DailyPost 2474
BODY SHOPPING OF A DIFFERENT KIND
The Indian IT industry has been known for body shopping, but this one is of a different kind. One headline proclaims, ’Inside the nightmarish ethics breach at TCS’ BharatPe also had a scam pertaining to HR consultants / agents / firms whatever you call them. There are instances of this nature of covert connections in a variety of firms, which generally gets unraveled only through whistle blowers / insiders, otherwise it seems to be a well-oiled machine. But for it all runs hunky dory. Might be a level of financial impropriety has been ingrained into the Indian corporate system, otherwise large scams don’t happen.
There are no third parties who have any legal mandate to get into their systems as long as their taxes and legal compliances are fine. For TCS they say, this scam is unusual and somewhat unfortunate moment. The scam is that some employees for the company took bribe from third party staffing firms. The revelations when it hit the market was taken with ”widespread shock and disbelief.” But getting into the details of some reasonably comprehensive news reports gives us a feeling that it not all too unknown. All this happened in RMG and given the nature of tech outsourcing that TCS does, RMG (Resource Management Group) happens to be the heart of TCS.
‘You are my nuclear reactor’* is one of compliments which Chakravarthy, suspended RMG Head had got in his career. It is generally told that inside TCS, no one can question the RMG’s authority. A system of interference which they had created for themselves, given the nature of projects TCS handles. One of executives as reported in the media said, ”For the last two years, it was an open secret that many people of the RMG were allegedly abusing power by demanding upfront commission for the empanelment of staffing firms.” There are also instances of calls for hefty sums in return for empanelling the a company. Enquires don’t throw up chilling details which investigation does and, but whatever has come out itself is shattering for TCS and world of corporate HR.
RMG team is mandated to share the requirements on Ultimax, company’s enterprise resource planning platform. It is said that in the last two years contract staffing firms that allegedly paid commissions were able to know the requirements ahead of others. Then these staffing firms send the resumes directly to the ‘connected’ RMG executive. It was the then his job to secure all the approvals required from the business unit heads. The unfortunate part is that these guys might not have known about the ‘process bypass.’ The nexus would be deep, entrenched and complex and needs a thorough investigation to stem the rot in the corporate HR. TCS needs to resurrect itself and that too at the earliest.
OVERSIGHT, AUDIT AND PERSONAL DECLARATIONS OF CONFLICT OF INTEREST HAVE BECOME OUTDATED IN THE FAST BUCK, FAST PROFIT CORPORATE WORLD.
Sanjay Sahay