Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) saw its global headcount drop by nearly 20,000 employees in the quarter ending September 30, a number significantly higher than the company’s earlier announced workforce reduction plans.
The IT giant’s employee strength fell from 6,13,069 on June 30 to 5,93,314, according to Q2FY26 data posted on its website.
Newly appointed Chief Human Resources Officer Sudeep Kunnumal said the reduction included both voluntary and involuntary exits, with around 6,000 employees formally “released” as part of management-driven attrition.
He added that the company is about halfway through its expected workforce realignment.
In July, TCS had indicated plans to reduce around 2% of its workforce, roughly 12,000 employees, mainly from mid- and senior-level positions.
The CHRO clarified that this figure is an estimate rather than a fixed target, and that the company incurred Rs 1,135 crore in severance costs during the quarter.
However, the Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) accused TCS of downplaying the scale of layoffs. According to the employee advocacy group, nearly 8,000 more employees left than officially acknowledged, raising concerns about transparency.
“This is not a minor difference. Nearly 8,000 employees, more than what TCS admitted, have disappeared from the rolls. For a company of TCS’ scale, such underreporting cannot be dismissed as an error. It points to a deliberate attempt to downplay the scale of retrenchments and mislead regulators, policymakers, and the public,” NITES said.
NITES also highlighted that attrition rates had actually fallen during the period, suggesting that many exits were involuntary rather than voluntary.
The group alleged that long-serving employees, some with 10–15 years at TCS, were being forced out, calling the process “corporate cruelty” and accusing the company of prioritising profits over people.
“TCS may present these job cuts as numbers on a balance sheet, but for us they are stories of shattered lives,” NITES President Harpreet Singh Saluja said. “This is not restructuring, this is corporate cruelty. TCS has chosen profits over people, turning its workplace into a fear factory and betraying the very workforce that built its empire,” Saluja added.
TCS said its strategy to become a “future-ready organisation,” focusing on technology, AI, market expansion, and workforce realignment, prompted the layoffs, marking only the second such exercise in its history.
Kunnumal highlighted that the company is supporting impacted employees with severance packages above industry standards, counselling, and outplacement assistance to help them transition.