TCS attrition continues to inch up; firm to hire 40,000 in Q1FY23

Attrition rate was 17.4% in Q4FY22; lower than peers, higher than firm's own rate a year ago

India's largest IT services provider Tata Consultancy services for the fiscal 2021-22 added over 100,000 employees from campus, but its attrition continued to inch up. For the Q4FY22 the company's attrition was at 17.4 per cent.

Though the 17.4 per cent could be less than peers, which will be soon announcing their numbers, it has zoomed up from a year before. For the Q4FY21 the company had reported attrition of 7.3 per cent. Even for the quarter gone by, Q3FY22, TCS attrition was 15.3 per cent.

Management said that though on the LTM basis the numbers are high, on an incremental basis the numbers are coming down. "The 17.4 per cent is because of the way LTM is calculated. I also believe that this will get worse before its starts to come down. We are already seeing on individual basis the attrition numbers are tapering down," said Rajesh Gopinathan, CEO & MD, TCS.

The company also said that going forward, its hiring momentum will be similar to the last fiscal, "And we will start with a campus hiring number of 40,000 for the Q1 of Fy23," said N Ganapathy Subramaniam, COO and executive director, TCS.

In terms of getting back employees back to office the management said that starting this month senior leaders will start to come in for three days per week.

When asked what happens to its 25/25 target, Gopinathan explained, "At present we are in the ration of 95/5 with 95 per cent employees still in WFH mode. Before we hit the 25/25 we need to get employees back to office. So we expect to be 80/20 ratio by June this year and then gradually move to the 25/25 model."