New Delhi: Death by overwork is now a worldwide phenomenon. Unfortunately, workplaces in India are yet to acknowledge it, let alone address it.
The Japanese society has spawned many wonderful concepts around good living such as ikigai and wabi-sabi. These have found resonance around the world. But the hard-working Japanese also gave us another shameful concept—karoshi, which is death by overwork.
In Japan’s strictly hierarchical work culture, the boss is everything. You come before he (yep, most of them are those who identify as men) comes and leaves well after he does. Many young Japanese workers end up working unreasonably long hours every week. When it becomes too much, quite a few of them decide to take a tragic decision. In 2023, an estimated 2,900 Japanese committed suicide due to overwork. (They even have a separate word for it: karo-jisatsu.)
Sadly, karoshi is no longer just a Japanese phenomenon; it’s a global epidemic. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Labour Organization (ILO), there were 750,000 karoshi deaths worldwide. Anna Sebastian Perayil just became an unfortunate addition from India to that statistic.
As Anna’s mother wrote in her heartbreaking letter to EY, her daughter’s employer, “(Anna) worked tirelessly at EY, giving her all to meet the demands placed on her. However, the workload, new environment, and long hours took a toll on her physically, emotionally, and mentally. She began experiencing anxiety, sleeplessness, and stress soon after joining, but she kept pushing herself, believing that hard work and perseverance were the keys to success”.
The treadmill of death
To those who may be inclined to think that, “well, there are thousands of other Annas who work at EY (put any other name here), why aren’t they dropping dead, too? Anna must have had some underlying health issues”. People who die of overwork do have issues—they are mentally and physically exhausted! But they are not naturally so; it’s the overwork that does it to them.
You don’t have to take my word for it. There’s enough study academic research on this topic by now. And almost all of them show that there is enough evidence to suggest that overwork leads to serious health risks, particularly cardiovascular diseases and mental health issues. Apparently, long working hours not only induce burnout but also significantly increase the risk of suicidal ideation.
The reason why it becomes fatal for some people is simple. Just like millions of people eat seafood but only some die of allergic reaction, millions of people experience stress at workplace, but only some succumb to it. Is it their fault? Not at all. Every individual responds differently to stress. What companies need, then, is a system that picks up early warnings of an individual coping poorly with work stress. This is where EY India—particularly its HR–seems to have failed.
Going by the outrage and comments (many from people within EY) on social media, it does seem that EY India has allowed a toxic work culture to grow and thrive. Anna’s mother writes in the letter about late night calls from her manager, even telling her that “You can work at night; that’s what we all do.” Clearly, in some workplaces, overwork is glorified, and work-life balance is pooh-poohed.
The need for awareness and addressal
There are very few jobs where there is no stress. The online delivery boys and girls are stressed because of the unreasonably short delivery deadlines that have become the USP for some aggregators (one delivery boy, a student, in Chennai committed suicide because a customer scolded him for delay in delivery). Farmers are distressed when rains fail or there is excessive production; doctors and nurses deal with life-and-death situations, so stress comes naturally; the taxi driver, the bus driver…just about everyone is stressed.
In unorganized industries, it is nearly impossible to hold anyone accountable for karoshi. Therefore, it’s the organized industry where our best hopes of curbing karoshi lie. The first thing the government and employers need to do is to acknowledge that overwork can be fatal, and that guardrails need to be established to keep it in check. The second important thing is for these two important stakeholders to come together. The government needs to bring in legislation to address over work, its prevention, detection, and addressal. The employers, on their part, need to integrate implementation of these regulations with their HR processes. For example, having a counsellor speak with employees randomly or specifically, but regularly; setting up mechanism for employees to report abusive managers safely and anonymously, with prompt redressal. An ‘employee watch’ group could also be encouraged to report instances or harassment and abuse of other employees.
In short, there are many ways to address karoshi before it becomes an overwhelming issue. Anna’s death must serve as a wakeup call to urgently deal with an issue that’ll only get worse if left unaddressed.
Read latest India news here. Also get top breaking news, headlines and latest news from India and around the world news at IndiaPost Live.
