TCS plans to double employees' salaries and reduce pay disparityStory in 5 points

By Divyanshi SharmaTata Consultancy Services (TCS) is taking steps to address pay disparities among its employees. TCS’ chief human resources officer Milind Lakkad revealed in an interview that the company is looking forward to providing a chance for their employees to upskill and double their salaries. While many tech companies are resorting to massive layoffs in a bid to survive, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) stands out by not only hiring freshers, but also addressing pay disparity, which is a common issue in the industry.

TCS CHRO on reducing pay disparityStory in 5 points

In an earlier interview with Moneycontrol, TCS’ CHRO Milind Lakkad opened up about the company’s plans to reduce the difference between the highest and lowest salaries in the next couple of years.

Here is the full story in five points

1. TCS employees over 6 lakh employees globally and wants to invest in its employees and give them a chance to grow in their careers instead of hiring freshers at massive hikes. The company offers certain in-house programmes that give employees a chance to upskill. Lakkad, in the interview, revealed that TCS is planning to enroll more employees, from different experience levels, in these programmes.

2. The upskilling programs offered by TCS give employees a chance to double their salaries when they clear the assessments. One such talent development program is Elevate. Around 400,000 employees have registered for the programme and their experience ranges from 0-12 years. The people who manage to clear the high bar assessment get their salaries doubled immediately. However, around 10 percent of people per year usually clear such high-bar assessments and get their salaries doubled.

3. Lakkad also said that the company is mulling over the idea of increasing pay of freshers and giving 100 percent quarterly variable pay to its employees, especially those at junior levels. “Having said that, do we need to do anything more (to reduce pay disparity)? All of these programmes we have is a better strategy than a blanket change of salaries at the bottom. Even having said that would we think about changing the salaries at the bottom? The answer is yes. But when will that happen is yet to be determined, there is something we are mulling on,” he told Moneycontrol.

4. The CHRO also disclosed that despite the company’s high churn rate, around 125,000 current employees have remained with the organization for over a decade. To ensure that this group of employees, with over 10-20 years of experience, remains up-to-date with the latest skills, TCS invites international business schools to provide experiential learning for growth and transformational leadership training. The company prefers to train and advance employees of these groups into senior roles instead of seeking external hires. Lakkad also stated that TCS is committed to ensuring that their senior employees learn and understand the latest technologies, such as cloud, AI, cybersecurity, and more, and are placed in different job roles that align with their updated skills.

5. A couple of days back, it was reported that for the financial year 2024, TCS rolled out as many as 44,000 job offers to freshers. Unlike other tech companies that are revoking offers of freshers or are delaying their onboarding in these times, TCS chose to honour all offers. Not only that, Lakkad also promised that the existing employees will be getting 100 percent of their variable along with the standard increment, that is 12-15 percent. as is standard. “We are honouring all job offers, and have added 22,600 employees on a net basis in FY 23. During the year, we onboarded over 44K freshers and our highest-ever number of experienced professionals,” Lakkad had said in a statement earlier this month.