Tata Consultancy Services has finally reached pre-pandemic attendance levels according to Chief Human Resources Officer Milind Lakkad. Speaking with businessline after announcing results for Q1FY25, Lakkad noted that with 70 per cent of the workforce back in office full time, the IT services firm is satisfied with the current engagement levels of its workforce. 

The final push to get its workforce back to office included tying variable pay or bonuses to attendance. Lakkad deferred from disclosing the number of employees that took a pay cut in order to work from home.

“It is something internal, we would not want to disclose that. We have had to implement this as a temporary measure. Whatever money was taken out for an employee not fulfilling the attendance requirements was given back to the employees coming every day to work. We as an organisation have not pocketed this money,” Lakkad explained. 

Lakkad further added that since the occupancy levels at TCS offices have returned back to pre-pandemic numbers, they will stop disclosing occupancy levels on a quarterly basis. “We have come to a point where we will actually stop giving numbers. We will continue to monitor the situation very closely but any incremental numbers will not be material enough to report,” he said. 

TCS also saw net positive addition for the first time in four quarters in Q1FY25, adding more than 5000 associates. Lakkad however deferred on commenting whether this trend will persist for the subsequent quarters.

He said, “We should look at hiring as a longer term phenomena and not quarterly. We hired a lot of people in the previous years for projects that took place in the last six quarters. It means we have to plan things ahead for the next year and that leads to the numbers.”

Lakkad added that TCS is aiming to hire 40,000 associates in FY25. While the firm is in the process of interviewing candidates selected through its National Qualifier Test and online test to recruit engineers, “campus hiring will continue to be a cornerstone in TCS’ hiring strategy,” Lakkad maintained. 

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