Business Standard

Cyrus attributes TCS's record attrition to industry growth

Shareholders want to know what plans does company have to address the issue

TCS MD and CEO N Chandrasekaran (left) and Tata Group Chairman Cyrus Mistry at the company’s annual general meeting in Mumbai on Tuesday

Abhineet Kumar Mumbai
Cyrus Mistry, chairman of Tata Group, faced some uncomfortable questions on his birthday on Tuesday. At the annual general meeting of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), while several shareholders wished him ‘Many happy returns of the day’, some also wanted to know how the attrition at India’s largest software exporter reached a record 14.9 per cent in the last financial year. It was a notable jump from 11.3 per cent in the previous year. The shareholders wanted to know what plans the company had to address the issue.

“The high attrition is largely due to rapid growth in the industry,” said Mistry, promising to do the needful to check the attrition level. TCS said it will hire 60,000 people this financial year and impart training to its existing one lakh employees in various digital technologies. The company also paid a one-time bonus of Rs 2,628 crore to employees marking 10th anniversary of its listing on India’s biggest stock exchange in 2004. The payment that was announced in April this year - one week’s salary for every year of service completed - was probably the biggest ever bonus payout by an Indian company to its employees.   
 

Mistry, however, denied this as an effort for employee retention. “This was purely to reward the loyal employees,” said Mistry. It now also aims to train 100,000 employees in digital technologies to seek faster growth in this emerging space. “We have built a number of digital platforms and will have 100,000 employees trained in digital technologies this year,” said N Chandrasekaran, CEO, TCS. The company has been running online training programmes for digital skills for a while.  Employees underwent 2.59 million days of online training in technologies and domains resulting in 72,000 new certification, 400,000 courses completed and 120,000 competencies acquired in the last financial year.

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First Published: Jun 30 2015 | 11:59 PM IST

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