You have a long waiting period in store if you’re trying to leave your TCS job. India’s largest employer in the IT services industry has announced that it is extending its notice period to 3 months starting March this year. The current notice period at the company is one month.
“The company has reviewed the Notice Period policy and based on employee feedback and prevailing practices decided to revert to the earlier notice period of 90 days served with effect from March 1, 2016. This will be applicable to India-based employees,” Ajoyendra Mukherjee, executive vice president and global head – HR at the company, said in a post on the company’s internal site. TCS’s attrition rate had risen to 15.9% this year, significantly higher than the 12-13% rate it had been operating at two years ago.
The entire Indian IT industry is currently grappling with high attrition. With IT professionals shopping around for jobs, and many taking the plunge to startup, traditional IT shops are finding it hard to retain employees.
TCS’s strategy to retain employees is finding few takers online though. “Great move. You can also consider chaining the employees to their desks.” said Reddit user Natukodi sardonically. “90 day notice periods are f****** ridiculous. Notice period should be either 15 days or maximum of a month. I am not going to recruit someone who will join beyond more than 30-40 days from now. It would be stupid – what after 3 months, he tells me has interviewed at 20 other places after he accepted my offer and is not joining. Hiring has become even more difficult in the last few years because of these ridiculous notice periods.”, said another poster.
Being unable to get new jobs is a real problem for people working in companies with long notice periods. There are several Quora threads dedicated to the subject, and most people admit there’s no easy fix around the situation.
TCS employs over 300,000 people in India, and this is going to make it harder for a large section of India’s IT workforce to find new jobs.