Infosys Advocates Work-Life Balance After Murthy’s 70-Hour Workweek Remark

After Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy sparked a controversy by asking Indian youth to dedicate 70 hours of work a week, the company has gone the other way and now emphasises work-life balance for its 323,000+ employees.

According to a recent report by the Economic Times, Infosys has started implementing an internal policy for tracking and monitoring employees in relation to working hours, especially employees who work remotely. The HR department finds out how long employees are working and gives alerts to employees when they exceed 9.15 hours on a given day and 5 days a week. But Infosys is now showing an internal policy that seeks to address health concerns from remote working since long working hours followed by lack of sleep and the associated health risks evidenced employee burnout.

Since November 2023 when Infosys mandated employees need to be in the office at least 10 days a month, it has begun flagging excessive remote work hours as well.

 Employees receive automated emails with a summary of the total logged hours, number of remote workdays, average hours per day, recommended breaks, communication boundaries and support from managers.

This action follows a remarkable shift in Murthy’s previous remarks, in which he said that work life balance was a myth and stressed “relentless effort” for national development. Although Murthy’s pitch was taken in different ways, Infosys now implies protecting employee health is consistent with a return on investment for long-term success.

By embracing modern workplace initiatives, Infosys will now demonstrate productivity through balance and avoid burnout.