Long Oppressive Working Hours

During a Black Belt project for a Fortune 500 FinTech, our team uncovered an undeniable truth: there is a direct correlation between long, oppressive working hours, unapproved personal leaves, inefficiencies, and fraud.

No amount of audits, AI-driven quality control, or expensive monitoring can permanently fix these issues. Like a wildfire, they can only be contained temporarily—but at an ever-increasing cost. Over time, these inefficiencies, fraud losses, and skyrocketing quality-monitoring expenses leave a growing dent in profits.

As Abraham Lincoln said, ‘You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.’ Yet, many leaders, blinded by ego and control, refuse to address these issues, ultimately damaging not just their workforce but also their investors' and shareholders' interests.

One FinTech I worked with bore the brunt of such leadership. A WFM Head was wielding leave approvals as a weapon, controlling a team of 600 employees while the process spiraled into chaos. Process VPs were clueless about solving the crisis, which was further complicated by the WFM Head’s personal conflicts (including an affair with a married colleague). Morale was at rock bottom, fraud cases were rampant, and efficiency was at an all-time low.

When I stepped in as the new WFM Head, it became evident that ‘A stitch in time saves nine.’ Fixing the mess wasn’t as complex as it seemed—it just needed someone to act with clarity and decisiveness. Here's what we did:

1. Addressed the backlog of pending leaves, from past 3 years, by streamlining workflows and call flows across sites while assuring over 600 teammates in team huddles that I was staring a WFM Project and would need their support to ensure their leaves for past 3 year and current year are allotted to them.
2. Fixed basic hardware issues like headphones and desk phones that hindered productivity.
3. Redesigned IVR flows across sites for smoother operations. Data analysis of past data across 3 sites, helped me pinpoint the 'root-cause' in IVR configuration and made the IT Team fix it.
4. Tweaked certain terms in the Master Contract with the BA team for operational alignment.
5. Connected directly with the Business Head in the US who in turn started a daily morning call between WFM Heads across all site.
6. With the help of automated spreadsheets I mastered back then-something even WFM softwares couldn't achieve, drafted and implemented a democratic and self-governing 'break policy' and a robust leave request processes that ensured leave or break approval doesn't become a weapon in the hands of manipulative narcissistic management team members even after I was long gone.
7. Eliminated the toxic mafia-like culture led by the previous WFM head, who exploited employees to serve his personal whims.
8. As our overall efficiency increased in just 3 months, process came to a 'green' after 3 long years post migration for the first time, I used surplus idle wait time for migrating a new Tele Sales process that helped teammates earn incentives in USD!
9. As hard and smart dedicated workers won and politically charged scumbags lost, it was obvious that our attrition rate dropped from highest to the lowest amongst all outsourced sites with employee satisfaction at peak.

The final result?

Fraud cases dropped, inefficiencies reduced, morale improved, and the process moved out of the red zone. Most importantly, the 600 FTE team finally felt valued, not exploited and Thanked me for saving their Jobs (proces was about to be sent back when I was sent to save it, since it couldn't achieve BAU status even after 3 years of warnings post migration). However in coming months the process VP-AVP dou along with the remnants of good old Mafia members succeeded in motivating me to switch to another company and grabbing the credit that didn't belong to them.

A Message to Leaders Advocating 100-Hour Work Weeks

This experience taught me that leadership is about empowerment, not exploitation. As Simon Sinek wisely said, ‘Leadership is not about being in charge. It is about taking care of those in your charge.’ For those advocating 100-hour work weeks, I urge you to reflect:

Are you building a culture of sustainable success, or are you sowing the seeds of inefficiency, burnout, and eventual collapse?

Long hours and oppressive policies don’t build great companies—great leaders do. Leaders who act decisively, address problems head-on, and treat their teams with respect lay the foundation for long-term success, for both their employees and their organizations.