The Silent Crisis Behind India’s IT Boom
March 4G Sai Prashanth
India’s Information Technology (IT) sector contributes significantly to the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Something that was once the most important and most profound sector in the country now undergoes “Metamorphosis,” if I can call it that. Constant change and adaptation to the evolving new policies, reforms, and changes have resulted in something more fundamental being ignored. The IT sector employs around one per cent of the Indian population. The Metamorphosis has resulted in the rapid scaling up and expansion globally. What could be the factor that is ignored?
The Human Capital
The pressure on IT employees keeps expanding, squeezing them physically and mentally. With major industry leaders like Mr. X and Mr. Y advocating for high working hours to increase productivity, do they consider the state of the employees’ wellbeing? Burnout, stress, and mental health issues that stem from the expectations to increasingly meet tighter deadlines are now becoming the norm in the competitive IT sector.
After the global pandemic, the mental health of everyone has changed noticeably, and for employees working in the IT sector, there is no need to ask. Deep-rooted stigmas of being judged still exist in Indian organisations that stop people from voicing their problems and seeking help. And what do Human Resources (HR) departments do in response? Usually, HR policies in the IT sector are reactive rather than preventive, which focus more on reducing employees to a number rather than understanding and protecting employee wellbeing. We don’t even have to ask about mid-size and startup firms, where the focus is just on making the cut rather than allocating resources for employee mental well-being.
The convergence of technology, which lets people stay connected, also prevents separation of something more important. It upsets IT employees’ work and life balance. You have internet connectivity and you have your laptop, so why don’t you log in and attend the client call at home? The always-on culture has resulted in chronic overwork and mental exhaustion.
Workplace stress induces or intensifies health problems. That also means that the diabetic capital of the World is also the most vulnerable country towards health-related issues. Alcoholism and insomnia are too common, which is a direct result of workplace stress. From the lens of an HR professional, the lack of job clarity or conflicting job demands is common in the IT sector. Toxic workplace dynamics like workplace bullying or basic exclusion could highly impact the employee’s mental health.
Barriers to mental health support in the Indian IT sector fall into various categories. The demographic and cultural stigmas are the main barriers that restrict mental health support.
Seeking help, going to therapy or a counsellor for mental health-related issues, is still thought of as a weakness and is faced with silence, denial, and fear of professional repercussions.
Why don’t mental health initiatives work?
Demographic factors of the employees play a significant role. Younger employees of the age group 21-25 years, who constitute the majority of India’s IT workforce, often face pressure to perform at a high level while navigating uncertainty and being away from family. Gender dynamics
further complicate it as male and female employees face completely different issues related to emotional expression. Men are forced to suppress vulnerability, while women face extreme stigma about emotional instability in professional settings. Adding more layers to this, there is the intersection of caste, religion, and socioeconomic background that stratifies the awareness and access to mental health support in IT organisations. Lack of culturally sensitive counselling frameworks within many HR departments means that support initiatives often fail to reach the employees who need them most.
The IT industry in India was built like a manufacturing assembly line. To explain it using an analogy, we can say that the IT sector in India is a digital line that has numerous employees who code continuously to serve the global clients. There is a slow shift now that most global clients don’t want just assembly robots that know just coding, but this reduction of humans into parts of an assembly line has already done the damage. Being efficient and profitable being the only motto led to a lag in the human capital.
The IT industry now sees low engagement numbers and quiet quitting. Sustained productivity and scalability come with a price: The employee well-being. In the long run, IT companies that are seeing success in employee engagement rates, have found that performance is now entirely dependent on the priority they give to the mental health of the employee, along with upskilling them to grow with the evolving technology. As India strengthens itself as the IT Hub of the world, how can the industry balance productivity without employee mental health being its cost?
