TCS says it is out of “vicious cycle” of hiring and counter hiring

Tata Consultancy Services said it has escaped the “vicious” hiring frenzy by recruiting 150,000 plus campus graduates in the last two fiscals. The largest IT firm in India said it has rolled out a hike of 5-8% for its workforce needs to upskill on the back of AI-led transitions.

“The supply side challenges of the last two years peaked in the first half of FY 2023, with employee churn reaching unprecedented levels. We broke out of the vicious cycle of hiring and counter-hiring within the industry by investing in onboarding an unprecedented number of fresh engineers – over 110,000 in FY 2022 and over 44,000 in FY 2023 – and training them on the technologies most in demand,” said CEO and MD Rajesh Gopinathan for FY22-23 in TCS’ annual report for last fiscal.

K Krithivasan has taken over the MD and CEO role from Gopinathan.

The company said that an average annual increase was in the range of 5-8% in India. But if one accounts for promotions and compensation revisions, the total increase is in the range of 6-9%.

“In FY 2023, we focused on utilizing the spare capacity built up in the prior year, and recalibrated our hiring especially as attrition started falling in the second half of the year,” Gopinathan said in the report.

TCS clocked attrition in IT services for the year was 20.1%. Net addition in FY 2023 was 22,600, and the closing headcount was 614,795.

Chairman N Chandrasekaran pointed out that companies need to upskill and remain relevant against transitions led by AI.

“The energy, supply chain and AI transitions are going to require companies to reskill/upskill existing talent base, hire and integrate new talent and invest in research,” said the chairman in the report.

Chandrasekaran noted that companies can tap into talent globally.

“Harnessing this talent will need an approach that leverages technologies like AI and cloud to enable effective employee engagement and collaboration,” he added.