India's largest IT services company has seen a steady rise in its BES rankings over the last three years from #10 to #2 and now #1. This is no mean achievement. For a company of the size of TCS-over 27,000 people at the end of last fiscal-improving the HR health becomes a complicated and onerous task. To be sure, it narrowly made it past Infosys, but it is the first time TCS tops both DQ Top 20 and Best Employer rankings-reason enough to celebrate.
Two key things happened at the company last year. One, in preparation for its IPO, it started sprucing up its internal processes-including those related to HR. As a result, training days got better and average salary hikes were far better than last year. Two, employee attitudes changed a bit in anticipation of the impending IPO and the employee stock options that would follow.
As a result, satisfaction on most parameters improved-the most dramatically on training and job content and growth opportunities. Satisfaction on training (Ranked 1) is a fallout of increased investments in training facilities the company made last fiscal. In a big change over last year, workgroup level processes seem to have been spruced up. Appraisal systems also significantly improved.
But despite all the effort that went into the HR processes last year, fewer of its own employees rated it as their dream company (40%-down from 52% the year before). Its dream company rankings across the industry also fell from #4 to #6 with fewer people across the industry voting for it (a mere 3.6%). This is an issue. If TCS is unable to capitalize on the branding that accompanies any IPO exercise, there could be problems ahead. More importantly, while satisfaction on salary has improved for the time being-a big thing considering the fact that TCS is not generally a great pay master-there is no guarantee that things will stay that way. Infosys has been down the same road before-of euphoria followed by dissatisfaction. There's probably a lesson to be learnt there.