Capgemini ceo pushes for work life balance ‘47 hour work week no emails on weekends’

Capgemini ceo pushes for work life balance ‘47 hour work week no emails on weekends’

Amid top executives calling longer working hours, Capgemini CEO Ashwin Yardi has called for a 47-hour workweek with no work emails being sent to employees on the weekends. ‘Forty-seven and a half hours. We have about nine hours a day and five days a week,’ he said, while speaking at the Nasscom Technology and Leadership Forum. He was asked the ideal number of hours an employee should work in a week, PTI reported.

He added that unless an issue can be resolved over the weekend, all weekend emails should be avoided and he has used this principle for the last four years. ‘My guiding principle for the last four years is don't send an e-mail on a weekend even if it is an escalation unless you know you can solve it on a weekend,’ he said.

No point in 'giving grief' to employees

Yardi, however, said that he does occasionally work on the weekend but this does not extend to his employees as a mandatory exercise. He said he tried not to email them to avoid adding unnecessary stress and saw no point in just giving ‘grief’ to an employee knowing that the work cannot be done on a weekend.

Earlier, Yardi had said that given the demographic profile of IT workers, it is very important for organisations to adapt to the expectations of the younger employees and listed out strategies they are adopting. He added that Capgemini has quarterly promotion cycles, six-week employee surveys and charts out career paths for employees.

His comments are in contrast to Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy's push for a 70-hour workweek and Larsen & Toubro Chairman SN Subrahmanyan's call for 90-hour workweeks. Both have faced criticism for their comments amid debates over work-life balance.

Nasscom Chairperson Sindhu Gangadharan, who leads SAP India, highlighted that results matter more than work hours. Marico CEO Saugata Gupta shared a similar view but admitted to occasionally sending emails as late as 11.00 pm.