Hr Practices In Tcs

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Vamsee Krishna Kamisetti (4640314)

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Introduction

The Tata Consultancy Services Ltd(TCS) is basically an information technology service, consultant and business oriented company. It is operated in North and South Americas, Middle East, Europe and Africa. Its headquarters is located in Mumbai, India. It possesses a significant position in the market across the globe providing competitive advantage to its competitors.

TCS have a standard set of practices for maintenance of its HR practices. It is closely linked with the business strategy by planning it according to the structure of the company through the support given by innovative HR practices. Throughout the European countries, it is considered as the best employer with the lowest attrition rate of 9.9%. The company is known for the overall development imparted to its employees which also offers multi-lingual training concepts.(tcs.com)

The seven HR practices explained by Pfeffer in application to The Tata Consultancy Services is described below in detail.

HR Practices in TCS

Employment/Job Security:

TCS is a good base to work at, specially for freshers because they find it easy to work as they are given good opportunities under comfortable and cosy environment. Working in TCS, it feels like working in a government organization. Employees get high job security and fear less for losing the job as this company has low rate of job removal even during recession. The company provides further opportunity to employees who perform low in order to improve by offering learning and enhancing programs.

Compared to other IT companies, TCS accounts for lowest employee turnover rate. This is because most of the employees stay employed with the company for a long period of time as they find their job not only comfortable but also secured. The environment is very friendly and the company has a plan to improve performance of employees who face problems regarding understanding of processes. TCS aims in both personality and career development which is very advantageous for the improvement of employees skills and knowledge. The HR practices followed by this company is determined in understanding people's ability for managing them right from sourcing to deployment which means in regards to scalability.

The employees working in this organization feel very secure because they are given long periods to work where they have fixed contracts and have flexibility to work in shifts. Ambitious employees are given chance to study overseas where they are provided with visas and long-term leaves. All employees sign a contract while starting to work with a company which will last for a period of two years and after that they are considered as permanent workers.

Recommendations:

It is recommended for the company to work on satisfaction of senior employees as it is seen that freshers are given vital importance in this industry while the seniors are given much attention. This is resulting in losing senior staff which is not good for the company's growth as the most experienced employees who work with enough knowledge and skills are moving out of the company. It is advised that the company should focus on attracting the experienced employees by introducing some policies related to their growth and satisfaction.

It is also observed that in case of new joiners, when there are lack of projects to be assigned to the employees, they keep them on bench for a long period which is a waste of time for the employees as their experience is not taken into account while on bench until and unless they are forwarded to work over project.

Selective Hiring:

Human resource plan is required by the firm which is prepared according to the firm's processes. Hiring of candidates is the most important task to be done in a procedural manner for selecting the best candidates among many applicants as Pfeffer described clearly that recruitment of right people is to be done firstly for obtaining profits. In today's management, this is known as identification of talent and acquisition. Companies have moved from traditional recruitment and practices of selection towards online practices like interviews over telephone. In face-to-face recruitment, the selection department conducts personal interviews where salary packages are discussed along with many other important things.

TCS recruitment process is based on hiring policy which includes the mix of fresh and experienced candidates.

Fresh Candidates - They are recruited and selected from academic institutions where TCS has links with these institutions which is considered as a critical relationship. Through communication with placement officers and fairs conducted, a large number of candidates get attracted to apply.

Experienced Candidates - They are recruited by unit heads through various consultancies and agencies sourcing candidates and through direct interviews. This recruitment is carried out based on the requirements needed for a company which is centrally coordinated to hire experienced professionals. (indoreservice.com)

Candidates are attracted to apply for positions through sources like advertisements through websites and job portals, placement fairs, agencies, TCS data bank that is done through combining the sourcing of resumes. Recruitment is also done locally from geographical areas that the company operates.

Background analysis is done to every applicant who is checked on following basis:

Academics - All candidates applying to TCS are required to submit copies of their academics right from their schooling to graduation or higher along with mark sheets obtained in each level of their study. The official screening these applications would then decide on forwarding the applications to further processing evaluating the requirements of the position.

Former Employment - The experienced candidates are checked on the contact information of their previous employers and based on the certificates stating their experience and performance. They are also checked on submission of release letters and pay slips obtained from previous employers.

