How can millennials maintain work-life balance?

Satya Kandala
The Economic Times
28 December 2015

Just one question for Kumar Mangalam Birla, Chairman, Aditya Birla Group

“The honest answer in my view is that for the first 15 years of your working life, it is difficult to get that work-life balance. I think, it is far too competitive. If you want to get ahead in the organisation, if you are ambitious, then it just requires an enormous amount of time and emotional commitment. And to strike that right balance becomes quite a Utopian kind-of agenda.

Having said that, you have people who have found a sweet spot in their happiness matrix. There are people who will say that, ‘Okay, I won’t take up the CEO job because it involves administrative aspects that I don’t want to do. I’m a finance person, I enjoy doing finance and therefore I’ll stop my growth at being the CFO of a large business. I don’t have the ambition to become a CEO.’

And then you live with the consequences — maybe the perks are less or you don’t get invited to as many important events as the CEO would. But maybe at the same time you have more time for family. The sheer burden of the responsibility of a corner office isn’t there.

If you know what you want and can come closest to doing that, with prioritization in finding the sweet spot in the happiness matrix — matrix because there are other dimensions to life — we will be happier people.”