No Office, No Raise: TCS halts appraisals over office attendance rules

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has suspended the final anniversary appraisals for employees who fail to comply with its return-to-office mandates. Reportedly, internal communications sent to staff in early January 2026 reveal that the company is withholding performance outcomes and salary increments for those who have not met attendance requirements.

This move follows a year of tightening restrictions where India’s IT services firm transitioned from a hybrid model to a mandatory five-day office week.

Link between attendance and appraisals

The company has informed a segment of its workforce that while their appraisal evaluations are finished at a supervisor level, the corporate office will not process them further. An internal email reviewed by major news outlets states that employees non-compliant with work-from-office (WFO) rules through the second quarter of fiscal year 2026 (July to September 2025) will see their anniversary process stalled.

The consequences extend beyond immediate delays. Employees who remain non-compliant through January 2025 face exclusion from the entire FY26 banding cycle. This means the company will not release a performance band for these individuals, effectively blocking them from receiving annual salary hikes or promotions.

Structured attendance monitoring

TCS uses a rigorous tracking system to monitor physical presence. The current policy includes several specific benchmarks:

• Five-day work week: Employees must be in the office every working day.

• Working hours: Staff must clock at least nine hours in the office daily.

• Variable pay slabs: Payouts are tied to attendance percentages. Employees with less than 60% office attendance receive no variable pay. Only those with more than 85% attendance receive the full amount.

• Business days: The company now requires at least 225 mandatory billed business days annually.

Strict controls on exceptions

While the company allows for exceptions, it has restricted the process to prevent misuse. Employees can cite personal emergencies for up to six days per quarter, but these days do not carry over. The system permits logging network-related issues for up to five entries at a time. Significantly, TCS has prohibited bulk uploads or backend entries for attendance exceptions to ensure managers cannot manually override the tracking data for non-compliant team members.

Comparison with industry peers

The stance taken by TCS remains the most stringent among Indian IT giants. While competitors like Wipro and Infosys have increased office requirements, they generally follow a hybrid model requiring two or three days of physical presence. Wipro recently mandated at least six hours of office time on scheduled days, but TCS is the first to directly freeze the annual appraisal and banding process as a disciplinary measure for attendance.

Managers now evaluate performance based on met goals and technical parameters, but corporate HR acts as a gatekeeper. If the attendance data does not meet the threshold, the final evaluation results are never released to the employee. This shift signals that physical presence is now a core metric alongside traditional productivity and skill-based performance.