A patient is asking the doctor about the disease she/he is suffering with, doctor replied there could be plenty of reasons and it is confidential and should not be disclosed to you. Sounds crazy?
Friends, this is not anyone’s imagination, this is just happening in and around your workplace. Yes, just substitute the doctor with a TCS management and substitute the patient with the trashed TCSers. This is just the narration out of the termination process ongoing in TCS since December last year, just a few desks away from you.
It is true that, in the termination process, the HR replied an employee “could be plenty of reasons and it is confidential and should not be disclosed to you” for asking the reasons for termination. How pathetic is this, if the reason cannot be revealed to the employee who would be the right person to know. I am sure the process owners are not educated with ethics, principles and humanity.
My friend’s case:
My friend wanted to resign from TCS a year ago, TCS convinced him for a better growth and better opportunities as he was the key resource then and he also accepted it and withdrew the resignation process. In a year, he is given a pink-slip now. Can it be classified as start-of-the-art cheating? How can a PCCM (People Capability Maturity Model) level 5 company indulge in such an activity? Is it not the right time to revoke PCCM level 5 for TCS?
Do we still want to believe that only non-performers are asked to leave TCS?
TCS spokesperson statement:
“As a performance driven company, workforce optimisation is a continuous process which happens throughout the year taking into account employee performance, business needs, and people aspirations. This leads to some amount of involuntary attrition in the company.”
The above mentioned statement is often repeated in the news media which never refutes the retrenchment of employees but claims it based on the employee performance and business needs.
One could easily understand from the term “business needs” is the recent workforce optimisation is merely to show case more profit in the coming quarter and towards greediness in earning more and more money.
We have to carefully evaluate the terms ‘employee performance’ and ‘involuntary attritions’.
Let us discuss more about performance appraisal process followed in TCS and how it gauges an employee performance.
Appraisal process of TCS:-
To evaluate the performance of the employees, TCS follows two cycles of evaluation for a financial year i.e. H1 and H2 translates to half-yearly 1 and half-yearly 2.
BELL curve (curve fitting) makes this appraisal process more interesting and brings the completion along with plenty of compromises.
End of appraisal process, employees are provided with performance rating A, B, C, D and E.
‘A’ means outstanding performance
‘B’ means More than expected
‘C’ means 100% contribution
‘D’ means Scope for improvement
‘E’ means poor performance
Annual increment in salary is being decided based on this performance rating.
BELL curve is nothing but a forced rating
Pictorial representation of a BELL curve.
The above bell curve explains the distribution of performance rating for employees. It leads to plenty of questions; let me explain a case study.
A team has 5 members, 3 male employees and 2 female employees. One female employee, a star performer, is going on a maternity leave during appraisal team. Any employee who goes on long leave gets released from the project. In this case, how the project manager would distribute the performance rating. Easiest, happening across TCS, way is to award this female employee the lowest rating because she would not have known about this for a long time and by the time she comes to know about this the whole appraisal process would have completed.
Demerits of BELL curve:
- There is simply too much room for error
- The curve has the potential to foster unhealthy
- Forced ranking is such a limiting concept there is no continuous development
- This distribution number is always static across years, why so. Why it is not dynamic in this dynamically challenging and changing world
Compromises:
In reality, accommodating the employees in the BELL curve is compromised to the fullest. How it is compromised?
- Employee who wants to take-up onshore roles for financial constraint
- Employee who gets promotion in the same appraisal cycle
- Employee who is looking for transfer to a different branch or location
Easy Targets for lower bands:
Irony, there are few cases being targeted for accommodating the employees in lower bands.
- One who gets released from the project
- Employee who always communicate in low decibels, literally who cannot fight
- Employee who goes on maternity leave/Long leave
- One who has difference of opinion with the management
- Employee who are not willing to join late-night parties
- Employee who is part of a project where man power is enormous.
For example: – There are two projects, one with 20 team members and other one with 4 team members. Targets would be from this 20 team member’s team. Reason is if the low rated employees wants to leave the company or the project, her/his work can be easily shared with other folks.
