Ernst & Young employee’s death sparks debate about toxic corporate work culture

The death of a young Ernst & Young (EY) employee allegedly due to a gruelling workload has triggered a conversation about the taxing work culture in India’s biggest firms.

Anna Sebastian Perayil, 26, worked as a chartered accountant with S R Batliboi, a member firm of EY Global, in Pune, a city in the western Maharashtra state. Four months into the job, Perayil died, from what her father described to The News Minute as a combination of “multiple issues including acid reflux, work stress, work pressure”.

According to a letter that her mother, Anita Augustine, wrote to EY India head, Anna started working at EY Pune on 19 March 2024, but “the workload, new environment, and long hours took a toll on her physically, emotionally, and mentally”.

Ms Augustine went on to describe how in July, she took Perayil to see a doctor after she said she had been experiencing  “chest constrictions” for about a week. The doctor prescribed antacids and pointed out that Perayil “wasn’t getting enough sleep and was eating very late”.

Despite this, Ms Augustine wrote, her daughter continued to work “late into the night, even on weekends, with no opportunity to catch her breath”.

“Anna's experience sheds light on a work culture that seems to glorify overwork while neglecting the very human beings behind the roles. This is not just about my daughter, it’s about every young professional who joins EY filled with hopes and dreams, only to be crushed under the weight of unrealistic expectations,” Ms Augustine wrote.

“Anna’s death should serve as a wake-up call for EY.”

Ms Augustine said no one from EY attended Anna’s funeral, adding that she reached out to the management afterwards but received no reply.

EY said that “work pressure” was not the reason for Perayil’s death.

“We have around one lakh employees. There is no doubt each one has to work hard. Anna worked with us only for four months. She was allotted work like any other employee,” Rajiv Memani, EY India chief, told The Indian Express. “We don’t believe that work pressure could have claimed her life.”

In a statement shared with The Independent, EY India said: “We are deeply saddened by Anna Sebastian's tragic and untimely passing in July 2024, and our deepest condolences go to the bereaved family.

“Anna was a part of the audit team at S R Batliboi, a member firm of EY Global, in Pune for a brief period of four months, joining the firm on 18 March 2024. That her promising career was cut short in this tragic manner is an irreparable loss for all of us. While no measure can compensate for the loss experienced by the family, we have provided all the assistance as we always do in such times of distress and will continue to do so.

“We are taking the family’s correspondence with the utmost seriousness and humility. We place the highest importance on the wellbeing of all employees and will continue to find ways to improve and provide a healthy workplace for our 100,000 people across EY member firms in India.”

Perayil’s death and her mother’s letter led to an outpouring of grief and anger online, with professionals from the industry, including EY, sharing their experiences with toxic work environments and crushing workloads.

A coworker claimed on Reddit that they were informed of Perayil’s death via a “centralised mail in which they attached her LinkedIn picture with some standard short message” and that “news was put in the grapevine that she was already suffering from a health condition which got worse”.

The employee echoed Ms Augustine’s letter, writing: “We average 16 hours a day in the busy season, and 12 hours a day in non busy seasons. No weekends or public holidays are off. Annually EY voluntarily announces a day off to rejuvenate their employees. And yes you guessed it right! Even that is not off. We work on that day as well — from office! Overwork is the only way to get promoted, do and make others do it.”

Another professional who said they worked at KPMG for four years described working while sick with Covid “until the point I could not sit straight because I had a fever and weakness”.

They said their manager “highlighted to the managers that I did not complete the tasks on that particular engagement even though I had submitted a Covid positive test report”.

Several other employees of the “Big Four” accounting firms — Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, EY— narrated similar stories on social media, detailing 14-18-hour work days, being referred to as “resources” instead of by their names, and receiving little to no support from managers on how to manage their workloads and stress.

Mr Memani’s response to Perayil’s death also came in for criticism online, with many bringing up the attitudes and past statements of industry leaders as having contributed to the lax attitudes towards employee welfare.

Many brought up Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy’s October 2023 statement about India’s productivity being among the lowest globally and saying that Indians must “work 70 hours a week” to develop the country.

Absence of labour protections and workplace stress have long been a matter of concern in India. As per data from the International Labour Organization, 51 per cent of India’s workforce logs over 49 hours a week. This places India only second to Bhutan for employees working extended hours.

A report by the Confederation of Indian Industries and the digital healthcare platform MediBuddy released in July showed that nearly 62 per cent of Indian employees experienced stress and burnout from work.

“The main thing to remember here is that almost all entry-level employees are covered under the Industrial Disputes Act. Therefore almost anyone not in a supervisory role is classified as a ‘workman’ and would have the concept of overtime applied to them. If this overtime is not paid, it is essentially theft,” Fidel Sebastian, a labour lawyer at the nonprofit Nyay Neeti Foundation, told The Independent.

According to the Factories Act of 1948 and the Minimum Wages Act of 1948, laws which deal with the working hours of an employee and overtime rules in India, respectively, if someone works for more than 8-9 hours a day, or over 48 hours a week, they are entitled to double the payment for the extra hours.

For employees feeling exploited, Sebastian said they can reach out internally to their management to negotiate overtime pay. If that fails and there is fear of reprisal, employees are still protected. The employee can raise their grievance with the labour commissioner who can decide how much back pay in overtime an employee receives as well as what fine the firm must pay.

Sebastian stressed the importance of unionising. For employees who feel they are being exploited, he said the best course of action is to try and register a union to collectively bargain or officially raise demands.

In the absence of a union, he said employees reaching out internally to the management to negotiate overtime pay should do so in writing.

Such complaints, however, usually lead to reprisals and, in many cases, termination.

“A registered union engaged in litigation or conciliation against the company will automatically protect the employee from being terminated for being involved in raising such demands as the management will have to take the court or authority's permission before such termination,” Mr Sebastian said.

The Independent has reached out to EY, Deloitte, and KPMG for comment.

India’s junior labour minister Shobha Karandlaje said in a post on X that the ministry will conduct a “thorough investigation into the allegations of an unsafe and exploitative work environment”.