TCS ends pandemic practice, asks all employees to work from offices

Largest IT services company TCS on Wednesday announced that it has asked its 6.14 lakh-plus employees to work from offices, ending the practice of remote working that started due to the pandemic.

The company -- the first major IT services firms to announce such a move -- has asked its workforce to return to offices because of the need to deepen the value systems and a belief in productivity gains coming from co-working, TCS Chief Human Resources Officer Milind Lakkad told reporters.

"We strongly believe that they need to come to work so that the new workforce gets integrated with the larger workforce of TCS. And that is the only way they will learn and understand and internalise the TCS values and the TCS way. So yes, we are asking people to come all days in a week," Lakkad said.

He added that in the last three years, it has hired a large number of people and hence, it is essential to instil the same values in all employees.

When asked if the company has scrapped its '25 by 25' agenda, wherein it was aiming to reduce the number of people present in offices to 25 per cent by 2025, Lakkad said, "We can't say that".

However, the company's Chief Operating Officer N Ganapathy Subramaniam said one can deduce that the '25 by 25' agenda will be defocused now.

The COO added that the high level of hiring and also the attrition over the last three years makes it necessary for getting all staffers in offices, and added that 70 per cent of the employees have started to come to office.

Within 7-10 days after the lockdowns were announced after the outbreak of Covid-19, the company shifted to a work from home (WFH) model to ensure that client needs continue to be supported remotely.

With the waning of the pandemic, it started encouraging people to come back to offices, but there were reports of some IT sector employees being reluctant to do so given the comforts of working from home.

The company's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Samir Seksaria said it had never given up on the offices and campuses even during the pandemic, and added that the move to get people back to offices will not impact the profit margins substantially.

The company reported a decline in the overall staff to 6,08,985 from the over 6.15 lakh in the quarter-ago period, and 6.16 lakh in the year-ago period.

About the decline of over 6,000 employees in three months, Lakkad said fall in the net employee count is because of slower new hiring as compared to attrition. TCS has "recalibrated" its hiring strategies, he said.

According to Lakkad, the company is honouring all offers on freshers' intake, but admitted that business requirements may result in delays in joining dates.

Maintaining the fresher hire target of 40,000 for the current fiscal, Lakkad said it is already at campuses looking for the next set of recruits to join the company.

The company is witnessing a surge in its joining ratio with a larger number of freshers it has made an offer to joining the company, Lakkad said.

He also asked everybody not to equate overall headcount with business growth, underlining the oft-repeated point on non-linearity.