TCS New Bench Policy will limit the annual bench period to 35 days:What TCS Grade Changes Mean to Employees

TCS New Bench Policy will limit the annual bench period to 35 days:What TCS Grade Changes Mean to Employees

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has come up with a new associate deployment policy under which bench time is limited to 35 business days

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has also implemented an improved associate deployment policy thus limited to bench 35 days in a year and employees must be deployed in at least 225 billed days every year. The new rule stipulates that, effective June 12, it seeks to improve the use of workforce and match individual effort with organisational objectives

Discussed by Chandrasekaran Ramkumar, the global head of the TCS Resource Management Group (RMG), the update states that extended unassigned stints may have adverse impact on compensation, career developments, overseas assignment, and even eligibility in the employment of the firm.

Other associates who are not assigned on current projects are supposed to approach RMG actively in search of alternatives. They should spend 4-6 hours daily during the bench period with the upskilling program like iEvolve, Fresco Play, VLS, and LinkedIn, go through mandatory training, and polish up by utilizing the Gen AI interview coaching bot that the company provides.

Physical office presence has become a communal requirement in order to deploy faster. Work-at-home or flexible works are not welcome in general to be done, but it must be exceptional case subject to RMG approval

The change affected Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), which, earlier in January, changed its work-from-office (WFO) policy to include harsher rules regarding the exception requests. As a company communication, referenced by The Times of India, reveals, the situation is now different with workers in India able to invoke personal emergencies to support up to six WFO exceptions every quarter. Unused exception days can however not be transferred to the next following quarter however

To handle similar logistic problems, such as space limitations, TCS has also enabled employees to request as many 30 exception days in a row (or as many as 90 days in total) at once, which enables a more flexible approach to short-term remote work arrangement planning.

Moreover, TCS has cautioned against recurring short term projects allotment where it mentions that HR inquiry and disciplinary action may be involved.