The New Workplace Battle: Why Personal Freedom Needs Formal Boundaries, Not Just Good Manners

A Bengaluru employee recently resigned over something that never used to make headlines: cigarette smoke at her workstation. Her resignation email went viral, but the story underneath it is not really about one smoker or one employee. It is about a gap that most Indian workplaces have never closed, the space between personal habit and collective comfort, and the fact that almost no company has a formal, enforceable policy to govern it.

As offices become more diverse and hybrid work becomes permanent rather than temporary, this gap is only going to widen. Smoking near shared desks, strong perfume in closed cabins, speakerphone calls, food with strong odours at the workstation, and now background noise, pets and poor call etiquette on video meetings have all become workplace friction points. Yet most companies still treat them as personality clashes to be sorted out informally between colleagues, rather than as a governance issue that HR and compliance teams should own.

This is where I think Indian workplaces are repeating a mistake we have already corrected once before. Fifteen years ago, workplace harassment was also treated as an interpersonal matter, something to be handled quietly between individuals. The POSH Act changed that by giving companies a structured, documented, enforceable framework, a policy, a committee and a defined process. Everyday workplace friction over habits and hybrid etiquette needs the same shift, not because it is equivalent to harassment but because informal tolerance is not a policy, and silence is not a solution.

In my compliance training work across BFSI, pharma, hospitality and technology companies, I consistently see the same pattern. Companies that formalise their Code of Conduct to explicitly address shared space etiquette, smoking zones, fragrance sensitivity, noise levels and hybrid meeting discipline see far fewer of these issues escalate into resignations or informal complaints. Companies that leave it to individual judgement see recurring friction that eventually surfaces as an attrition problem, exactly like the case that made headlines this week.

Three things I would recommend to any HR or compliance leader reading this:

1. Extend your existing Code of Conduct to explicitly name shared space etiquette as a covered area, not a vague expectation of professionalism.
2. Create a low friction, non punitive channel for raising these concerns, most employees stay silent for years rather than confront a colleague directly, exactly as this resignation letter shows.
3. Include hybrid and virtual meeting etiquette in your regular compliance training cycle, not as a one time onboarding slide but as a refreshed module, the same way AML and DPDP training need periodic refreshers rather than a annual checkbox exercise.

Personal freedom and collective comfort do not have to be in conflict. What is missing in most Indian workplaces is not goodwill, it is structure. And structure is something compliance frameworks, not just office managers, are built to provide.

(The author Kruti Sharma is a POSH Trainer and Investigator, AML/CFT Compliance Trainer and DPDP Act Compliance Trainer, and has trained corporate teams across BFSI, pharma, hospitality and technology sectors. The facts and opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not reflect the views of ETV Bharat.)

Also read:

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2. Corporate Trend: Lunch Is Increasingly Becoming Part Of The Employee Experience
3. Deepfake Harassment Is Coming To The Workplace: What HR Leaders And Employees Need To Know Now
4. Career Cushioning Explained: Why Employees Are Preparing For The Next Job Before They Need One