Bottomline | Beyond the '70-hour workweek' line

Infosys Founder NR Narayana Murthy likely did not expect that his conversation with former colleague Mohandas Pai would stir up a hornet’s nest over a comment on getting the nation’s youth to put in more hours to build the nation. Clearly, his throwing a 70-hour workweek proposition into the mix while calling for the country’s youth to step up to seize the moment that can shape India’s destiny has rankled many.

Looked at in the context of Murthy’s broader point, it would seem that this was more an impassioned statement to stir up a sense of commitment to the nation than a directional suggestion. The gist of Murthy’s argument is that India finds itself in a good place today, and the country should seize the moment to shape its destiny. He points to how other nations harnessed the power of their youth (favourable demographics for India) to great effect. He chides the youth today for being distracted and adopting what’s bad in the West, not what’s good. He calls for the youth to rise to the occasion and commit to working harder and longer to help the nation to achieve its goals.

The 70-hour workweek expression seems to have been made more in this context. Else, it doesn’t make sense. We’ll get to why.

What some seem to have missed, seems to be Murthy’s less emphasised but notable comment on corruption. While his words were carefully chosen, he did mention that corruption needed to be weeded out. In fact, that’s been one of the key reasons holding back India’s progress. Not just corruption at high levels, but corruption at all levels. India ranks 85 out of 180 countries in the Corruption Perceptions Index. Unless you weed out corruption, you can’t instil confidence in the youth that their efforts will go towards bettering their future.

The youth of today, given the vast amount of information available to all across social media, are far more aware. You cannot expect them to follow a path that they can clearly see the “leaders of today” are themselves not willing to embrace. It isn’t as easy for leaders today to hide their deeds. To lead, they will have to lead by example.

Also, despite the progress in the formalisation of India’s economy, there remains a large cash economy outside the purview. Even today, if you pay cash, you can avoid the GST levy. What’s more, less than 7% of India’s adult population pays taxes. The inequitable contribution of people to the nation’s growth is another hindrance in stirring up the national spirit.

It is important to distinguish between the labour productivity of a nation and revenue per employee for an organisation to appreciate the difference. Productivity for a country is measured as the gross domestic product or output generated per hour of work—or GDP/ hour. Hence, an increase in the number of hours worked, will not lead to any change in productivity.

The productivity of a nation depends on several factors. One among these is the nature of work. India having a large section of its population employed in low-productivity sectors like agriculture does skew the comparison. For an economy, investment in capital (equipment), technology and human capital (education and skilling) are the key factors that drive productivity. So, doing extra hours will not change the picture—it will be more output with the same or likely lesser productivity. Interestingly, Ireland with a 39-hour work week and Norway with a 40-hour work week have productivities of over $100/ hour, the highest in the world.

For businesses, the more commonly used parameter is revenue per employee. Here, you divide the total revenue of the organisation by the number of employees. So, if the revenue increases without an increase in the number of employees, the revenue per employee will rise. Extra hours can help achieve this, but will an increase in hours also spell an increase in employee costs? That remains the important question.

However, even in organisations, productivity improvements come from more effective utilisation of human capital, better management practices, technology-led improved efficiencies and other such factors. It has been demonstrated by various studies that productivity levels in large organisations are higher than in small businesses. Also, productivity levels vary vastly across sectors. Generally, productivity levels in services are higher than in manufacturing, so comparing disparate businesses on productivity is not meaningful.

Interestingly, Narayana Murthy’s comment on the 70-hour work week also drew a statement from Sajjan Jindal, Chairman, JSW Group: “We have to make India an economic superpower that we can all be proud of in 2047. A five-day week culture is not what a rapidly developing nation of our size needs. Our PM Narendra Modi ji works over 14-16 hours every day. My father used to work 12-14 hours, seven days a week. I work 10-12 hours every day. We have to find passion in our work and in nation-building.”

Clearly, the accent from both business leaders is on nation-building and committing to working harder for a common cause, more than work hours or productivity. By his own admission, Jindal works fewer hours than his father did, but his productivity levels are likely to be significantly higher.