Amid Infosys founder Narayana Murthy’s opinion that youngsters should choose to work 70 hours a week, jury members of the India Business Leaders Award (IBLA) on Tuesday, October 31 shared diverse perspectives on work life balance and 70- hours a week productivity, during a panel discussion.

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Shyam Srinivasan, MD & CEO, Federal Bank advocated for a more integrated approach, advising hard work and smart choices over a strict work-life balance while Anish Shah, MD & CEO of the Mahindra Group, stressed the importance of individual balance and the evolving nature of this equilibrium as one progresses through their career.

"I know I'm going to become terribly unpopular, I don't believe in this line of work life balance," said Srinivasan, "I'm not saying it in light, I think it's probably integration, people have to figure it out themselves best. You can't expect the lifestyle of your grandson with the salary of your grandfather, let's be clear about it. You have to put in the hard yards, find the best way to do it, do it at home, do it at work, location agnostic. Gone are the days of entitlement, you can't sit back and expect everything to come to you."

While Shah who believes that "it's very important for each person to have a balance that works for them" said, "balance is very important for each person to see. It's also for each person to decide how that balance changes over time. And at times, you will work hard at times, you might want a little more balance from a work life standpoint. And hard work is essential. So I am not going to say that, it's okay to sit back and have a great balance and expect your career to go very well. So I think it's a combination of both of those things."

Zarin Daruwala, Cluster CEO - India & S Asia, Standard Chartered Bank highlighted their supportive policies, including paternity leave and on-site creches. "So we have certain policies, and now we have paternity leaves. So even that is something that most organizations don't have we have introduced, but we have creches in our buildings," she said. "We have the support system for women and I mean, if somebody is having a personal issue and wants to work from home, it's fine. But it's more about supporting the person at different stages is what we focus on," Daruwala said.

Sandhya Devanathan, VP at Meta India, underlined the importance of gender equality and building support systems for all employees. She said, "If we want to be an $8 trillion economy, it's not going to come if women aren't equally participating in that."

"We have to build the support systems that enable them to participate in the workforce equally. And I am not saying 70 hours is good or bad. But I am saying system has to work for everyone, it has to work for people taking care of young families, men and women not just not just looking at a work lens," Devanathan added.

Hindustan Unilever MD & CEO Rohit Jawa emphasized their trust-based approach, valuing outcomes over hours worked, and focusing on employee well-being. "We do believe in flexibility and we believe in trusting our people. So we have Hybrid model that said, we judge people outcomes not by number of hours they put in. I think people do work very hard, I must say even, we don't count it but we know that they work very, very hard...I think it's really about having an open culture, trusting people, basically driven intrinsically from their own desire to do well," Jawa said.

Discussed the need for a motivated and values-driven young workforce, Manny Maceda, CEO of Bain & Company, said, "The fact that you still have a population dividend that is willing to have aspirations, have some reasonable amount of hard work to achieve that, and with a generation that hopefully, is also looking to have values that are consistent which you are trying to save climate, electric vehicles, diversity, if your young workforce, that is the fastest growing population at this scale in the world gets the balance of all of that that will be a real source of competitive advantage for India in the world, because otherwise, I haven't gotten this right."

Nikhil Kamath, Co-Founder & CFO of Zerodha, emphasized the value of competition within a capitalist framework and recognized the government's efforts in this direction. "Let me not say what is better or what is worse, I feel like there is so much precedent to four day workweeks, to the socialist leaning policies of some Nordic, Scandinavian countries or history for that matter to have shown that that form of ecosystem does not work as well as capitalism, not just for a category of people, but for the whole country at large."

"I think the government has done a great job of recognizing that. Lower tax rate 25% for corporates is a great step in the right direction. So if we are all agreed on the fact that capitalism is the way to go, the very thing at the code that we need to cherish or celebrate is competitiveness, and everybody has to compete with everybody. I think net-net for society at large, that is what is required. So if you want to go out and compete by virtue of the number of hours you work, you should be able to do so I think." Kamath added.