Background

The technology service industry has transformed in recent years. Working from home has become the norm for many individuals. The productivity has remained unaffected. Organizations have come to terms with this new reality. Many Tier-2 cities have seen a rise in investments as firms start investing more in these cities closer to the native home of many professionals. This is because experts found attrition rate started increasing when associates were being gradually asked to come to office to resume working. Tata Consultancy Services is one of India’s largest software services organizations. TCS has also said that 20% of its over 6,00,000 employees are currently working out of their designated office locations. TCS is trying to return to a post-pandemic working normal.

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TCS Hybrid Work Model

Tata Consultancy Services is aiming for a hybrid work model by 2025. TCS CEO Rajesh Gopinathan mentioned TCS will continue trying to encourage employees to return to office. The expectation is to reach a level of pre-pandemic normalcy, or at least 80% of the normalcy when employees used to come to office for work. The 25/25 model is planned to be executed after that goal is reached. The TCS CEO also mentioned that the current priority is getting back to a normal working environment, and then implementing the permanent hybrid model. The 25/25 model of TCS states that by 2025 only 25% of the TCS employees will need to work out of TCS facilities at any point of time. The 25/25 model also states that TCS employees will not need to spend more than 25% of their time at work. For project teams, 25% of the employees can be co-located in any instance.

The process of returning to office is starting with the senior associates, around 50,000 of them. The senior associates will come to office initially 3 days a week. TCS has announced it plans to bring many of its employees back to office from November 2022. The coverage of associates will gradually increase as time goes back, and the environment tries to resume normalcy. A goal of 80% normalcy continues to be the target. The attrition rate of TCS has gone higher to 19.7% from the previous quarter’s attrition rate of 17.4%. It is clear that employees are hesitating to return to office and have discovered a new meaning of life. But still the attrition rate of TCS continues to be the lowest in the industry.

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TCS SEZ Rules provides flexibility

Rule 43 A for Work from Home introduced by the Commerce and Industry Ministry allows 50% of the employees of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) to work in hybrid mode. This rule has been introduced to add flexibility and attract top talents. Many organizations including Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys have their companies in SEZ. The rule indicates that IT employees who are working from home can keep working offsite. Entities operating in the SEZ like TCS can permit working from home, however the cutoff is at 50%. It has been mentioned that employees can continue working from home for 1 year, and SEZs will be required to maintain proper attendance records for regulatory purposes. This rule however does not cover cases where during the scenarios of a pandemic, 100% of the employees might have to continue working offsite for more than a year. However, it is good to see the laws being recognized in alignment with the reality faced by thousands of TCS professionals. TCS also mentioned there were no out-of-turn cancelations for any of its leases. If the lease came to an end or for an old infrastructure, a new facility was leased with state-of-the-art features and workspaces. TCS continues to be on track on its expansion plan for new IT parks having 5,000,000 square feet. TCS is also on track to lease an additional 1,000,000 square feet.

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TCS Occasional Operating Zones (OOZs)

Tata Consultancy Services is rolling out Occasional Operating Zones, or OOZ in short. Along with it, TCS will also roll out hot desks. The OOZ will allow employees to plug in their laptops in the TCS network in any office across the country. This will allow them access to the TCS intranet immediately. There are many actions that cannot be performed when associates are not directly connected to the TCS intranet unless the laptop is provided by TCS. But with such portability, the TCS network becomes more easily accessible. The priority for TCS now is to control attrition and at the same time get the work done by employees. The TCS OOZ will thus help enable reach out to the remote areas of native homes of the employees who are in cities like Goa, Guwahati, Nagpur, Ahmedabad, Baroda, Bhubaneshwar, Gandhinagar, Bhopal, Indore, Jamshedpur, Lucknow, Nashik, Patna and Varanasi. Nearly 60% of the employees in the IT sector have moved to their native homes which are in non-metro regions. Connectivity and outreach will thus help build a robust ecosystem of TCS for business continuity in the face of this unprecedented reality. Let’s learn how the transition is happening below.

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TCS Europe success with Marks & Spencer

Even though Europe is undergoing severe strain with the Russian aggression in the East, that did not stop the British retailer Marks & Spencer to make a multi-million dollar deal with Tata Consultancy Services. The deal is aimed at transforming the British retailer’s human resource operations. The revenue growth of TCS in the retail market of UK and Europe is expected to be more than the company’s overall revenue growth. Abhijit Niyogi is the head of TCS retail operation in Europe, who mentioned the demand for IT services remains pretty robust even though there is pressure of inflation, the looming threat of a war-driven recession, and a political upheaval in the United Kingdom. There is no slowdown anticipated over the next few quarters, he mentioned. We can define performance of TCS by the stability of the pipeline, and the demand for IT services. When we hear such messages, it means that demand is high. Here we get to know some more details on how Marks & Spencer was transformed by TCS.

How coming back to office will work

All organizations are gradually trying to bring back their employees to office. The trend can be seen across all industries, with various business models. Often employees are agreeing and coming back if the essential nature of their work truly requires them to be present in office. Otherwise, the results are mixed. Employees have been seen to understand the value of work and life. If they have been able to work more efficiently remotely, they have little reason to come back, or any justification that their employer might provide. Personally I believe that you need to find a balance between your priorities in life. An organization will of course want to have a physical presence of their employees at various degrees, but at the same time a certain level of flexibility is welcome. So occasionally coming to office for a few days every week and working the remaining working days from home seems like a good plan going forward. This way employees will not see a drastic change in their schedule that they have become accustomed to. Even new hires who have never been to the office complex will get time to slowly get onboard into the new environment.

Perks of working from home

Work-life balance is the highest rated perk of working from home according to associates surveyed. Many of them highlight they can do more work with the extra time they saved from their daily commute. Mental health also improves when employees get to stay with their family and loved ones in remote cities, which otherwise would not have been possible. The balance this provides to associates and often financial savings is appreciated in the industry overall. Most of the time it has been seen that there is no drop in the efficiency of the employees. People will miss the team activities and the learning by osmosis that happens when working in a close working environment. People will also miss the synergy that builds up with face to face communication instead of meeting everyone virtually. However, with camera friendly meeting applications like Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Zoom becoming more popular every day, it might only be a matter of time when workarounds of these challenges are identified. There are digital ways being identified to schedule different events that bring the team together. Corporations are gradually trying to bring the senior most executives back to office, who in turn are requesting some members of their team to come to office a few days a week. With time this approach might prove successful and efficient in bringing back the times that we all used to know. Working from home might not entirely go away with time, however will continue to exist in some form of our working culture that will prove to be acceptable to the masses.

Let’s take a look at the most recent TCS quarterly results performance. I use this to understand where the organization is headed and a general sense of understanding how the overall IT industry stands today. With the information from these quarterly performance announcements, we can also analyze the trend of hiring of employees, joining dates, salary hikes, project pipelines, new acquisitions, and global expansion strategies.