MUMBAI:India’s largest IT firm Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) faced questions related to the rise in harassment cases and the difference in median salaries of men and women empl-oyees. Chairman of Tata Sons, Natarajan Chandrasekaran concurred that while TCS, with more than 600,000 employees, has zero tolerance towards harassment, the uptick in cases could be due to more employees expressing themselves.
He also denied any conscious disparity in salaries based on gender.
“…we are operating in such a global environment. We are also operating with…six lakh-plus professionals and the company constantly is enforcing and encouraging a culture of openness. We always want people to express themselves and, in the process, if there is harassment, people should raise and when they raise, the number is likely to go up,” he said in an annual general meeting on Friday.
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He was responding to a shareholder’s question on the rise in POSH cases.
The total number of complaints reported under Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibit-ion and Redressal) Act, 2013 (POSH) in FY2023-24 were 110 vs 49 in FY2022-23. However, according to TCS’ annual report, FY2023-24 figures include ones reported globally by employees and for FY2022-23, information is for TCS’ India operations, excluding non-wholly owned subsidiaries.
The chairman added that for a company as large as TCS “this number of cases is expected to happen…And the main thing is how do we continue to invest in education of people how do we deal with these cases with zero tolerance and how do we continue to reinforce both the culture, education and also the actions that we take how do we ensure that people are aware of that so that we create a culture of healthy working atmosphere.”
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The firm with 601,546 employees has employees from around 152 nationalities with women making up 35.6% of the employee base.
The shareholder asked if remote working could solve the problem. “In spite of all the trainings, etc. is it not possible…work from office is a contribution to that…Why TCS is hesitant on the remote working policy because the argument of culture and sense of belonging seems difficult to digest…,” the shareholder said.
Chandrasekaran seems reluctant to accept remote working as a way to reduce harassment
Chandrasekaran, also the chairman of TCS, seemed reluctant to accept remote working as a way to reduce harassment. “I don’t think that we can go to remote working to solve this problem…We are not trying to create jobs for people, we are trying to create careers for people. This company is about building an institution…In order to continue this being a very strong institution, we need to ensure that we invest in people at the same time people also build their careers with a company like us.”
TCS used office check-ins as one of the metrics to determine pay hikes. According to a Mint report dated 18 April, TCS employees who would dutifully report to offices received higher pay hikes than those who did not. TCS later communicated to employees that those employees with less than 60% attendance at office, or less than three out of five days at office, would not receive performance bonus.
The company’s median salary differentiation for its male and female employees also came under scrutiny. To a question on why the median salaries of male employees who are not on the Board or key managerial personnel was ₹14.8 lakh versus ₹10.4 lakh for women, the chairman denied any bias.