Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has hired 43,000 fresh engineering graduates and has made them industry-ready by training them, essentially to mitigate the challenges posed by rising attrition levels. 

“By focusing on organic talent development and by linking learning with careers, we have kept employee satisfaction levels high. At the same time, we continue to scale up programs like Contextual Masters and Elevate to groom the G&T leaders for the workforce of tomorrow,” said TCS’s CHRO Milind Lakkad. 

TCS, however, has not been immune to what is now the growing concern across the $190 billion IT industry in India - voluntary employee exits. Yet the IT services provider is still planning to hire another 35,000 freshers over the course of the year as it looks to meet the growing demand for executing projects it is winning from global customers.

According to the company, the attrition level for Q2 (July-September) FY22 was reported at 11.9 percent, compared with 8.6 percent during the last quarter. With the bulk-hiring in FY22, TCS  aims to hire a total of 78,000 employees by the end of the financial year.

Milind Lakkad also described the attrition levels as concerning and it is likely to continue for the next two-three years. He said that the company has embarked on a robust talent acquisition model to keep the supply ready even as the lateral hiring costs have risen. Lakkad added that the freshers were hired over the last few quarters. In Q2 of FY22, the company added 19,690 employees.

The TCS leadership is tackling hiring issues and contemplating whether the talent acquisition in a strong demand environment will be a costly affair, especially with remunerations being offered by start-ups, and Global In-house Centres (GICs) being reasonably higher, leading to rise in attrition levels.