TCS wants employees back to office to teach them what can’t be taught

• TCS said that 70% of its employees are coming back to the office, and its advantages are being realised.
• New workforce that’s been hired virtually during the pandemic needs to be integrated with old workforce, company adds.
• People feel that it’s better to be in office, says N Ganapathy Subramaniam, COO of TCS.
  

Within two years of coming up with a 25/25 plan to have only 25% of its workforce in the offices, tech major TCS seems to have taken a U-turn on the plan. On Wednesday, the company in its second quarter earnings address said that it’s important for people to come back to office, after having ‘brainstormed’ the idea extensively, internally.

“We hired a lot of people in the last three years and most of them were in the virtual and remote mode. A lot of the new workforce hasn’t come to office. We strongly believe that we need to integrate the old and the new employees. That’s the only way to learn and internalise the TCS way,” said Milind Lakkad, chief HR officer of TCS during the second quarter earnings press conference.

The company has started to ask people to come back to the office and it says that 70% of them have started to come back. It adds that advantages of the move are already visible. .

“People feel that it’s better to be in office,” said N Ganapathy Subramaniam, COO of TCS, adding that it’s helping them give ‘the full TCS feel’ of mentorship and more. He stressed that employees who come to the office can see how people interact with customers collectively.

“There are things that cannot be taught and observed and better done in a collective manner while co-existing in a workplace,” said Subramaniam. When specifically asked if they are de-focussing from the 25 by 25 plan, he said, “That’s a conjecture that can be made.”

Lakkad, however, insisted that nothing is written in stone, not yet. “We will assess working models and will see what is best for our employees and clients,” he said.

The company also said that it will pay 100% of the variable pay to 70% of its employees and the rest will be paid on business performance. The company reported a dip in its dollar revenues for the first time in four years in the second quarter.

Its attrition fell sharply to 14.9% from 17.8% seen in the last quarter. Its headcount also went down to 608,985 as of September end from 615,318 seen by end of June. “We have been hiring but we have not hired enough to cover for the attrition,” said Lakkad adding that they will also hire freshers and will honour all commitments even if there are delays.