TCS sacked employees over non-performance

Mumbai: India's largest software services provider TCS on Thursday said only 1,000 jobs have been axed in the country due to non-performance, clarifying that this is a part of normal working and not due to any mass restructuring exercise as being speculated.

The Tata-group company said it carries out performance reviews every year, which result in this "involuntary attrition" and added that the overall number of 2,574 includes only 1,000 jobs locally.

"This whole exercise this time has created a lot of noise. That is something for us to think about. If we look at India, it is just a 1,000 people. I don't want to say that it is a restructuring, the business is in such a state that it is restructuring. We are in a normal process. This is a performance exercise. We do it every year, this year also we are doing. Some years we do it at a certain time, some others we do it at a different time. Involuntary attrition at TCS has been about 1 per cent every year in that range and this year, it is no different," TCS CEO N Chandrasekaran told reporters after announcing the company's results.

His global HR head Ajoy Mukherjee chipped in saying these involuntary attritions have been based on performance review which is equally important, and is part of every organization.

"But we will have to think why all this noise," Chandrasekaran said, and adding that there is no truth whatsoever in any rumour about layoffs or restructuring. The company is in a high growth mode and is hiring significantly, which is always done keeping clients, shareholders and employees in mind, he said.

Blaming the social media for the spread of high numbers being floating around, Chandrasekaran said, "It is something for us to think about as there is a learning for us. We have to understand how this social media works when somebody puts up a message, that's some action point we should take as we go forward."

When asked whether TCS would also follow rival Infosys, which had given 3,000 employees with the latest iPhone 6, global HR head Ajoy Mukherjee said TCS has a very strong reward system, some of it is based on quarterly variable, some yearly and it will stick to that.

Chandrasekaran chipped in saying "TCS will give 100 per cent variable pay" as far as this quarter is concerned. The attrition level rose to 13.4 per cent in the December quarter, but TCS said there was no excess link to attrition due to involuntary attrition.

He also said the company does not employ sub-contractors in the country to be laid off.

Stating that the company invests a lot in training its staff, Chandrasekaran, who joined TCS as a trainee, said, "I have built my career going through the same process as any other person would; I have been through the ranks. I can identify myself. We are very sensitive, we invest a lot in training and fundamentally, we look at things from an employee point of view."