Death of young Ernst & Young employee raises questions about workplace culture
Indian authorities are investigating the work environment at Ernst & Young after the death of a 26-year-old employee whose mother said she was overworked.
Indian authorities are investigating the work environment at a global accounting firm after the death of a 26-year-old employee whose mother said she was overworked.
Anna Sebastian Perayil died in July, four months after joining the Pune office of Ernst & Young, one of the “Big Four” accounting firms. In a letter to the company’s chairman in India that has been widely shared on social media in recent days, her mother, Anita Augustine, said her daughter had died from “backbreaking work.”
Augustine said her daughter had “worked tirelessly” to meet the demands of her new job, but that the workload, new environment and long hours took a toll on her health.
Anna Sebastian PerayilLinkedIn“She began experiencing anxiety, sleeplessness, and stress soon after joining, but she kept pushing herself, believing that hard work and perseverance were the keys to success,” she wrote, adding that no one from Ernst & Young had attended Perayil’s funeral.
NBC News was unable to access the letter directly and could not independently verify its contents. Perayil’s cause of death is unclear.
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