TCS to end work-from-home culture; 25,000 Pandemic Hires Quit Before Getting ID Cards

Major IT Company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is in the process of ending the work-from-home (WFH) culture for the first time since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. TCS is expected not to allow WFH after November onwards. Not just TCS, most tech companies are finally calling all of their employees back to the office after providing WFH facilities for the past few years.

Responding to the need for employees to return to the office, TCS COO N Ganapathy Subramaniam said, “We hired around 100,000 people last year. About 25,000 of them joined TCS remotely without even taking ID cards or seeing a TCS office and have also chosen to leave this year for another job when I look at that I feel sad I’m sure if they had been in a face-to-face interaction they would have valued TCS much more than working remotely because in their minds they are seeing someone on the screen”.

Subramaniam spoke at Business Today’s India@100 summit in a session moderated by his editor Sourav Majumdar.

However, praising the effort of the employees during the WFH, the TCS COO said, “There were times when 99 to 100 percent of the employees were working remotely. I met someone in the airport lounge around 6 to 7 months and the person asked me how do you make a $1 billion profit this quarter with no one coming to work, you feel very positive and you have to give it to them (employees).

Currently, about 20 to 25 percent of the company’s total workforce has returned to the job.

Commenting on new trends in the tech space, he said: “Everything we do, it’s going to have to be reinvented all the time, what we do all the time. When I look at what’s going on around me, there are three or four things.”

These are advanced connectivity, security, privacy, and pervasive artificial intelligence, Subramaniam stressed.

Meanwhile, the IT company has confirmed that it will pay 100 percent variable salary to more than 6 lakh employees.