TCS to Allow 75% of its Employees to Work From Home by 2025

Indian IT services giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has indicated that nearly 75% of its employees will work from home over the next five years.

TCS would build its future infrastructure keeping in mind the goal of allowing more employees to work from home, stated the company’s CEO Rajesh Gopinath in an earnings call with analysts and investors.  

“It’s about time. Our current operating model is 20-years-old, and in some way, this crisis actually leapfrogs us into a new model,” he said.

The Mumbai-based firm’s Chief Operating Officer (COO), Ganapathy Subramaniam, has also talked similarly. In a call with analysts, Subramaniam said he ‘does not believe’ that an IT services firm can remain productive only if all its employees work out their offices.

“We also believe that 25% of the project team may not be located in a single place,” he added.

While teleworking is not new to the Indian IT services industry, hardly a few employees worked from home until the COVID-19 pandemic placed much of the world on a lockdown.

For the past month, more than 80% of the country’s IT professionals are working from home using encrypting desktops and virtual private networks (VPN), which help protect customer data.

The flexible work arrangement has proved to be successful at least for now, with a few IT executives finding home-based workers more productive than those working out of office. Cognizant gave a 25% pay hike for its India-based staff in recognition of their work. The extra pay was processed with their April paycheck.