TCS says no office, no appraisal, cracks down on staff ignoring WFO rules

The company had significantly updated its attendance requirements over the past two years --- now requiring employees to spend nine hours in the office and sending alerts when they fall short of four hours

Written by Anwesha Mitra

January 8, 2026 12:29 IST

TCS pauses anniversary appraisals for employees who failed to meet stringent work-from-office rules

Tata Consultancy Services has pressed pause on appraisals for some employees due to non-compliance with its work-from-office policies. The company had significantly updated its attendance requirements over the past two years — now requiring employees to spend nine hours in the office and sending alerts when they fall short of four hours. The final appraisal follows an annual cycle after the employee’s work anniversary and begins with a formal initiation of the process.

“Please note your anniversary appraisal process is completed but not processed further by corporate since you are WFO non-compliant till Q2 FY26 (July 2025 to September 2025). If your anniversary is not committed in January 2025 due to WFO non-compliance in Q3, as a consequence, you will be excluded from the FY26 banding cycle and no performance band will be released,” Times of India quoted an internal email as saying.

Annual appraisal

According to the report, the final anniversary process begins with the formal initiation of the appraisal. An anniversary email is sent to eligible freshers and the update is also shared via the intranet portal. TCS had previously discontinued final anniversary appraisals for lateral hires in 2022.

Supervisors create goal sheets for the employee and discuss expectations once the process is initiated. Performance is reportedly evaluated on the basis of parameters they have met throughout the year — with the banding results released on the basis of the final scoring.

Stringent work-from-office policy

The company had also revised its variable pay policy in April 2024 to integrate office attendance as a key factor — creating four slabs that would also dictate payout. Employees were required to physically attend office at least 85% of the time to receive the full variable pay for the quarter.

Subsequent updates made it mandatory for employees to have at least 225 mandatory billed business days every year. An Economic Times update from June 2025 also added that the permitted bench time had been reduced to merely 35 days per year and employees were now expected to dedicate four to six hours per day to skill development.