TCS- From Physical Offices to Borderless Work

A Case Study

Group -2

Ekta Agarwal
Bodhisattwa Dasgupta
Mohit Sethi
Samarth Kapoor
 TCS
TCS

Background
Background Company
Company Structure
Structure Market
Market Environment
Environment
 TCS an Indian IT company formed in  TCS has a Matrix organisation structure
1968; subsidiary of TATA Group;  Highly flexible and adaptable working
following the mix of mechanistic and
Percentage
formerly Tata Computer system; environment to easily integrate and
organic design
Growth
headquarters in Mumbai adapt changing working environment
 Employees are reporting to multiple
 Operates in 149 locations across 46  High competitor base like Tech
leaders/ superiors with characteristics of
countries; Mahindra, Wipro, HCL, IBM etc.
solid and dotted line reporting system
o second largest Indian  Diversified presence in domestic market
 Operating with mix of vertical and
company as per market as well as globally
horizontal design with the below
share; dimensions  Multi-dimensional business from IT
o fourth largest employer o High Formal organisation services, consulting, setting IT
amongst listed Indian infrastructure to engineering and
structure
companies industrial services
o Specialisation; process and
technology excellence
o Non-hierarchical working style;
essence of working in an agile
environment
1. Briefly explain your understanding of 25-25-25 model of TCS. What challenges TCS confronted while
implementing this model with specific reference to internal employees, teams, and external clients globally?

The 25-25-25 plan of TCS targets to make a secure borderless working model where only 25% of the employees need to work from office
space , no employee would need to spend more than 25% of their time in office, the target date for achieving this plan is year 2025.
The idea is to make workplaces flexible and agile to suit the requirements of customers that are spread across different countries. This will
not only give employees freedom to work from their place of choice, will also ensure that organization is more agile to meet the changing
needs of the business.
CHALLENGES
EMPLOYEES EXTERNAL CLIENTS
TEAMS OTHERS
 What Structure would suit the  Team Collaboration through  Data Privacy and Security  Labor Laws : Like which
employees - Once a week from Online Mode  Intellectual Property and country's jurisdiction
office or one day week in office.  Operational Challenges : like Competition would prevail
 How to inculcate the knowledge transfer etc.  Efficiency of project  STPI/SEZ Laws: how to
Organizational Culture  Interaction Issues : E.g. : No Water implementation while adhere the SEZ
 Mentorship and Personal Cooler conversations working from home regulations
development for Employees  No Informal Chats, Lack of Team  Secured access to their
 Work Life balance Bonding etc. environments
 Team Management by senior  Collaboration and communication  Good connectivity for calls
employees among teams  Noisy backgrounds specially
 Classroom training in India
 Non availability of
uninterrupted power supply in
some Tier – II / III cities
 Connectivity Issues from home

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2. What benefits TCS achieved and projected to achieve by implementing The New Model: Secure Borderless
Workspaces (SBWS) globally?

Achieved or Projected to achieve by Implementing SBWS (secure borderless workplaces)

Employees
​Other benefits  Enhances work life balance, productivity and reduces stress by giving
 Contributes to the modernization more time to family in these difficult times;
of the company by adding new  Comfortable and safe working environment with least exposure; reduces
working platform cost of living by saving travelling cost , rentals etc.
 Setting up the platform of
continuous feedback 1 Customers
 High employee satisfaction,  New digital platform for customers to get
carbon footprint reduction, uninterrupted and continuous services
6 2
enhancing electronic learning  Continuation in working under agile environment
modules etc. Who and even with new business model
what benefits
​Compliance from SBWS?
 Collaboration platform integrates 5 3 Company
with the digital platform  Maintaining the revenue and growth even under
 Reduces workflow and provides pandemic situation
regulatory compliant environment 4  Consistent performance; improvement in client
electronically satisfaction and increase in responsiveness
 Formation of talent cloud and even achieved
reduction in cost by giving away rental offices

IT infrastructure
 Successfully setup controlled IT
infrastructure and assured clients with
confidentiality of sensitive data
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3. How TCS could integrate its organizational culture into the new operating models and new ways of working through
restructuring the organizational work practices from time to time?

 TCS always looked at say/do attitude- the Management followed this principle
 The company culture was primarily of passion and humility
 Senior managers describe TCS as a family
 Personal connections were essential, management felt to learn the organization ethos
 TCS went through various operation models from ODC to ADC to OACW and finally to SBWS
 In ODCs, TCS initial Operational model, so organization culture was developed like it should have been
 In the ADCs, teams worked closer, management hierarchies removed, collaboration increased, and family bonding established
 In the OACW, associates could collaborate with people across boundaries thus increasing the bond
 Teams were brought in from different geographies, diverse bonding happened.
 TCS also included National Qualifier Test to get more diversity in the team
 In 2020, due to Corona, TCS had to shift to its SBWS i.e., borderless workspace where every associate was working remotely
 In a fortnight, almost the entire team was up and running
 It was initially difficult to convince clients about data sharing, the change in the operational model.
 Clients were more worried about data security.
 Talent on the cloud is another aspect where an associate can be found from any region
 Onboarding was already digitized, it facilitated frequent feedback on performance and training sections
 New employees are encouraged to catch up with team members on video calls other than work
 Many managers began daily meetings with trivial issues like the water cooler or coffee machine talks
 Town halls continued with a lot more number of people.
 Live chats were held to keep motivation high with celebrities like Cricketer Jhonty Rhodes or Ultra Runner Mima Valerio
 Live cooking session was held by Chef Ajay Chopra
 As per a senior manager- TCS work force average age of 30 and this generation is already familiar interacting virtually.
4. During pandemic what obstacles TCS faced while rebooting its business operations to remote locations or work from
anywhere globally?

There are various obstacles that TCS faced while rebooting its business operations to remote locations or work from anywhere globally, below are
mentioned few of them:

 Managing Information and Data security: There are different segments within the organization like Lifesciences, Healthcare, Banking and
Financial Services, Insurance which leads to various projects that works on confidential data and managing the same outside the office premises
was the main obstacle that the TCS has faced

 Government Laws and Regulations: TCS has various offices in locations like SEZ, business parks where the government laws and regulations are
different as of other locations as they are physical boundary oriented and so the obstacle in front of TCS was to take the approval for working
remotely from the government and TRAI.

 Convincing Clients for remote work: TCS has various clients like from Lifesciences, Healthcare, Banking and Financial Services, Insurance and
many more who are very much sensitive, concerned and strict towards their data protection, and they are not ready to accept that associates
can have access of their data outside the office premises

 Tracking team availability and Measuring productivity of employees: When every associates will be working remotely the concern for TCS was
whether the employees will be as productive as they are in offices and if the project deliveries will not get affected due to this. Also, how the
team leaders will track the availability and measure the productivity of the associates.

 Training process of freshers: Though the TCS has started the onboarding process of freshers digitally before the pandemic, however, the
training process of them was still not digitalized, the concern in front of TCS was how to provide the training to the freshers such that they will
not only be competent to work in real projects but also understand the organization culture.

 Preserving the TCS organization culture: TCS has a brand value that comes from Tata Group and stands on its organization culture. The concern
for organization was how to preserve the same when most of the associates work from home.
Thank you