Harsh Goenka, it appears, played it straight and safe. There was no mention of working on Sundays. There was also no mention of staring at spouses. The billionaire businessman underlined that he did not speak about these things at all, drawing big laughs from his employees.
“The last time a chairman of a company, called L&T, spoke in a townhall he got into a lot of trouble. I have not spoken about Sunday working. I have not talked about staring at your spouses, so, please…,” said the RPG group chairman Harsh Goenka at the townhall address to employees amid cheers and claps.
Concluding part of my annual RPG townhall address to all my colleagues 😀 pic.twitter.com/sIbC34dqU2
— Harsh Goenka (@hvgoenka) June 3, 2025
Employing the laughter emoticon, the businessman posted the video clip from his address on X.
The comments referred to the debate on working hours, proposed by Infosys founder Narayana Murthy, who advocated working 70 hours a week.
Early in January, Larsen & Toubro (L&T) Chairman SN Subrahmanyan suggested employees work 90-hour per week, even on Sundays, to remain competitive.
“If I can make you work on Sundays, I will be more happy, because I work on Sundays also,” he said at the time.
He further questioned, “What do you do sitting at home? How long can you stare at your wife? How long can the wives stare at their husbands? Get to the office and start working.”
The comments sparked a huge work-life balance debate.
Weighing in on the work-life balance and putting in more working hours, Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra said he believed in the quality of work and not the quantity, adding the debate is in the wrong direction.
“My point is we have to focus on the quality of work, not on the quantity of work. So it’s not about 48, 40 hours, it’s not about 70 hours, it’s not about 90 hours,” Anand Mahindra had said.
Rajiv Bajaj, Managing Director of Bajaj Auto, said that what matters is quality of work, not hours. He suggested “90 hours to start from the top”.
Notably, several countries are experimenting with or have adopted a four-day workweek.