This list gives impression that compromise is better than target but both are unacceptable.
Few obvious questions to CEO of TCS:
- In a country like India where we have favoritism towards religion, caste and gender what kind of actions been taken to ensure unbiased appraisal process.
- There are few companies like Microsoft and Google dismantle this bell curve based appraisal, why Indian IT companies still sticking with this process
- TCS has a robust (?) PIP process, why PIP is not deployed before the termination of employment.
- CEO also should go through this performance evaluation process and should be fit into BELL curve. Who are CEO’s competitors?
- Why 360 degree is not introduced in the appraisal process?
- If these trashed employees ,according to TCS this termination due to business needs, will they be employed again in TCS once these business needs are met
- If these trashed employees, according to TCS this termination due to business needs, apply for a job in TCS after few years, how would TCS treat them?
This current appraisal process is such a limiting concept and the IT management should strive hard to bring out a model to encourage “continuous development” for organizational success.
I personally believe that everyone can be a “top-performer” when the conditions are rightly provided.
I’m an ex-TCSer with 9 years of experience, when I was young in TCS I asked a senior of her motivation for sticking with TCS for many years. She stated that how could a child leave a mother. This is a true incident, hence, plenty of seniors lived with TCS not because of lack of competitiveness it was since TCS was looked up as a mother.
According to me, the recent situation in TCS can only be seen like this – Operation/Surgery is tremendously successful but the patient is murdered with intention.
(The author, Vasumathi is an ex-TCSer and FITE member, currently working in a major IT Company in Chennai. She can be reached out via vasumath@yahoo.com)
12 Comments
Scorpion1985C January 17, 2015 at 8:23 pm
Bell curves are supposed to be applied only on large datasets. TCS being an IT company should have the brains to not apply bell curve on projects of size less than a couple of 100. Idiots will never learn.
third world country January 21, 2015 at 4:15 am
Valid point. But there is no other proven way to rate employees of a service company. Bell curve is the only way available to do this.
In TCS's retrenchment list July 25, 2015 at 1:21 pm
What happened with me for Bell Curve fitting – I want to share the fact that had happened with me in TCS. An employee at grade C4 in TCS and in same project in USA has worked with me (I am also at grade C4). Eventually, I was his supervisor because of playing different roles (he was designer and I was Delivery Manager). I rated him with 3.4 and my supervisor also rated me 3.4 (It is a coincidence).
In the name of bell-curve fitting, TCS has given “C” band to him and “D” band to me. I don’t know the reason yet. I have raised a grievance although I know that TCS will tell that because of bell-curve it has happened.
However, I am guessing a couple of reasons: 1) He is continuing in same account at Bangalore after coming back from offshore as because his base branch is in Bangalore and I have been released from the account because my base branch is in Delhi.
2) TCS may have a plan to retrench me because I am more experienced and TCS does not need this type of employees at present (why such a guess? TCS told me to come back to India from US in Jan-2015 in the middle of the project and they suddenly told me to continue)
Solution: Instead of bell-curve fitting (which tries to accommodate a wide range), keep the rating as it is and during the time of compensation, consider individual rating, account wise performance or rating and TCS performance. In this digital era, it is not a difficult task. It needs some programing effort.
vj January 17, 2015 at 9:23 pm
Mathematical concepts can’t be applied every where… Eg: Average is a good concept but can we take average of depth of a river across its width while crossing the river? Its not only funny its very dangerous.
People who worked in one account till H1 and as the project gets over hence getting into next account during H2 also getting suffered in appraisal… The reason for the bad result given is ” New to the project”…
There is no ” mistake proofing” in appraisal process.
Management expects continuous learning from employess yaa its good agreed…but what new concept management invented to evaluate employees such that the appraisal happens in such a way that none of the hard worker getting affected???? Dragging with this BELL even now…
This was applicable very long back now the scene is different its very competitive period everyone is performing fighting for their future then how this old BELL concept will give good result? Please change ur appraisal process and proceedure ….
