In a note to shareholders in the annual report, Milind Lakkad, HR head of TCS said that historically women’s attrition at TCS has been similar or lower than men’s attrition; however, that has changed now.
“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,” said Lakkad.
While the company did not disclose the exact attrition numbers of women employees, he attributed the shift to change in domestic arrangements for women during the pandemic, calling the increased attrition “unusual”. The company ended the year with 20.1% overall attrition compared to 17.4% attrition in the year-ago. The company reported that 35.7% of its 614,795 employees are women, which is the same as last year.
He further added that this development was a setback to the company’s efforts toward increasing gender diversity. “The higher attrition among women in FY 2023 is a setback to our efforts to promote gender diversity but we are doubling down on it,” he said.
A look at the numbers shows that the share of women in the middle ranks has reduced compared to junior or senior roles. The share of mid-level female employees dropped from 31.1% in FY22 to 30.7% in FY23. Midlevel employees have between 10-20 years of experience.
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Lakkad said that the company has been focusing on leadership development programs like iExcel to increase the share of women in leadership. The company also has a program called Rebegin, to enable experienced women professionals who had taken a work sabbatical due to family commitments, to rejoin the workforce.
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