For a company that prides itself on keeping employee welfare at the heart of everything, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has decided that the heart now beats best inside the office.
TCS has found a new vital organ – the attendance register.
By intensifying enforcement of its work-from-office policy, the company has made it clear that compassion has office hours.
According to a report, some employees have had their final anniversary appraisals put on hold.
The reason is non-compliance with attendance requirements in earlier quarters. The signal is clear. Office presence is no longer optional – a certain number of hours at work has to be honoured.
The move reflects a stronger push by India’s largest IT services company to mandate full-time office attendance. This comes at a time when much of the IT industry continues to operate under hybrid work models.
According to information reviewed by a national daily, the action impacts employees who failed to meet TCS’s work-from-office (WFO) criteria during specific quarters of the current financial year. In these cases, the appraisal process may be completed at the operational level.
Corporate approval, however, has not been granted. As a result, performance outcomes reportedly remain on hold.
At TCS, final anniversary appraisals follow a defined annual cycle linked to an employee’s work anniversary, a national daily has highlighted.
Eligible freshers typically receive a formal anniversary email after completing one year. The status is also updated on the company’s internal portal, Ultimatix.
The report mentions that it is relevant to note that TCS discontinued final anniversary appraisals for lateral hires in 2022. This makes the current development particularly significant for fresher cohorts.
In at least one internal email cited in the report, employees were informed that their anniversary appraisal exercise had been completed. It would not be processed further. The stated reason was WFO non-compliance up to Q2 of FY26, covering the July to September 2025 period.
The communication also carried a sharper warning. If the anniversary appraisal is not committed within the defined timeline due to continued non-compliance in subsequent quarters, the employee could be excluded from the FY26 banding cycle. In that case, no performance band would be released for the year.
Under standard practice, the anniversary appraisal process begins with formal initiation by the organisation. The reporting manager creates a goal sheet. The employee reviews and submits it after aligning expectations with the appraiser. Performance is evaluated against goals and tracked parameters over the year.
Banding results are declared thereafter. With the current enforcement, attendance compliance has become a prerequisite for the entire process.
TCS has made its stance on office attendance explicit, the media reports adds.
Employees are required to work from the office five days a week. This places TCS among the first major Indian IT firms to adopt such a rigid approach. Many peers continue to mandate two or three in-office days. TCS has gone further by linking physical attendance directly to performance outcomes and variable pay.
To operationalise the policy, the company updated its WFO exception framework last year. As per an internal note reported earlier, employees may cite personal emergencies for up to six days per quarter.
Unused days cannot be carried forward. The framework also accounts for operational issues such as space constraints, allowing employees to submit up to 30 exception requests in a single entry. Network-related issues can be logged through five entries at one time. However, bulk uploads and backend adjustments for attendance exceptions are not permitted. Those avenues have been closed.
Also Read: TCS Honcho Gopinathan Quits To “Pursue Other Interests,” K. Krithivasan Named CEO https://www.vibesofindia.com/tcs-honcho-gopinathan-quits-to-pursue-other-interests-k-krithivasan-named-ceo/