Medical Examination - Every employee is subjected to a set of fitness checks which are essential prior to the joining in the company. Check-ups like overseas services are also conducted to candidates required to travel overseas on business purposes. (asmedu.com)

Recommendations:

While recruiting candidates, it is recommended for the recruiting officers to test on their group skills because employees are required to work in groups sharing and gaining knowledge in and from the group. Therefore, group discussions must be included as one of the phase during recruitment process.

TCS should not select a large number of candidates because in the recent years many selected employees are on bench or either not given the joining date.

Self- Managed Teams or Team Working:

TCS assigns employees to work as a team or group in order to carry out processes in a particular project. Each such team is given information regarding the requirements needed to fulfil their work so that they can put efforts and use tools to manage their work in a sequential manner. Each team is set a team leader who takes care of the entire team and manages them to get the outcome. Some teams are interlinked with each other where the team leads of each team interacts with one another and shares information for helping each other. Finally all the team leads passes on their work to the project leader. This improves work continuity and flow is carried out efficiently throughout the work flow.

During the training period, the freshers are assigned into group of two members who work together and share information in order to accomplish work assigned to them. This environment is created because the employees should be pre-moulded to work and share in a group when they actually come to the work place.

There is diversity of work place with respect to culture, nationality, language is seen widely in TCS. It is regarded as a common place to work for all such diversities without any differences or attitudes. Cultural potpourri is promoted where people from different backgrounds, cultures and geographies meet together to work on common issue. TCS follows an open door policy where culture is open for everyone and anyone can involve working in a team to play an important role. Global family identity to support and encourage every employee and bring employees together like a family.

Recommendations:

IT is advisable to the company to be more strict in usage of language. People coming from different cultures tend to communicate using their own language which would be a barrier to others who do not understand those languages. People of same region tend to form their own groups and communicate with their regional language which would hurt feelings of other employees who do not understand. So, it must be made very clear that everyone speaks only in English within the company premises.

There is very less exposure of company's information to the team members which would lead in less trust and confidence towards the system as they are not aware of performance of others in their team and remain confused if all employees of same position are being paid the same.

High Pay Contingent on Company Performance:

Most of the companies do not focus much on acquiring resources but their main concern is to utilize these resources in a profitable manner by achieving this through employee's potential. Today, TCS is the best employer who has a structure for compensation having only 5% of its pay with respect to performance. TCS is a company that makes its employees work in a team to evaluate to decide on their pay as a team but not individually. This does a lot of benefit as it does not possesses any rivalry among the team members. Each such team is formed on the basis of trust, co-ordination, co-operation, dependence among employees, spirit in the team etc. These qualities cannot be maintained if an individual is greedy to discuss and share in a team. Rather he/she should be concerned for the ultimate success of the team. This is the main reason for TCS to follow such structures over compensation. So, the reason for the success of employees satisfaction lies for the high compensation structure. It follows the principle of good harnessing the potential of employees in the company.

In order to decide the best type of compensation to follow in an organization, there should be knowledge of job profile and it's area of application in business. As a manager is paid for his leadership qualities and competencies such as managing power and team building, a person working as a software developer should also be awarded for his/her work on the basis of hours of working and skills. So, every employee must be paid according to the performance, skills they possess on their respective work.

TCS uses the EVA model(Economic Value Added) to measure performance and bonus focussed on the goal to align people to the mission of the corporate creating a specific culture for empowering the force of work in order to build ownership.

Recommendations:

The EVA model practised by TCS suffered from criticism during the starting years of its implementation because it is mainly concentrated over return on investments that would result in the restricted growth of TCS. It is also noted that there is a decrease of 10% of salary for TCS employees in the year 2003. This reduction would result in employee dissatisfaction as they would take less pay home. It is advised that the company should change the model in a more effective way keeping employees in mind.

Extensive Training:

Training in TCS starts immediately on the first day of join in the organization which continues for a period of three months. Training is given throughout the entire period of work in the company, that is, from the training period till the end date of work in TCS. Training is also imparted to the employees whenever new techniques or platforms are introduced at any point of time while working in a project or at the start of the project.

Following are the different learning programs imparted to the employees throughout the training session and while working.(coolavenues.com)

Initial Learning Program(ILP) - This program is designed to provide a friendly environment by smoothening the shift from "campus to corporate". This allows the transition of engineers of graduate level to consultants of information technology with a world-wide mindset.

