‘Business as usual’: TCS to stop tracking work from office numbers soon
The Hindu
TCS reaches pre-pandemic office levels, focusing on employee well-being and productivity with flexible policies and growth strategies.
Tata Consultancy Services, India’s largest IT services exporter, has reached pre-pandemic levels on the percentage of employees working from offices, a top official has said.
Admitting that it took longer than expected, the Tata Group company’s chief of human resources Milind Lakkad said the levels have been achieved after 18 months of “hard” efforts. “We actually have come to the point where we believe we are coming back to almost the same levels as we were pre-pandemic times,” Mr. Lakkad told PTI.
Stating that “it is kind of a business as usual” for the company employing over 6 lakh people, he said TCS will not track this metric as much in the next couple of quarters.
The number of employees working from offices for five days a week is higher than the 70% it had previously announced, he said, without giving a figure.
It can be noted that the pandemic-induced lockdowns resulted in the entire IT industry's staff delivering work from their homes, but companies, who look at working from offices as more virtuous because of the team building, mentoring, culture deepening aspects, have struggled to get them back to workplaces.
TCS reported a marginal decline in the number of women employees at 35.5% as of June this year, but Mr. Lakkad said this is not an aspect of concern for the company and added that it has a slew of policies and measures in place before the pandemic itself wherein it has been flexible as an organisation to take care of employees' needs.
Mr. Lakkad declined to specifically answer if it will close the fiscal year 2024-25 by hiring 40,000 freshers. Likewise, when asked if it will close the fiscal on a positive number on the net hiring front 'last year saw a decline in staffage amid business volatilities, he declined to give a specific answer.