After a long debate surrounding the 70-hour work week remark by Infosys founder Narayana Murthy, the tech giant is now on the path backwards. Infosys is now encouraging employees to focus on maintaining a work-life balance.
According to reports, the IT firm has begun an inter-company campaign to track how long employees have been working. Under this campaign, the HR is keeping a track of the time spent by employees on work in the office, while requesting them continuously not to work beyond their working hours, especially for employees working remotely.
As a part of this fresh initiative, Infosys is also emailing the employees who are logging out later than their usual working hours. Under the new system, the HR sends health alerts to employees whose average monthly working hours exceed the standard benchmark of 9.15 hours a day, five days a week, according to a report by The Economic Times.
The initiative, rolled out after the company adopted its hybrid work model, is designed to promote employee well-being amid growing concerns over overwork and burnout.
These automated emails from the HR department are triggered when remote work hours surpass set limits. They provide employees with detailed data, including the number of days worked remotely, total hours logged, and average hours per day.
“We must work for 9.15 hours a day for five days a week, and if we overshoot this while working remotely, it prompts a trigger,” an Infosys employee told ET.
Infosys has been reinforcing this guidance since November 20, 2023, when it mandated that employees return to the office for at least 10 days a month. Since then, the company has been closely monitoring how much time its workforce, over 323,000 employees strong, spends working remotely.
The initiative comes at a time when professionals across industries are reporting rising health issues, particularly those linked to poor sleep, long hours, and irregular routines. Infosys now frames work-life balance as a matter of both personal health and sustainable professional performance.
A contrast to Murthy’s views on hard work
The company’s current focus on work-life boundaries stands in contrast to the stance taken by its co-founder N. R. Narayana Murthy, who has publicly argued that India’s youth need to work longer and harder to help the nation rise.
“If we are not in a position to work hard, then who will work hard?” he said at the Indian Chamber of Commerce’s centenary event in 2023, referring to the hundreds of millions of Indians living below the poverty line.
Murthy has long been critical of reduced working hours. He opposed India’s shift to a five-day work week in 1986 and, more recently, told the CNBC Global Leadership Summit that he doesn’t support the idea of work-life balance.
“I don’t believe in this concept of work-life balance,” he said. “Real progress requires sacrifice and relentless effort.”
His remarks sparked widespread debate, with some hailing his work ethic, while others questioned the health consequences of such expectations in today’s fast-moving tech industry.
