Tata Consultancy Services kicked off the earnings season for the Indian IT sector on Friday, October 8, and saw attrition inch upto 11.2% in Q2 of FY22. This comes amid the war on talent in the Indian IT sector, and Chief HR Officer Milind Lakkad said while the attrition levels are “concerning”, he expects this level to continue for the next two to three quarters.
According to Lakkad, the company onboarded 43,000 fresh graduates in the first half of FY22, crossing the target it announced in July. At the time, the company said it planned to hire over 40,000 people from campuses, the same number that it had hired in FY2021. The company is also looking to add 35,000 people more in the second half of the financial year. This would lead to the company hiring a record 78,000 fresh graduates by the end of the financial year if the target is met.
He added that the company is in a high demand environment, and that most hiring is happening to satisfy that. “We may have to increase the volume or velocity of our hiring a bit more than what we usually do because of increased attrition,” he said.
In terms of headcount, the company said it had a net headcount addition of 19,690, and a total workforce of 5.28 lakh as of September 30, oh which women make up 36.2% of the total workforce. The company saw a total headcount addition of roughly 75,000 on a year-on-year basis, CEO Rajesh Gopinathan said.
“Investing ahead of time in building our own pipeline of talent has helped us overcome supply-side challenges, and meet the execution timelines of our customers’ growth and transformation programs. By focusing on organic talent development and by linking learning with careers, we have kept employee satisfaction levels high,” he said.
In terms of bringing people back to offices, Lakkad said that 70% of TCS employees were fully vaccinated, and 95% of them had received at least one dose, and so they hoped to have employees back in office by the end of this year.
COO NG Subramanian said that protocols that need to be exercised to bring employees back have been put in place.
“We look forward to welcoming our employees back with a desired level of flexibility that is required in our operations and for their own personal reasons. The way we are looking at it is that senior levels and people who are fully vaccinated (including families) are welcome to come to our offices. Our management team and client executives, delivery executives — satisfying safety criteria henceforth we are encouraging them to come to the office and they have been attending office to a great extent over the last few weeks,” he said.
He added that the hybrid model (partly from office and partly from office) is the future of work but said he encouraged employees to come and visit office and work out of office in a systematic manner.
Currently, he said that 97-98% are working remotely, and are looking to bring 80-85% of employees back to offices currently. “We hope to bring close to 80% of employees back to office, and slowly systematically come down to 70 and 60% adn give that flexibility that we need in our operations,” he said,
He added that working remotely is integral to the operating model and business continuity plans of TCS. “Given the other situations such as other pandemic waves, we believe employees would like to come back to office,” he said.