HR News: 17th January, 2022

1. TCS now employs more than 2 lakh women in its wokforce.

Tata Consultancy Services has announced that it has achieved a big diversity goal in the third quarter of the financial year 2021, with the total participation of 2,00,000 women in its workforce.

The total employee count at TCS stood at 5,56,986 as on December 31, 2021. The Company added 28,238 employees in the past year. What is commendable is that the growth in the number of women holding positions at senior levels between 2016-21 was observed to 68 per cent!

The Company has reportedly filled almost one-third open positions internally, through upskilling or cross-skilling.

The attrition rate for the third quarter for TCS stood at 15.3 per cent, which the Indian multinational claims to be the lowest in the IT services industry.

In addition to the 43,000 freshers the Company hired in H1, it has further added 34,000 fresh graduates in Q3 in its workforce. This is the highest fresher hiring in the Company’s history.

According to Milind Lakkad, CHRO, TCS, the Company has always believed in giving preference to internal candidates for the best vacancies and offering them opportunities for global postings. The Company focusses on fast tracking its employees’ career paths through learning.

2.  Labour Minister interacts with HR heads in a rare event.

In a rare event, Union Minister of Labour and Employment Bhupinder Yadav, had an interaction with the HR heads of various sectors across manufacturing, staffing, automotive, hospitality and so on.

This interaction was facilitated by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII). To begin with, Sunil Barthwal, secretary, Ministry of Labour & Employment, initiated the dialogue inviting comments from all participants on various topics, such as improving service delivery in the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) and Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC), Work from Home, better utilisation of services of the National Career Service Portal and enhancing women’s participation in the labour force.

The HR heads appreciated the formulation of the four new labour codes and insisted on rolling them out as early as possible.

In the interaction, Yadav mentioned the formulation of committees to resolve the grievances of 6.5 crore EPFO members. He also talked about strengthening technological interventions, capacity building, effective monitoring of ongoing projects and enhancing coverage under social security.

Yadav also mentioned that for better governance and policy making, having better data points is also important. Therefore, Yadav announced that apart from the All India Quarter Employment Survey (AIQES), the Government will also launch an area-based area-frame establishment survey for establishments having 9 or less workers in formal and informal sectors.

The Union Minister also talked about the success of the e-Shram portal, which maps occupations in about 400 catagories of all unorganised workers. 

Yadav ended the interaction on a positive note saying such interactions with the HR heads and CEOs will be organised more frequently to ensure better worker conditions and to create employment in the country.

3.    Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp staff to submit proof of booster to return to office.

Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, has now mandated that all its employees produce proof of having got their booster shot before returning to office.

Earlier, the return-to-office was scheduled for end of January, 2022. However, with the surge in the Omicron variant recently, the Company has again pushed back return-to-office to end of March.

The tech company, which owns Facebook, Instgram and WhatsApp, realises that the booster shot offers effective protection to people, and is therefore, adding this to its vaccination requirement.

The Company will try to ensure that its workforce is offered options to choose from, in terms of where and how to work, given the uncertainty that has set in yet again due to the scare of the latest variant.