New norms cap bench time at 35 days, tighten work-from-home rules, and emphasize upskilling raising concerns over employee stress and flexibility.
Bengaluru: June 17, 2025
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has instituted a new employee deployment policy with a minimum of 225 billable days in a year and a maximum of 35 bench days. The new policy, in place since June 12, 2023, enables TCS to maximize resource utilization, productivity, and cost-containment, across the organization.
Key Components of the Policy:
• Required Deployment Timeframe and Timeline: Employees are required to project allocations within a 35-day bench period, or face negative consequences to the individual’s, professional status of reduced promotion promise, compensation increase, and/or international deployment.
• Continuous Upskilling/Reskilling Obligation during Bench Time: During the bench time, unallocated employees are required to spend 4–6 hours each day on one or more learning platforms available to them (for example LinkedIn Learning) as well as preparing for any internal interviews.
• Company Office Attendance: The company has implemented a hard attendance policy requiring employees to attend the office. WFH approvals are permitted only for an emergency situation, to expedite new project development and deployment.
• Tighten Movement Against Unfair and Frequent Transfers: Employees who routinely change their short commitments (1 -2) business days, will be flagged and subject to HR, review and possible adverse action.
Strategic Objective:
The policy is carried out by TCS’s Resource Management Group (RMG) to make sure the request for talent deployment is aligned with what talent is available for multiple project demands. The strategy purpose is to minimize time hovering without purpose and to maximize higher billing across teams.
Industry Context and Employee Reactions:
TCS has yet to issue an official statement, however, sources within the organization have linked the decision to margin pressures, in combination with the slowdown in demand for IT services. Other industry peer companies like Infosys and Wipro have also taken similar steps, all hoping to improve utilization.
However, the policy has caused some disturbance among employees, expressing that they will feel more pressure to go to situations they might not feel they want, less options and flexibility of work, an organization that truly cares and could lead to burnout. The company is hoping to press employee ownership and accountability in their performance, however, with the confines of the prescriptive framework it could have adverse impacts on morale in a wider context.
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