Work-life balance and installing the right value systems are important, says Anant Goenka

RPG Group vice-chairman Anant Goenka on Friday emphasised the importance of work-life balance for employees and installing the right value systems at companies.

Speaking on a debate on work-life balance at the Mint India Investment Summit in Mumbai, Goenka said every person has their own way of running a business. “It is important to have time for taking care of families. I believe in breaking up life into five parts: family, health, work, friends and spirituality. One needs to see the gaps in what time is being allotted to each,” he said.

Over the past few months, industry leaders such as Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy and L&T chairman SN Subrahmanyan have sparked controversy by calling for longer working hours.

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Responding to whether there has ever been resistance to having a liberal approach to work-life balance, Goenka said, “We need to differentiate whether success leads to happiness or happiness leads to success. In the former, the happiness is short-term.”

Emphasis on work culture

Talking about his tenure at tyre maker Ceat Ltd, Goenka said a key part of driving expansion of the company was working on the culture there. “There was some friction between workers and management at factories. We worked on resolving that,” said Goenka. “Even today, people will be prioritised over profit,” he added.

Goenka said he had a four-point checklist for installing values: role-modelling the behaviour one wants to see, communicating the change one wants, putting in place the right processes, and figuring out whether one has the right talent to execute change.

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“Values are very important to me personally and I spend a lot of time on that. At the group level, we’ve defined our values to be unleashing talent, touching lives, outperforming and being happy,” Goenka added.

Talking about taking tough decisions such as layoffs, Goenka said leaders need to be humane and compassionate. “It is best to do it in a short period of time. It is important to give the right support to laid-off employees and also then communicate properly to the affected teams,” he said.

Highlighting how the emphasis on culture has helped the RPG Group, Goenka said nearly half of the employees who have left the group have wanted to come back.

Focus on customers

RPG Group operates in diverse sectors, ranging from pharmaceuticals to tyres. Talking about his journey in the business, Goenka said it was important to understand the real India and get out of one’s comfort zone.

“When we talked to customers at Ceat, we found out that they were struggling with grip on the roads. We went ahead and launched Ceat Grip to cater to the customers’ needs,” he said.

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Goenka, son of RPG Group chairman Harsh Goenka, started his career with Hindustan Unilever Ltd. He went on to join construction engineering company KEC International. After working at ATMA India and Zensar Technologies, joined Ceat before being appointed vice-chairman of RPG Group in October 2023.