Everyone Is Tortured; No Social Life, No Personal Time…’ EY Employee Dies from ‘Work Stress’, Colleagues Share Harrowing Experiences.
Anna Sebastian Perayil, a 26-year-old Chartered Accountant at Ernst & Young (EY) in Pune, passed away from “work stress,” her mother Anita Augustine claimed in an email written to EY India Chairman Rajiv Memani.
After the email went viral, several other EY employees shared their experiences. One such letter, circulating on social media, is reportedly from a colleague of Anna, though the name is not mentioned.
“The death of Anna was informed via a centralised mail in which they attached her LinkedIn picture with some standard short message like RIP. News was put in the grapevine that she was already suffering from a health condition which got worse,” read the letter.
The person further goes on to talk about Anna’s manager and assistant manager without mentioning any names. “The manager is actually worse than how it’s portrayed in the letter. He prioritises his convenience and doesn’t really care for anyone’s time and effort. He takes all the credit for himself and blames the team for shortfalls…Her assistant manager, she’s atrocious.”
Talking about his/her experience, the person shared that the “senior people can make your life a living hell if you don’t cooperate with them. Try reporting it to the HR, then you’ll get to know he’s part of the structure too…Humiliation in team calls is quite normal here…Female employees may get some leniency but for our male colleagues it’s absolutely brutal.
Everyone is tortured to hell. No social life, no personal time, no time to attend even phone calls…We average 16 hours a day in the busy season and 12 hours a day in the non-busy seasons. No weekends or public holidays are off…Overwork is the only way to get promoted, do and make others do it.” The person further shared about an incident when a colleague was hospitalised due to dengue. However, he was made to work from the hospital bed.
“Anna’s death has impacted us all. And such a letter from Augustine is conclusive evidence that ‘already suffering from mental health issues’ was a deliberately created rumour. Hope the effort behind this letter doesn’t go in vain,” the person concluded.