Harsh Goenka rejects Narayana Murthy's 70-hour work week advice: '5-day office week is dead'

Harsh Goenka's opinion on NR Narayana Murthy's views made him among the few to have disagreed with the Infosys founder.

The debate on India's existing work productivity continues to rage on, a few days after Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy said that if the country's overall work productivity had to improve, then the youngsters needed to work 70 hours every week.

The latest to share his views on the issue was RPG Enterprises Chairman Harsh Goenka who disagreed with Murthy's views, adding that the number of hours put in by any employee did not matter anymore and a professional had to be measured on parameters such as ambition, purpose and productivity. "It's no longer about working 50 or 70 hours, but about your own ambition, your purpose, and your productivity," Goenka wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday.

The 5-day office week is dead. People are working nearly 33% of their office time remotely, and it's a game-changer. Flexibility is worth as much to people as an 8% raise.What we value most is skipping the daily commute and the sense of flexibility.
Hybrid work…

Story continues below Advertisement

Remove Ad

— Harsh Goenka (@hvgoenka) October 30, 2023

Others such as JSW's Sajjan Jindal and Ola's Bhavish Agarwal have endorsed Murthy's suggestion.

Additionally, Goenka also wrote that the five-day work week structure had run its course and the hybrid work model was the present, as well as the future. "The 5-day office week is dead. Hybrid work is the present and the future. It's all about blending office and remote work to suit your needs," he added.

There is no doubting that the coronavirus pandemic changed the way professionals worked across different sectors. But with the pandemic effect now having reduced significantly, companies have started to call employees back to offices and deployed a hybrid or an on-site model of work.

Recently, Zerodha CTO Kailash Nadh said that work from home had been a tough nut to crack and he and his team had been able to complete tasks faster by working from office, as compared to working remotely.