Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is not considering layoffs as it believes in nurturing talent for longer careers once it hires an employee, a top official said.
The country’s largest exporter of information technology services is also looking for entry-level workers who have lost their jobs, PTI news agency quoted its chief human resources officer Milind Lakkad as saying.
The comments come amid IT companies, including global tech giants, who are laying off people for a variety of reasons.
“We don’t do that (layoffs), we believe in nurturing talent in the company… (there will be) no layoffs,” Lakkad said.
He said many companies have been forced to take such a step because they hired more than they wanted, while the “cautious” TCS believes that once a staff member joins the company, it is the company’s responsibility to make them productive and derive value.
In cases where it finds a gap between the skills required and what an employee possesses, it focuses on training the employee by giving her more time, Lakkad added.
He said the company, which employs more than 6 lakh people, will announce hikes that will be similar to previous years.
With a slew of startups laying off people, especially in sectors like education technology, Lakkad said TCS will look for such affected workers.
In particular, it is looking for talent in user experience design, artificial intelligence, many aspects of the cloud and having product experience, Lakkad said.
When asked if TCS will review its stock option plans given that startups attract a lot of talent based on such offerings, Lakkad said it continues to evaluate this aspect as it believes that both loyalty and performance play an important role.
When asked if the decline of more than 2,000 staff in total employees in the December quarter was a one-off, Lakkad declined to specify whether the March quarter will see an addition or continue a decline.
He explained that in the past year it has hired more than 2 lakh people, including 1.19 lakh interns, who are still embarking on billable projects and that the slowdown in new hires has led to a decline.
In the coming quarters, the company does not see “significant additions” from a net-workers standpoint, Lakkad said, noting that it is now leveraging its past investments.
This will lead to an increase in overall utilization before it begins to decline as the more than 40,000 interns it expects to take on in FY24 begin to roll in, Lakkad said.
The company is also open to hiring people from the Indian diaspora in the US who have lost their jobs in the engineering majors and may be on the verge of being forced to return home under their visa conditions, Lakkad said.
Currently, 70 percent of US workers are Americans, Lakkad said, adding that it would like to reduce this number to 50 percent as it also aims to provide global opportunities to its workforce in India.
Currently, nearly 40 percent of staff work from offices three times a week and 60 percent come twice a week, Lakkad said.
“I expect this number (of those who work from offices) to increase. it will rise significantly in the second quarter of FY24, we will decide how to proceed,” he added.
Tech companies around the world have resorted to layoffs in recent months. The layoffs range from letting thousands of employees go to eliminating entire teams. According to the latest data from layoffs.fyi, about 332 technology companies have laid off 1,00,746 employees so far in 2023.
(with PTI inputs)
Read all the latest business news here
