India-based Tata Consultancy Services expects the rate of staff departures to fall and demand for its services to rise as companies continue with their pandemic-hastened digitisation processes, reports Reuters. More tech talent is expected to enter the job market from start-ups facing funding crunches, as central banks withdraw stimulus and hike rates, TCS Asia Pacific President Girish Ramachandran told the Reuters Global Markets Forum yesterday. TCS' rate of staff attrition, the percentage of those retiring or leaving for other reasons, rose to 17.4% in the quarter-ending March 2022 from 15.1% in the whole of 2021, as India's IT services sector experiences a tech talent crunch and high staff turnover. Ramachandran, however, said India still had a significant talent pool. "We just need to start looking at how do we get access to the best talent and ensure we train them, so that we're ready to deploy them." Despite uncertainties around a potential global slowdown, Ramachandran said demand for TCS's software services had not slackened.

"Digitisation is irreversible," Ramachandran said, adding he did not expect organisations that went digital during the pandemic to significantly reduce their tech budgets. Ramachandran said he expected a hybrid work environment to become the norm, especially in the tech sector.