Tata Consultancy Services Lifts Curb On Lateral Hiring Amid Covid-19 Crisis

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the country’s biggest IT services company, has lifted the freeze on lateral hiring (employing experienced people from industry) it had imposed in the last quarter of 2019-20 financial year.

The Mumbai-headquartered company, however, said it would selectively hire experienced employees from outside.

“We are looking forward to the demand environment, and (have) decided to selectively open up on lateral hiring, apart from onboarding new associates into the ecosystem,” said Rajesh Gopinathan, chief executive officer and managing director, TCS.

“We had indicated in the last quarter that lateral would be frozen due to the (Covid-19) uncertainty but honour all outstanding offers issued,” he said at the post-earnings press meet on Thursday.

This comes at a time when the Tata Group company sees its headcount declining by 4,788 to 443,676 on a quarter-on-quarter basis. The attrition rate also dropped 100 basis points to 11.1 per cent during the quarter. The company, however, said the net hiring in the quarter dipped as it retained the internal talents to fill up positions that were vacated by employees who voluntarily left during the quarter.

“Through our operational excellence, we have not added people, and have filled up vacancies through internal talent management. Hence, the net result is a negative number,” said Milind Lakkad, global head (human resource), TCS.

TCS gave 40,000 campus offers last year, but the onboarding is expected to be deferred as colleges are yet to conduct the final semester exams amid the pandemic. TCS said it would honour all the offers.

HR experts, however, feel the muted hiring trend to continue among top IT firms but it might not be as bullish as last year.

“Top IT firms have large contracts that are getting renegotiated and some are temporarily frozen. The September and December quarters are when hiring picks up. But we expect a 5 per cent decline in total hiring in the third quarter compared to last year,” said Aditya Mishra, CEO, CIEL HR Services.

TCS’ management termed the US administration’s action of suspending H1B and work visas “unfortunate and unfair”.

“From a business perspective, it will have a short-term impact until the end of the fourth quarter. But considering our strong supply and delivery in the US ecosystem and location-independent work model, we will be able to manage the situation,” said Lakkad.