In its new strategy to control attrition rates in the company, India's largest IT firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which employs over 6 lakh people globally, is up-skilling its in-house talent. It is also evaluating the employees at a high bar amid its plan to double their salaries.
TCS finds this upskilling plan a better strategy than shelling out very high increments to new hires as the industry has started to come out of a covid pandemic-induced rally of high employee attrition and massive hikes of over 80-120%.
As per a Moneycontrol report, Milind Lakkad, Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO), TCS, said?¡°Those two years of instant gratification were definitely there. While we lost people because they were getting X percent more somewhere, we also hired people, not with that kind of increase but there was some increase definitely. We also ensured that internally people get the opportunity to upgrade their compensation through various initiatives, to reduce disparity internally.¡±
As the vicious cycle of attrition continues, TCS has sought this internal solution by enrolling more employees in its existing programmes across levels of experience to give them a chance to double their salaries ¡ª even if the bar of people managing to clear these high-level programmes in the first attempt is only around 10% a year.
TCS CHRO Lakkad reportedly said that the company has been considering raising fresher pay and ensuring 100% quarterly variable pay to its employees, especially the juniors.?In terms of annual increments, he said the company gave around 12-15%, 8%, 5%, and then 1.5% increments depending on their performances.
Also Read:?TCS?Tops Linkedin's 2023 List Of India's Best Companies To Work
TCS¡¯ main programme, Elevate, has over 400,000 registered employees with 0-12 years of experience. Employees in the first three years of experience category go through a prescribed programme from TCS to help them become full-stack professionals, also including soft skills training. Those who clear are able to cross the high bar assessment and double their salaries immediately.
At present, TCS provides two categories of fresher salaries ¡ª Rs 3.36 lakh per annum (LPA) in the Ninja pay category and Rs 7 LPA in the Digital category. In FY23, TCS added over 44,000 freshers.?
Lakkad expects employees with 4-12 years of experience to become specialists when their programme ends. They could specialise in technology, cybersecurity, IoT, analytics and artificial intelligence. Employees even get to pick the industry they want to focus on.?However, the catch here is, for this middle category the pay hike doesn¡¯t happen in a go. ¡°So basically they get a part of the kicker and will get the remaining kicker when they get deployed to that role,¡± he said.
Also Read:?The Untold Story Of?TCS' First CEO & Co-founder F. C. Kohli
According to CHRO Lakkad, despite the ongoing high churn, around 125,000 of its current workforce have been with the company for over 10 years. So employees in the 10-20 years plus experience bracket are sent to upskill themselves to become growth and transformational leaders in the company.
TCS invites international business schools to train this category through experiential learning. This is a critical category for TCS, given the existing connections these employees have built with key customers over the years. Lakkad said the company prefers training and deploying these employees in senior roles rather than hiring externally, as per the report.
¡°Over the years, while these employees have added a significant value to the company, some of them may have lost it on the market relevance skills, which are required today. So how do we basically ensure that they don't get left behind? They learn the latest technologies, whether it is cloud, AI, cybersecurity, etc and get deployed to different jobs,¡± he added.
In FY23, for this senior category, around 40,000 employees signed up, with 15% of them certified and deployed in new roles. Lakkad plans to deploy another pending 1,000 in the next 18 months.
Also Read:?At 2.10 lakh,?TCS?Becomes Top Women Employer In India
For more such interesting content and the latest financial news,?keep reading Worth.?Click here.