Sleepless nights for TCS

Mumbai: It started innocuously, on 11 December, at a Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) press conference in Bengaluru, an annual event to announce the number of new employees TCS would be hiring.

The moment Ajoy Mukherjee, executive vice-president and global head (human resources) at TCS, mentioned the words ‘restructuring’ and ‘layoffs’, the focus shifted. Mukherjee’s other statements, although reported, didn’t. Statements such as these: This is a year-long process. It happens every year. This is for senior and mid-level executives who the company believes are non-performers.

The next morning, in newspapers across the country, the restructuring at TCS was the big news. While others reported the event and a bit more about things slowing down in the information technology (IT) industry, Business Standard took it one level further. Attributing the information to company sources, it said, “These are employees with around 20 years of experience and some 25,000 employees could fall in this category. They would be reviewed during the process which will get over by February 2015, before the next appraisal cycle starts from March.”

This was the first time the number 25,000 was mentioned in relation to TCS layoffs. And it stayed there.

Inside TCS, the folks didn’t bother to clarify matters, hoping that the story would die a natural death, when the media moved on to the next big story. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

TATA Consultancy Services ( TCS )