Continuous Learning Program(CLP) - This is designed for the growth of associates where learning and sharing is the main value. These programs come from needs of the project, strategical business, technology and direction of individual aspirations and access through domains, processes and soft skills.

Leadership Development Program(LDP) - This program aims in turning its employees into future leaders by carefully understanding their potential through branded programs.

Foreign Language Initiative(FLI) - This helps its employees to communicate properly with its clients where employees are encouraged to develop on foreign languages and also emphasises in improvement of English for effectiveness of communication while making business deals.

Workplace Learning - This encourages TCSers by providing all necessary initiatives required to learn while working. To promote this, TCS has an extensive library where E-learning courses and online books are available.(indoreservice.com)

Recommendations:

As Pfeffer emphasised that training should be given extensively for gaining overall profit of an organization, TCS should work more on training its employees prior working. The starters need more extensive training because some of the concepts required during project are completely new and the freshers do not have enough knowledge on those concepts to work on. Specially, people are being selected without software background which is difficult for them to survive as they are not aware of software tools and programming languages.

Reduction of Status Differentials:

TCS visions to equip all its employees with proper resources so that they all work as a family irrespective of position, salary, region, sex and status. Every individual is given an equal opportunity to develop themselves and share views and ideas. They are allowed to make innovative designs and work on research right from the first day of work. Everyone is supposed to follow a discipline throughout the work floor whether it be a starter or a manager. It is required for every employee to be formal and swipe a unique identity card everyday to indicate their presence.

All the employees are required to learn behavioural manners like dinning, greeting manners and can have the freedom of enquiry from their respective supervisors. The junior employees have a privilege to communicate directly with the mangers in case of any position discrimination practice shown by their seniors.

While working in a team TCS ensures that the team leader of every team should manage the team in such a way that there should not be persistence of attitudes between the team workers. Every team member is treated the same way and appreciated for outstanding performances. The team leader encourages and motivates team members to support among themselves so that they can achieve their target through co-operation.

Recommendations:

The main problem encountered in TCS is that on-site work opportunities are mainly given to employees belonging to a particular region ignoring the others who put equal efforts. This kind of regional liking and promotion should be demolished and such mangers who are responsible for such causes should be checked periodically and penalized.

The management is strict towards junior employees in terms of following dress code. Juniors are regularly checked if they are maintaining the prescribed dress code and if not they are penalised whereas the senior employees are not checked and they behave liberal even if they do not follow rules. This should be taken care of as measure of equality.

Sharing of Information:

This is promoted to motivate people for enhancing performance of the entire organization in some dimensions and know the use of interpreting information as explained by Pfeffer. TCS emphasises on working in a group instead of individually performing as this attempt would take a lot of time and the case would be worse in case of mistake either in a part of work or completely.

TCS supports a portal where people can communicate each other to share information. This is done through a chat application called "same time" where people across the company chat and share information with each other instantly. Information sharing could be done only through emails to communicate with each other which is TCS domain enabled. Moreover, access is limited only within ODC(Offshore Development Centre) where people work for the same project in distinctive teams. The associates are not given access to this outside the work floor.

There are some interactive applications available in a portal supported by TCS known as "Ultimatix". For instance, there is an application called "Justask" where TCScers can login using their identity can pose a question regarding any enquiry that they want to be answered. These questions can be answered by any TCS employee.

Recommendations:

Although there is a huge emphasis on sharing information by promoting portals, the employees should be even more told about the outcome and benefits of sharing and exchanging information. This can be done through conducting regular meeting and seminars on information sharing in order to create awareness among employees in regards to privacy and transparency issues. There should also be programs encouraging people to meet and know each other to create a friendly environment in order to trust each other and share and gain knowledge.

Conclusion

Considering TCS with respect to human resource management, the company is doing good in practicing Pfeffer's seven practices and the company is making huge efforts in delivering various methods and processes in increasing growth of the organization.

TCS is working great on providing satisfaction of job to its employees but it should be keen in understanding the fact that senior officers are not very happy for continuing to work. It should be taken care that only selective candidates capable of the position to be filled should be offered the job.TCS must make the rules strict for the use of language as regional language use is still being practiced. Pay must be higher to encourage employees to work without worries and training importance must be delivered effectively. Treatment of every TCSer should be the same and employees should be told the importance of information sharing.