500 TCS employees quit after performance appraisal

500 TCS employees quit after performance appraisal

Coinciding with cost-cutting drive in Indian IT space amid fears of recession in the US, the country's largest software exporter TCS on Tuesday said about 500 members of its staff have "voluntarily resigned" after an annual performance check.

"Employees with experience of two years and above across the company who were unable to meet the performance requirements of our company are asked to look for other jobs commensurate with their abilities," TCS spokesperson Pradipta Bagchi told PTI.

However, he asserted that no employee has been sacked or fired. As a policy the only time when TCS dismisses people is for disciplinary reasons, he added.

"This is not an exceptional thing, it happens every year and its part of our annual performance exercise. In TCS, everyone has to go through an appraisal cycle where they are rated between 1-5 depending on their performance. If in one appraisal cycle anyone is rated below 2, we put them on PIP (performance improvement plan).

"Under this they are given extra training. Even after this if their rating is below 2, then they are asked to look for other jobs," Bagchi said.

Even last year, nearly 500 employees had to leave the company on performance ground.

TCS has added 7,522 employees in the third quarter ended December 31, taking the number of its employees to 1,08,229.

The move comes close on the heels of global IT major IBM reportedly showing the door to a large number of its entry-level trainee programmers across major offices in the country on the grounds of performance.