Few accounts are doing only data entry few are with risky finance and some are dealing about aircraft and automobile safety but the effect A, B, C, D, E alone same for everybody??? Is it not look funny????
MP January 18, 2015 at 8:26 am
I think the problem is not with the methodology. But the methodology can not be blindly applied to the company. Each company has different dynamics and operates in a different environment. The job of the HR is to humanly apply the methodology to fit into the needs of the Organization. But, unfortunately that is not happening. HRs simply act like a voice of the corporate heads
Even in this case where a corporate with more than 3.5 lakhs employees with multi cultural environment and with different nature of jobs, I wonder how one policy gets applied to all. The HR acts like a human medium for the rules written in the Corporate’s policy. Instead of understanding the indivdial scenarios and apply the rules, they simply go with the companies rule book.
disappointed tcser January 18, 2015 at 8:29 am
TCS under name of ethics and principles violates many TATA code of conduct to name few
– Tweaking resume to meet customers need ie breach of customers’ trust (sic) : how tcs will treat it if an associate does the same during joining tcs?
– being morally correct organization why salary slabs/range cannot be shared with associates : Every time an associate asks the question issue is tagged as confidential. There is wide range of salary at Same designation/role even with in project
– if associates are paid differently why their roles and responsibilities and band do not consider it. If an associate paid 4 lakh is compared to one getting 15 lakh per annum is it justified .. Rule of thumb is gigo … Garbage in garbage out
– bell curve covers juniors seniors n all: Why not project internal bell curve to normalise at different level of experience
– why salary of an individual I tagged to isu performance. Does tcs provide an option to switch isu
– why lower bands associates are not mentored and discussed at the end of the band despite rejection … Process is just for name sake finalized in conference room using excel sheet and negotiation
whys are numerous and I am sure every answer can be tagged as confidential and internal so that can be avoided … TCS NEEDS TO REDEFINE CONFIDENTIALITY, PRIVACY, ETHICS, MORALITY .. Whole Tata code of conduct is screwed by todays leaders.. TATA is no more an employee organization… Goal of reaching to mars is of no use to society other that the MUKHERJEEs, MISTRIEs n CHANDRAs
Rome was not built in a day .. But can be destroyed in couple of weeks
Jagmohan Lakhotia January 18, 2015 at 9:05 am
TCS is ugly.
Shiv January 18, 2015 at 7:55 pm
TCS has many “fit for nothing” managers who do not even communicate properly.Most of the times they are the cause of embarrassment in front of the customer due to which projects are not realised.They will nicely delegate all their work to junior resources, the so called capacity resources who are paid 1/5th of manager’s salary. TCS Senior management should kick such guys who do not even know how to save a MS Excel file.
Deep January 18, 2015 at 11:18 pm
Bell curve is a statistical tool but for measuring products variability usually in manufacturing.Hmm..how is applicable in appraisals?This is nothing but a scam ,a systematic exploitation of labour.
third world country January 21, 2015 at 4:14 am
I hate bell curve fitting too. But help me understand what other way would you rate the employees? Would you rather give A rating to all? or C rating to all? TCS (and the likes) are servicing companies, where the Employee’s time is the commodity sold to the clients.
Rahul January 20, 2015 at 11:51 am
Now this quarter, the promotions has been stopped for the employee promoting AST onwards… such a mess in TCS.. HRs are not aware what to do, how to do, when to do, why to do? Rather they knows lick GLs ass, follow what they are saying, abusing the already abused TATA Code of Conduct not showing transparency in anything.
The rascals are getting salary of Rs. 60 Cr annually, which keep on increasing at higher rate when company is growing, however the junior level employees are not getting promotions, getting D bands(which mean if they are getting 10L now, they will get 8 lac next year) and 1 D band make you 3 years behind.
Athiest san January 16, 2016 at 10:04 pm
Someone needs to wake up and change this system of rating Employee, ASAP