Posting a disappointing first quarter dip in profits, TCS seems to have found one of the reasons- Employee Attrition. Being the largest IT company in India, it’s strong 324,935 workforce are slowly dropping out of the company. TCS reports that it’s present attrition rate stands at an eight quarter high, although IT sector is used to job-hopping scenarios.
TCS has been the biggest IT company in terms of revenue and workforce for many years in the past, but recent trend suggest otherwise in the future. With around 80% of it’s workforce being Gen Y, when work eats into the larger chunk of their life, they are slowly withdrawing from work and the attrition rate has rapidly increased to 15.9% ie to say in every 100 employees, 15 quit and with the portion of work left undone by the recent ex-employees, the existing employees are further burdened. Now that makes the remaining 85% of them to start thinking of quitting.
Reasoning with the current attrition rate this fiscal, Ajoy Mukherjee, Global HR head, TCS, said, “Mobility is important and time factor needs to be reviewed. Rotation (between) roles probably needs to happen a bit faster because this generation wants everything fast. Although nothing is defined, depending on the ability of roles, it needs to be faster than 1.5-2 years.”
Considering the situation, TCS thinks reducing time spent on each project must undergo huge reductions to continue to perform. Known that salary structures and employee perks cannot undergo major changes for companies like these, reducing time spent on each project is a viable measure.
Ajoy also went on to include, “Work has to be challenging and you have to keep them motivated. TCS allows rotation and faster ones are in the pipeline.” That being the crux of the matter, it’s most important to give it’s 80% Gen Y workforce strong reason to stay other than salary increments. The keywords we are looking at are Effective work done at faster pace in lesser time frame.
However, some analysts say that, “if they bring down minimum time spent on a project too much, it could upset clients, who typically prefer the people on their projects to stay for a while.” TCS is currently stuck between it’s clients and employees. Either one cuts its supply, the plug will wear out.
Ajoy noticing the trend in TCS’s branches in Latin America, says that eligible candidates are recruited for a certain project and some of these projects last for longer periods. But back in India, where the flow of engineers from engineering college never goes down, newly graduated engineer seek a long term appointment.
TCS had also announced that it will put 100,000 employees into training mode soon for them to perform better, will start off this second quarter with it’s measures to cut attrition and retain it’s employees for long.
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