BENGALURU: The country’s largest IT services company Tata Consultancy Services has mandated many of its employees who are working on certain projects to work from the office for five days a week starting next month.
Earlier, the company had asked its workforce to attend office for three days a week. When asked about it, TCS said it would not be able to comment as it is in the silent period. The company will announce its second quarter of FY 24 results on October 11. The company has been stressing the work-from-office model, as in its FY23 annual report, the company said it was gradually bringing back people to offices during the year.
“Work from home is definitely more convenient for everybody, but there were drawbacks...Workplace essentials like collaboration, mentorship, and team building suffered a lot in these two years,” Milind Lakkad, chief human resources officer, said in the annual report. He also termed higher attrition among women as “unusual”.
“I would think WFH during the pandemic reset the domestic arrangements for some women, keeping them from returning to office even after everything normalised,” he said. Kamal Karanth, the co-founder of staffing firm Xpheno, said permanent hybrid or extended work from home on a large scale has an inherent inefficiency that will hit an organisation, irrespective of size and maturity.
“These are arrangements designed for exceptions and short-term flexibility. Return to the office is inevitable and non-negotiable for enterprises seeking higher efficiency and tighter organisation-building processes. Employees who have redrawn their lifestyle and personal ecosystem to a hybrid will find it dysfunctional to be back at the office,” he said.
However, back to office is the new norm and employees have to recalibrate themselves. With respect to TCS , it is an interesting and intriguing development in the backdrop of their 25 by 2025 model, he added.