WFH no longer an option for TCS employees
- Champa Ha
Employees of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest IT services firm, who are currently spending three days a week at the office, have reportedly been told to return to the office for five days a week.
“Some of the human resources (HR) heads of some business units have asked their business group heads to ask their team members to be in the office for five days a week. This is also being done as some clients have been asking for employees working on their contracts to be back in the office,” a senior executive said on condition of anonymity, reported Business Standard.
The senior executive added that currently, approximately 75% of TCS employees are in the office for at least two days a week, while 60-65% are doing so for at three days in a week.
Employees have been asked to return to the office three times a week since September 2022, based on rosters arranged by their manager or team leader after discussion with employees.
TCS management has been open about getting employees back to the office as part of nurturing the culture and essential for innovation, citing reasons such as a reduction in women employed in the office. “There might be other reasons, but intuitively, I would think working from home during the pandemic reset the domestic arrangements for some women, keeping them from returning to the office even after everything normalised,” said Milind Lakkad, HR Head at TCS, during the launch of the organisation’s FY23 Annual Report.
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TCS has also said that it hired a significant number of employees post-2020 and they need to understand the need for collaboration and team building. “Workplace essentials like collaboration, mentorship, and team building suffered a lot in these two years,” Lakkad said.
Nurturing organisational culture was also another factor considered, as new employees were unable to interact with senior colleagues and leaders, adversely impacting employee engagement and acculturation, he added.
