Is stress pushing admen to the edge?

It’s a quirky world — natty client-service executives and shabby copywriters, a laissez faire workplace, lots of glitz and glamour...

But this façade hides the everyday mundaneness of deadlines, punishing work schedules, creative blocks, and intense competition within and outside organisations. This is the reality of the ad industry, where workplace stress is spiralling out of control, burning out people.

This was brought painfully into focus recently by the suicide of a Tokyo-based employee of ad major Dentsu. A probe confirmed the employee was pushed to suicide because of the punishing work schedule.

Since Japan has a higher suicide rate than India, should too much not be made of the case, as one section of the Indian ad world says? Or, should it be seen as a wake-up call, as another set thinks?

According to insiders, much of the work pressure originates from outside the office — the work schedule depends on the client. Deadlines have become more sacrosanct, and work pressure surges during a pitch.

“The industry is just imploding. One of the reasons is people do not have a life beyond the workplace,” says Meenakshi Menon, chairperson, Spatial Access, an audit and advisory firm in the marketing services space. She adds that if the advertising profession is to draw insights from the outside environment, ideas cannot happen when ad executives are operating in a vacuum (inside the office).

Youngsters in the business, too, complain about the punishing work schedule. According to one young executive, a couple of his female colleagues could not even conceive. “They had to plan for more than two years to have a baby,” he says. But, then, the workplace was not kind. “Even female colleagues would gang up to ask why someone was going home early just because she was pregnant.”

Ganapathy Ramachandran, founder and CEO, Reverse Advertising, says: “Unlike the Mad Men days, necks can roll in a trice on issues ranging from performance and punctuality to language and even dress code.”

He relates an anecdote from his days at a large agency. Every Monday morning there would be a town-hall and late-comers would be fined ₹10 for every minute they missed. There were months when he used to take only 50 per cent of his salary as the rest would go to pay the fines. “I was working hard and delivering on time. But I was not on the organisation’s clock,” he says.

Nevertheless, the industry remains a big draw for the young and talented. As Sapna Srivastava, a veteran HR professional from the ad world, says: “Once somebody joins advertising, they retire from advertising.”

One CEO agrees that pressures are rising, but insists that an agency office is different. “It’s not a boiler-room scenario where things are often bubbling. We create a good working atmosphere even when employees are staying up late.”

The chief of another large agency enthusiastically agreedthat maintaining work-life balance is critical. Asked to elaborate, however, he edgedaway promising a detailed reply later. Only, will it come before an epitaph is penned for a copywriter or a service executive?

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