Milind Lakkad, EVP and Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) at Tata Consultancy Services. File
| Photo Credit: PTI

Tata Consultancy Services, India’s largest IT services exporter, has reached pre-pandemic levels on the percentage of employees working from offices, a top official has said.

Admitting that it took longer than expected, the Tata Group company’s chief of human resources Milind Lakkad said the levels have been achieved after 18 months of “hard” efforts. “We actually have come to the point where we believe we are coming back to almost the same levels as we were pre-pandemic times,” Mr. Lakkad told PTI.

Stating that “it is kind of a business as usual” for the company employing over 6 lakh people, he said TCS will not track this metric as much in the next couple of quarters.

The number of employees working from offices for five days a week is higher than the 70% it had previously announced, he said, without giving a figure.

It can be noted that the pandemic-induced lockdowns resulted in the entire IT industry’s staff delivering work from their homes, but companies, who look at working from offices as more virtuous because of the team building, mentoring, culture deepening aspects, have struggled to get them back to workplaces.

TCS reported a marginal decline in the number of women employees at 35.5% as of June this year, but Mr. Lakkad said this is not an aspect of concern for the company and added that it has a slew of policies and measures in place before the pandemic itself wherein it has been flexible as an organisation to take care of employees’ needs.

On hiring, involuntary attrition

Mr. Lakkad declined to specifically answer if it will close the fiscal year 2024-25 by hiring 40,000 freshers. Likewise, when asked if it will close the fiscal on a positive number on the net hiring front ‘last year saw a decline in staffage amid business volatilities, he declined to give a specific answer.

To a question on whether the incidence of involuntary attrition has gone up as the company becomes more rigorous in assessing its employees, he said such an eventuality is not a core part of its HR strategy.

When a resource is hired, the company feels it is its responsibility to ensure that the talent is productive, he said, adding that it is only when there are skill mismatches over a period of time or productivity issues even after attempts are mounted to improve, that it resorts to involuntary attrition.

Meanwhile, amid a raging national controversy following the integrity of professional examinations, Mr. Lakkad said the focus on governance and ethics would have to continue, adding that technology can offer solutions to avoid instances of people gaming the system by helping in assessments and background verifications.

On SBI’s disclosure that 80% of its fresher hires are qualified engineers, Mr. Lakkad said the country was producing a huge number of engineers yearly and TCS does not see any concerns from a talent availability standpoint.

With the TCS management calling expanding on utilisation as a key metric to grow its profit margins, Mr. Lakkad said there still exists the headroom of a few percentage points to grow the number but made it clear that it will not “take it to the brim” and continue to have sufficient bench strength.