Back to office takes toll on women@ TCS

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) said more women employees have left India’s top software services company than men in the fiscal year ended 31 March 2023 as its return-to-office policy has led to a “reset of domestic arrangements”.

- Devina Sengupta

Chief human resources officer Milind Lakkad, however, insisted that employees will need to work from office following the abatement of the covid-19 pandemic to understand the company’s culture and for better collaboration among workers. He noted that for FY23, attrition among women has been higher than male colleagues and called it “unusual”.

“There might be other reasons, but intuitively, I would think working from home during the pandemic reset the domestic arrangements for some women, keeping them from returning to office even after everything normalized,” Lakkad said in the company’s annual report. He pointed out that historically, the attrition rate for women at TCS has been similar to or lower than that of men. “The higher attrition among women in FY23 is a setback to our efforts to promote gender diversity but we are doubling down on it,” he said. At TCS, attrition rate for the trailing 12 months is 20.1%.