In boardrooms across corporate India, a troubling realisation is dawning. The very perks and policies designed to humanise work—flexible hours, constant praise, elaborate office amenities—may have created something far more problematic: a workforce that conflates presence with performance and mistakes tenure for achievement.
“We created it,” admits Shaleen Manik, CHRO, Transsion India. “In our attempts to boost morale and retain talent, we began over-rewarding even the basics.”
This is not a story of lazy employees or entitled millennials. It is the tale of well-intentioned leaders whose cultural overcorrections have quietly eroded the link between effort and reward, creating what might be called the entitlement trap.
“We created it. In our attempts to boost morale and retain talent, we began over-rewarding even the basics.”Shaleen Manik, CHRO, Transsion India
The roots of this crisis stretch back to the pandemic’s aftermath. As companies scrambled to retain talent during the Great Resignation, standards for praise and promotion were systematically lowered. Average performers received standing ovations; underperformers escaped candid feedback in the name of psychological safety. This ‘vanilla feedback’—so vague and gentle that it offered no genuine guidance—left employees with a dangerously distorted view of their own capabilities.
“Even low performers feel they’re doing fine because nobody tells them otherwise,” observes Manik. The result is entitlement masquerading as confidence, with mediocrity mistaken for success.
Younger employees, particularly Generation Z, have internalised these signals most acutely. They view recognition as a baseline expectation rather than an earned reward. Promotions become time-based entitlements rather than merit-driven advancements. Social media amplifies this mindset: viral posts about startup perks—free lunches, four-day weeks, wellness retreats—create envy-fuelled benchmarks that spread faster than corporate cultures can contain them.
“The biggest entitlement we’ve seen is around work-from-home.”
Chandrasekhar Mukherjee, a senior HR leader
Chandrasekhar Mukherjee, a senior HR leader, identifies remote work as a particular catalyst for entitlement. “The biggest entitlement we’ve seen is around work-from-home,” he explains. Whilst productivity metrics may look healthy on paper, something more fundamental has been lost: visibility and mentorship opportunities that come from physical presence.
What began as flexible hours—arriving an hour early or late—has morphed into employees coming and going at vastly different times. The overlap necessary for genuine collaboration shrinks daily. “When someone is in the office, you can spot and groom that talent. That visibility is lost now,” Mukherjee notes.
To lure workers back, companies have doubled down on elaborate inducements: gourmet meals, entertainment Fridays, wellness days, even gifts for simply showing up. “This creates dangerous precedents,” warns Mukherjee. “When people come in just for food and spend the day chatting, you’ve not just lost productivity at home—you’ve also failed to gain it at work.”
The viral nature of workplace perks on LinkedIn and Instagram has created a particularly toxic feedback loop. Employees broadcast everything from mental health days to rapid promotions, fostering a culture of comparison and expectation. “People come in asking for promotions simply because they’ve been in a role for 18 months,” says Manik. “They believe time served equals progress earned, not realising that readiness and impact are what matter.”
HR departments, under pressure to retain talent amid hiring freezes, often capitulate to these demands. “We sometimes offer the same increment percentage to all, regardless of performance,” confesses Manik. “It’s equality without equity.”
The consequences extend far beyond individual careers. Innovation stagnates when average becomes acceptable. Team dynamics fracture when high performers feel unrewarded. Decision-making suffers when promotions become participation trophies rather than earned advancement. In talent-scarce environments, even mediocre employees become indispensable, creating a retention-at-all-costs mentality that further entrenches the problem.
Yet the solution is not a return to rigid corporate hierarchies of the past. Instead, it requires what Mukherjee calls “pairing kindness with clarity and accountability.”
The path forward begins with linking every benefit to contribution. “Free meals? Sure—but let them be part of your overall compensation structure, not a dangling carrot,” argues Manik. Promotions must return to being merit-based, tied to readiness and business need rather than tenure. Feedback systems need complete overhaul—more frequent, more honest, more constructive.
“Tell people where they went wrong. Sugarcoating doesn’t help anyone grow,” Manik insists.
Mukherjee advocates for structured flexibility rather than chaos. “Flexibility is good, but too much creates disorder. We need clarity, not rigidity.” He urges HR leaders to resist short-term fixes for long-term cultural problems. “It may be tempting to throw perks at attrition, but in doing so, we sacrifice accountability.”
The goal is not to strip workplaces of humanity but to restore the understanding that recognition must be earned, not expected. That rewards should follow results, not requests. That belonging doesn’t require blanket equality but fair treatment rooted in contribution.
The most successful organisations of the future will master a delicate balance: “We will care, but we will also challenge. We will support, but we won’t rescue. We will reward generously, but justifiably,” says Mukherjee
This represents neither a retreat to corporate authoritarianism nor an abandonment of employee wellbeing. Rather, it offers a path toward resilient workplaces where empathy and excellence can coexist—where caring doesn’t mean coddling, and where the next generation learns that the greatest reward is not a free lunch, but the satisfaction of work well done.