination of the different aspects which unleashes productivity of that individual as well as corporate organisations and so on and so forth.

Let me interject and ask you because you said this is a country of low productivity. Why do you think that is the case? What is the root cause for low productivity in India?
India is a country where only 4% of our youth have access to any kind of formal training or skilling. There is, of course, a direct correlation with that and the productivity levels of our youth. I think every individual in India today does a minimum of 12 hours of work. But unfortunately, four hours, three hours of that time goes into commuting time. As a matter of fact, I feel Indian youth actually is probably doing more hours. But that is not really contributing towards a greater GDP of the country because there are so many factors which are beyond the control of a human being.

We do not have the infrastructure. We do not have the academic ecosystem which enables it. Our cities are not structured like that. We do not have enough cities in the country where we can compete with Japan, Germany and have equitable wealth. I guess there are a lot more layers to it. I would like to appreciate the intent behind what he said but I do not think working more hours.

So you are saying that the thought process of the past may not work right now, where you want diversification of interests, of passions. It may not be a huge hit on productivity when people are pursuing passion simultaneously. Do you agree with this because this discussion is happening at a time when several countries, including ours, are talking about a four-day work week. Here we are talking about extended work hours, 12-hour work days? And this too, for the next 20 to 50 years, if we want to hit our potential when it comes to GDP? Does it have to be at the cost of the much-talked-about work-life balance?
What is productivity? Productivity essentially means that the final output is much higher than the cost of inputs that go into it. In simple language, that is what productivity is. In India, the large population that we were talking about, it is not you and me. The larger population, almost 88%-90% are informal workers who actually can go on working for 17, 18 hours but we know the kind of income or the wages that they are going to make, because that is essentially the kind of skills that they bring to the table.

So even if the formal sector – the 10%-12% – starts working 12 hours, India will still not become or cannot compete with the productivity levels of the other countries. It is statistically impossible. And hence, we have to figure out how we can unleash an engine where a larger cross-section or majority of the workforce are able to hit a bare minimum level of productivity against the effort that they put in or the input that they put in.

We have so many workers who are working in construction, road building. Do you really think that if you make a comparison between the time that they put in and the income, is comparable to any country in the world? That is not for want of them not working or putting in the hours. I mean, they are working for 16 -17 hours sometimes on sites and they do double shifts. But does that ensure that they are increasing the productivity of themselves or the country? I am not too sure about it. So India’s problem is very complex.

Can technology help? Now technology is coming to play a huge role and for the longest time, we have spoken about the democratic dividend of our country. Now combine that with our prowess in technology. Is that going to be a lethal combination that we need to kind of dip into and capitalise on?
Of course, unlike a lot of countries in the West, where they became richer first, which means more productive and then became older, I actually feel India's biggest crisis and risk is going to be that India might just end up becoming older without becoming richer. Honestly, that is going to be a double whammy for this country. So I am making a case that what India essentially needs is massive extrapolation of efforts to improve productivity and technology is a no-brainer. Like we have seen UPI for example, some of these things unleashes productivity in the ecosystem like UPI is one such.

I am sure that like in the regulatory construct of this company, we can release something in terms of compliances, in terms of getting more of the work that we spend time on which honestly no other country or individuals are spending in terms of how we are paying our bills and a lot of other stuff. The more digitised it becomes, more we will unlock some of those benefits which makes individuals as well as the economy more productive.

We always talk about working smarter because productivity, like you are both suggesting, comes from different constructs. And to be able to dip into the possibility, you need to even work smarter. How does that translate?
We have to figure out ways by which we adopt technology in every realm, every aspect of how we do business in this country. We just do not anymore have the luxury that we will follow. We have showcased our ability to trailblaze in some of these innovations. I actually feel the telecom infrastructure in India is probably one of the most modern in the world.

We have seen how we are replicating open structure, open architecture resources like UPI in every realm, whether it is in terms of hiring, onboarding or compliances. We have to create some of these open architecture to actually enable this process and India has all the talent in the world to crack that. We can do it far cheaper than anyone else in the world can do. So why not get started? It is a shame that very soon we will have one of the largest GDPs.

We are already talking about being the fifth largest, but India is 142nd worldwide in terms of per capita income. Nothing can be a bigger tragedy than that. So even if you become the largest GDP, if you are not changing the per capita income, you have done nothing in terms of improving productivity.