Sanjiv Bajaj on 70-hour work week debate: 'We focus on output, not time spent at work'

Sanjiv Bajaj, Bajaj Finserv Chairman and MD

Billionaire businessman and chairman of Bajaj Finserv, Sanjiv Bajaj weighed in on the 70-hour work week debate and said that his company focuses on employee's output and not the time they spend at work, adding that employees get incentives based on their output.

"We don't control how many hours somebody works," Bajaj added.

Speaking at the Lokmat Maharashtrian of the Year Awards 2025, the billionaire businessman shares how his company rates employees. "We started doing this in our companies 8-10 years ago. Today, we employ about 1.2 lakh people across financial services. There's no way we can know the bottom 90 percent of the staff. Eventually it is left to Mr XYZ and who is reporting to him. If he likes him, that guy gets a bonus. So, we tried to take the politics out of it," Bajaj said.

He added that the company then metricized 95 percent of its jobs into monthly and weekly tasks. "You do those tasks, you get your bonus or incentive. So, we tried make it as objective as possible," he said.

The policy however was different for senior management, as their roles are much more qualitative, Bajaj said. "We don't go into who’s there how many hours," he added.

Bajaj said that being is office is needed to boost innovation. "After COVID, within a day or two of opening up, we were all back at work. We were not working from home. Somebody had a medical problem, somebody was pregnant, of course we were compassionate for them. But we said if we were to be in the innovation business, we can't innovate by being on four zoom screens. You have to be together with people," he said.

"We want people to be there at work. We don't control how many hours. Based on the output, they get their incentives," said the business leader.

Sanjiv Bajaj’s comments come after an intense debate over work-life balance was reignited after Larsen & Toubro (L&T) Chairman SN Subrahmanyan suggested that employees should work 90 hours a week, and even on Sundays, to stay competitive. Prior to that, Infosys Founder Narayana Murthy had suggested a 70-hour work week to improve productivity.