Remote working to be rolled out as a long term strategy at TCS, post Covid-19 crisis

While the Covid-19 pandemic has driven the vast population of workers who power India’s information technology (IT) services industry to adapt to working remotely, at least one large player in the sector is now contemplating remote workers as a more permanent way of operating. Mumbai headquartered TCS, the country’s largest IT services exporter, is looking at a future scenario where up to 75% of its workforce would work from home at any given time. 

“I think it’s sufficient that they spend 25% of their time in our offices. We believe that this particular model and way of working will help achieve about 25% improvement in velocity throughput productivity -- when coupled with our overall machine first thinking,” TCS COO NG Subramaniam said at the company’s post-earnings conference. 

The remote working model, a Business Today report on Saturday citing Subramaniam said, was dubbed 25/25 and would enable 75% of the company’s workforce to operate from home by 2025. 

TCS employs a total of 4.48 lakh employees globally.

Last month, the country’s largest software services exporter had asked 85% of its employees in India to work from home amid the Covid-19 crisis. This month, the company enabled remote work for over 90% of its employees.

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TCS reported its earnings for the fourth quarter of financial year 2019-2020 last week. The company reported a 5.1% rise in revenues at Rs 39,946 crore during the fourth quarter ended March, compared with Rs 38,010 crore during the same period in the previous year. CEO Gopinathan said that the pandemic had marginal impact during the fourth quarter as the lockdown started in North America and Europe only during the last two weeks of March. 

At the time, the company also said it expected the demand situation to return to normal by the third quarter of the current financial year.