TCS Let Go Of 6,333 Employees In Q2, Attrition Rate Dips To 14.9%; Says GenAI-Ready Workforce Over 1 Lakh

A paradigm shift is seen in the largest IT services provider, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) who on Wednesday announced that its GenAI-Ready workforce is going strong with over 1 lakh consultants. Major tech giants across the globe are tapping to explore artificial intelligencies and have huge investments in recent times. But at the same time, TCS also let go of a total of 6,333 employees in the September 2023 quarter of FY24. Surprisingly, the TCS attrition rate has also dipped sharply to 14.9% in the quarter.

As per the financial results report, TCS' workforce stood at 608,985 as of September 2023, which is down by 6,333 employees from the headcount of 6,15,318 as of June 30, 2023. Also, the workforce is down by 7,186 employees from a headcount of 616,171 employees in the second quarter of FY23.

Currently, IT companies are struggling with tepid growth due to challenging macro conditions, which has weakened IT spending from clients. In Q1FY24 alone, six Indian tech firms such as TCS, Infosys, HCL Tech, LTIMindtree, L&T Technology Services and Wipro cumulatively registered a decline in workforce by 18,000 employees which is steepest in the past three years.

Coming to TCS Q2 attrition rate, the IT services' attrition was at 14.9% for the last twelve months, declining sharply from the rate of 17.8% in Q1FY24 and 21.5% in Q2FY24.

The employee base continues to be very diverse, with 35.8% women and 152 nationalities. Also, year-to-date, TCSers have clocked 26.4 million learning hours, and acquired 2.6 million competencies including 350,000 high-demand competences.

Milind Lakkad, Chief HR Officer, said: "Our strategy of proactively hiring bright freshers and investing in training them with the right skills is paying off. With that talent coming on stream and with reduced attrition, we were able to recalibrate our gross additions, keeping it below the departures during the quarter, driving up productivity and enhancing project outcomes."

While the workforce continues to be squeezed in the tech firms, TCS also claimed that they now have a 100,000-strong pool of Gen-AI Ready consultants and prompt engineers.

N Ganapathy Subramaniam, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director said, "We continue to make investments in our people and new technologies. We now have a 100,000-strong pool of Gen-AI Ready consultants and prompt engineers who are engaged in hundreds of Gen-AI projects for our clients across segments."

Also, K Krithivasan, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of TCS emphasized over their continued appetite for experimentation with Gen AI and other new technologies, which he believes gives them the confidence in longer-term growth prospects.

In the September quarter of FY24, TCS posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 11,342 crore, which is attributable to the shareholders of the company, registering single-digit growths of 2.4% QoQ and 8.7% YoY. Further, in the quarter, consolidated revenue from operations stood at Rs 59,692 crore, rising by a fractional 0.5% QoQ and 7.9% YoY.