Work pressure

 In a short span of a week, reports have come in about the death/suicide of.employees due to 'work pressure'. While the first one was the death of an employee of consultancy firm EY due to heart failure, the other.two.were cases of suicide, one of.an.executive of private sector bank and the other of a manager of a public sector bank in Mumbai. It is in the interest of everyone to find out the root cause of such happenings. While many including the human rights.commission have taken cognisance of the death of EY employee and condemned the 'inhuman' work culture prevailing in the firms, not much have been talked about the other two.

I am a retired senior executive of a major public sector bank in the country with more than 33.years of service experience and I would say the pressure of work has always been there, but we were able to face it and handle it and never thought of ending the life. But in the current generation, the ability to absorb pressure appears to be minimum, may be because of the surroundings in which they grew up! I am not advocating that the present work atmosphere in all walks of life is conducive to the well being of the employee. But in the rat race, there are others who are willing to accept the pressure in the interest of their career progression and hence everyone is forced to accept the scenario. But each individual should take a call about what is the threshold which he/she can go to and decide whether to continue or quit instead of paying by their life.

The HR department everywhere has become merely recruitment and promotion departments and nothing much is done by them to maintain the 'health' of Human Resources, I am afraid.

It is high time the employers and employees really understood and practiced the concept of Work Life balance to save the situation