TCS delays performance appraisal for some freshers who didn’t work from office for 5 days

TCS

• TCS halted appraisals for freshers not meeting 5-day office attendance rule.
• Non-compliant employees may miss performance band release for FY26
• Office attendance now directly affects appraisals and variable pay at TCS

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Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has paused the final anniversary appraisal outcomes for a group of fresher employees who did not meet the company’s five-days-a-week office attendance rule in earlier financial quarters. The update was shared in an internal email reviewed by The Times of India on January 8, 2026.

The email explained that the anniversary appraisal process was technically completed, meaning supervisors had already initiated the review and created the employee’s goal sheet on Ultimatix, TCS’s internal work portal. However, the company did not move ahead with processing the final performance band because the employees were marked WFO (work-from-office) non-compliant until Q2 FY26, which covers July to September 2025. TCS did not respond to media queries before the story was published, according to the report.

For freshers at TCS, the anniversary appraisal is an annual review that begins right after an employee completes one full year in the company. Once that milestone hits, the system sends an anniversary email to eligible employees, and the intranet reflects that their review cycle has started. After this, the supervisor creates a goal sheet, which the employee fills in and submits. Then comes a discussion between the employee and the appraiser to align expectations for the year. Over the next several months, performance is evaluated based on how well goals were met, consistency of delivery, teamwork, deadlines, and overall contribution. At the end of the cycle, TCS releases a performance band, which works like a yearly rating.

One important detail is that TCS stopped offering anniversary appraisals for lateral hires back in 2022, so this update impacts mostly freshers who joined the company directly after college.

TCS currently expects employees to work from the office five days a week, a stricter schedule compared to most IT firms in India, where hybrid attendance is more common at two or three days per week. The company has also tied variable compensation to attendance compliance, making it clear that physical presence at the office is now part of how performance is tracked.

To handle attendance exceptions, TCS updated its policy last year. Employees can cite personal emergencies for up to six days per quarter, but those days cannot be saved or rolled over into the next quarter. For space or seating issues, employees can file 30 exceptions in one entry, and for network problems, five entries can be submitted together. What is not allowed anymore are bulk uploads or backend edits for marking attendance exceptions.

For employees who were marked non-compliant in Q3 FY26, the email warned that missing the January 2025 appraisal commitment would mean exclusion from the FY26 banding cycle, and no performance band would be released at all.

The decision has sparked conversations across the company, especially among freshers who see this as a signal that office attendance is no longer a soft suggestion but a tracked requirement with real consequences.