 "TCS' millennial management challenge")
India’s largest information technology (IT) services provider, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), will end this financial year with a staff count nearing 300,000. With a headcount of 290,713 at the end of the December quarter, it has one of the largest employee bases among private companies in India. It is well ahead of India’s largest state-run bank, State Bank of India, which had one of 222,106 at the end of the September 2013.
Globally, too, TCS has left behind much of the competition; for instance, Accenture has a global staff count of 281,000. It is still behind IBM, which has an employee base of 434,246.
IBM, though, also has a large hardware practice and the company does not break its headcount according to business segments.
However, for Ajoy Mukherjee, the executive vice-president and global head, human resources, at TCS, it is not the size of the employee base that is the prime concern. It is managing and meeting the aspirations of “Generation Y” (those born during the 1980s and early 1990s, also called millenials), who are 79 per cent of employees.
“When I joined the company in 1980, we were 450-500 people. With the size we have today, connecting with the aspiration of every employee is crucial,” he says. Some of it seems to be going well, as TCS has one of the lowest rates of staff attrition in the sector.
For the quarter ended December 31, this was 10.9 per cent; Infosys had 18.1 per cent.
Mukherjee said this will be important as in the next four to five years, the company will be ready to take on board far more of the the millennials. “We have taken several initiatives to connect with our employee base, such as creating a social media platform, holding town halls (meetings) so that they can connect with leaders, having group meetings as this will allow their seniors to understand the aspirations and have constant dialogue,” he added.
One change the company has seen as younger people walk in is the way they claim benefits. As part of the salary, TCS has something called a “bouquet of benefits”, where an employee can choose to claim or invest part of the allowances.
Earlier, the trend was that people would save money for the long term; now, more and more people want the maximum money in hand at the end of the month.
‘Knome’, the internal social network platform, has helped employees connect with each other. This is significant as several IT companies do not allow employees to access platforms such as Facebook or Twitter during work hours. This has been a crucial step for TCS.
In 2013, it did a survey on India’s younger generation, covering 17,500 high school students across 14 cities. The biggest finding was that this generation was a heavy user of smart devices and had a constant need to be online. This is impacting every aspect of their lives, such as how they communicate in their academic and social lives.
At TCS, Knome allows employees to connect by putting up issues for discussion, debate or by writing blogs. Set up around 18 months earlier, this is also a popular platform for the chiefs to connect. Since then, the chief executive, N Chandrasekaran, rather than sending emails to individual employees, has chosen to post his thoughts on this platform, ensuring it reaches out to the largest number.
There is also an effort to connect with the future employee. Through Campus Connect, students are made part of the TCS system even before they join; it also helps the company to spot talent much ahead of the placement season.
“We engage with them before they join us through their engineering lifecycle. They are part of our ecosystems through our portals, competitons, etc. They are already interacting with us much before they get selected by us. So, we have a pipeline of talent much before we recruit,” said Chandrasekaran in an earlier interview to Business Standard.
TCS is also the only one among the top four IT services company which has been a net hirer for this financial year.
In fact, it has raised its hiring target by another 5,000, taking the total addition to 55,000 for FY14.
“The addition reflects the company’s growth trajectory. Also, our utilisation has gone up to 84.3 per cent. Looking at the requirement we had in the pipeline, we had to add another 5,000,” said Mukherjee.
Around 43,000 of these are already in and another 6,000 are under training and will join in the fourth quarter in India. The rest will be lateral hires in this country and those taken abroad. ADAPTING TO CHANGING TIMES
Globally, too, TCS has left behind much of the competition; for instance, Accenture has a global staff count of 281,000. It is still behind IBM, which has an employee base of 434,246.
IBM, though, also has a large hardware practice and the company does not break its headcount according to business segments.
However, for Ajoy Mukherjee, the executive vice-president and global head, human resources, at TCS, it is not the size of the employee base that is the prime concern. It is managing and meeting the aspirations of “Generation Y” (those born during the 1980s and early 1990s, also called millenials), who are 79 per cent of employees.
“When I joined the company in 1980, we were 450-500 people. With the size we have today, connecting with the aspiration of every employee is crucial,” he says. Some of it seems to be going well, as TCS has one of the lowest rates of staff attrition in the sector.
For the quarter ended December 31, this was 10.9 per cent; Infosys had 18.1 per cent.
Mukherjee said this will be important as in the next four to five years, the company will be ready to take on board far more of the the millennials. “We have taken several initiatives to connect with our employee base, such as creating a social media platform, holding town halls (meetings) so that they can connect with leaders, having group meetings as this will allow their seniors to understand the aspirations and have constant dialogue,” he added.
One change the company has seen as younger people walk in is the way they claim benefits. As part of the salary, TCS has something called a “bouquet of benefits”, where an employee can choose to claim or invest part of the allowances.
Earlier, the trend was that people would save money for the long term; now, more and more people want the maximum money in hand at the end of the month.
‘Knome’, the internal social network platform, has helped employees connect with each other. This is significant as several IT companies do not allow employees to access platforms such as Facebook or Twitter during work hours. This has been a crucial step for TCS.
In 2013, it did a survey on India’s younger generation, covering 17,500 high school students across 14 cities. The biggest finding was that this generation was a heavy user of smart devices and had a constant need to be online. This is impacting every aspect of their lives, such as how they communicate in their academic and social lives.
At TCS, Knome allows employees to connect by putting up issues for discussion, debate or by writing blogs. Set up around 18 months earlier, this is also a popular platform for the chiefs to connect. Since then, the chief executive, N Chandrasekaran, rather than sending emails to individual employees, has chosen to post his thoughts on this platform, ensuring it reaches out to the largest number.
There is also an effort to connect with the future employee. Through Campus Connect, students are made part of the TCS system even before they join; it also helps the company to spot talent much ahead of the placement season.
“We engage with them before they join us through their engineering lifecycle. They are part of our ecosystems through our portals, competitons, etc. They are already interacting with us much before they get selected by us. So, we have a pipeline of talent much before we recruit,” said Chandrasekaran in an earlier interview to Business Standard.
TCS is also the only one among the top four IT services company which has been a net hirer for this financial year.
In fact, it has raised its hiring target by another 5,000, taking the total addition to 55,000 for FY14.
“The addition reflects the company’s growth trajectory. Also, our utilisation has gone up to 84.3 per cent. Looking at the requirement we had in the pipeline, we had to add another 5,000,” said Mukherjee.
Around 43,000 of these are already in and another 6,000 are under training and will join in the fourth quarter in India. The rest will be lateral hires in this country and those taken abroad. ADAPTING TO CHANGING TIMES
- TCS has one of the largest employee bases among private companies in India
- As part of the salary, TCS has something called ‘bouquet of benefits,’ where an employee can choose to claim or invest part of the allowances
- At TCS, Knome, an internal social network platform, allows employees to connect by putting up issues for discussion, debate or by writing blogs