TCS CTO K Ananth Krishnan on the future of the workplace

The COVID-19-led disruption has transformed our homes into workplaces, which is being described as a silver lining for women in order to increase their participation in the workforce.However for the country’s largest IT service provider — Tata Consultancy Services — women already comprise 50 per cent of the entry-level recruits, K Ananth Krishnan, Chief Technology Officer, TCS said in a live Webchat with Kaveree Bamzai, Author and Senior journalist and S Vaidhyasubramaniam, vice-chancellor, SASTRA Deemed University as part of TNIE’s Express Expressions, a series of live web casts with people who matter. The TCS CTO said that over the past 5-7 years women have constituted 50 per cent of the total number of entry-level recruits and one-third of the company’s overall workforce. On the productivity front, Krishnan said that it will be too early to predict whether the Work from home model has achieved the desired targets. “We can come clear on the productivity part in next three months,” he added.Mumbai-headquartered TCS has, infact, pioneered the remote work model by announcing its 25-25 plan, which aims at having only 25 per cent of its workforce in offices by 2025. Explaining the same, Krishnan said that the assessment has been made based on the current work strategy and going forward, the company’s 25 per cent of the employees may need to be in office by 2025 to achieve 100 per cent productivity.He added that the company’s Annual General meeting with shareholders as well as quarterly earnings meetings were held virtually recently. “Abput 97 per cent of the TCS global workforce is still working from home. In India, 99 per cent of our employees are working remotely. We can gradually build this upto 5-10% depending on the employee comfort, local regulations, given we are able to run our businesses,” Krishnan said. Currently, TCS has a 4.5 lakh strong workforce. On being asked whether the onboarding of new employees has posed a challenge in a remote work culture environment, the TCS CTO said that the company has already onboarded many management graduates and will be recruiting new hires from IIT’s for TCS research. “Entire recruitment is happening while sitting at homes. We have identified challenges, which will scale in next few months when more people are brought on board.” he added. Krishnan believes that remote working was a possibility in the tech sector even before Covid-19.