Our Bureau Mumbai, Feb. 5 Global head of Human Resources at Tata Consultancy Services, Mr S. Padmanabhan, who has been with the company 25 years, has been now appointed Executive Director, Operations, at Tata Power.

Mr Padmanabhan, (‘Paddy’ to his colleagues), took over the HR function at TCS four years ago. A senior official at TCS said that his new assignment was part of the “group leadership movement across the Tata companies,” that happens from time to time.

Mr Ajoyendra Mukherjee, who was earlier Vice-President and head of operations, eastern region, and a key architect for TCS’ growth in eastern India, has been appointed as the new global head of HR at TCS.

Ms Ritu Anand has been appointed as the deputy global head of human resources and will report to Mr Ajoy Mukherjee in her new role.

Responding to reports that TCS had asked 500 employees to leave the organisation, a senior official said that this was nothing but part of the regular annual appraisal process.

“In fact, these 500 people left over a period of 10 months,” he said.

A statement from the company said: “In line with its performance-driven culture, Tata Consultancy Services has an institutionalised process of bi-annual employee appraisal system that ranks employees on a grade between 1 and 5. If an employee gets a grade of 2 or less during one appraisal cycle, he or she is put on a performance improvement plan.”

If at the end of the second appraisal cycle, the employee does not come up to the mark and his or her ratings do not improve beyond 2, then TCS, after proper counselling, disengages with them. However, as a responsible employer, TCS arranges for placement agencies which can help place these employees in alternate jobs.”

“The number of employees impacted during this year till date is 500 which constitutes about 0.5 per cent% of the company’s employee strength of 108,000 which is less than 0.5 per cent% of the company’s total employee base,” said the statement.

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