Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has fired 6 of its employees and also banned them. These employees were giving unfair advantage to some recruitment companies in the recruitment of contract employees in TCS. This information was given by Chairperson N Chandrasekaran at the company’s Annual General Meeting on 29 June.
This is the first time that the chairman of the company has openly given information about this. The company had set up an inquiry regarding irregularities in the recruitment process. Regarding the investigation, he said in the AGM, “We found that 6 employees did not follow the ethical conduct.
At the moment we cannot say what favors they got in return, but it is certain that they acted in such a way that those firms got benefited. We have banned all those six employees and companies. Investigation is on against three more employees.”
Ethical conduct is more important than money.
In his address, the TCS chairperson said that ethical conduct and integrity come before financial performance for any Tata Group company, and every employee is expected to follow them. Whenever these are violated by any employee in the Tata Group, we take it very seriously. We will take strict action in this matter. Along with this, he said that the company will take necessary steps to prevent such incidents from happening in the future.
How did the matter come to light?
Chandrasekaran told that in February-March this year, two whistle blowers drew attention to this matter. These whistle blowers complained to CEO K Krithivasan and COO Natarajan Ganapathy that some employees have shown favoritism and favors in the recruitment of Business Associates. Basically TCS recruits people in two ways. One is from the hiring side, who recruit people for different departments. However, many times when people with particular skills are needed for a project, their hiring is done by business associate firms on a contract basis.
Business associates make up two to three percent of the company’s total work force at any point of time. In the complaints received by the company, it was written that some employees of the company are hiring people in their favor by working with some BA firms.
The chairperson said, “TCS works with many BA firms. The company hires a BA firm after a difficult process. The company works with around 1000 such firms across the world, as the company needs to hire workforce in 55 countries.
In its investigation, TCS found two cases of giving favors to BA firms. One in India and one in the US. India’s case was investigated by a senior officer of the company, while America’s case was investigated by an external officer. After being found guilty in the investigation, the company took action against six employees and six BA firms.
Chandrasekaran told that no key managerial person of the company was involved in this matter. He also said that there was no fraud by the company or against the company and there was no financial loss.
