Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest IT company, has completed its investigation in the recruiting misconduct case that came to light earlier this year, the company noted in an exchange filing.
As per the exchange filing, 16 employees were sacked and six business associate firms were disbarred by the IT major post its investigation. Moreover, six vendor entities, their owners and affiliates have also been debarred from doing any business with the company.
"Our investigation found 19 employees to be involved and action has been taken against all as detailed here - 16 employees have been separated from the Company for code of conduct violations, and 3 employees have been removed from the Resource Management function," the exchange filing read.
Bribes for Jobs at TCS
The investigation closure report has come months after the company looked into practices where staffing firms were allegedly involved in bribing senior executives overseeing recruitment processes in the company to get business.
In June, TCS said in a stock exchange filing that a whistleblower had brought a recruiting scam to the management’s notice.
Later during the company’s AGM, Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran noted that the company had already started investigating, sacking six employees and staffing firms.
Chandrasekaran explained how the issue unfolded. The company has two departments that usually are involved in hiring, HR and talent acquisition. But in case of talent shortage or a need for a particular skill that is not available in a location, the company has a set of business associate firms or staffing firms from where they get contract employees.
He said, “At any point in time in the overall deployment of resources, about 2-3 per cent of them are such BAs or contractors. The complaint was related to certain individuals in the company working with certain BA firms to be recruiting in their favour.”
“There are a large number of BA firms that TCS works with. There is a rigorous process in the company to recruit or qualify a firm to be called a BA firm. There are about a little over 1,000 such firms globally because we need resources in 55 such countries. And each one of them does a certain amount of business depending on their skill availability,” Chandrasekaran explained.
In the press conference held after the company announced its second quarter results, Chief Executive Officer K Krithivasan said that the firm had completed its investigation in the recruitment scam and had taken appropriate action.
Krithivasan said, “We have completed our investigation. We have taken appropriate action against whosoever we believe violated our code of conduct. Actions differ based on the kind of violation but all actions have been taken and it's closed.”
