“Our quarterly variable pay for Q4 was released with April’s salary. I got between 60-80%,” one senior employee told Moneycontrol.
However, employees with office attendance below the required threshold received lower payouts. One employee said many received around 50% of their variable pay as their office attendance stood at only about 60%.
Since Q1FY25, the company has closely linked mandatory work-from-office requirements to eligibility for receiving quarterly variable allowance (QVA). Employees with less than 60% office attendance are not eligible for the quarterly bonus.
As per the policy, TCS expects a minimum 85% office attendance for employees to be eligible for full quarterly variable pay. Employees with 75-85% office attendance receive 75% of their variable pay, while those with 60-75% attendance receive only 50% of their variable pay.
TCS did not respond to Moneycontrol’s queries on quarterly variable pay at the time of publishing the story.
Variable payout linked to performance
Meanwhile, employees have seen lower performance-linked payouts over the past two years, despite office attendance compliance.
“TCS has deducted anywhere between ₹4-5 lakh over the past two years as part of QVA,” said one employee.
Previously, TCS had stated that, as a standard practice across quarters, variable pay is determined based on the business performance of an employee’s entire unit.
TCS rival Infosys had reduced performance bonus payouts for the March quarter after disbursing its strongest variable pay in more than three years in the preceding quarter. The average bonus payout stood at around 70%, lower than the roughly 85% paid in the December quarter (Q3FY26), which marked the company’s best variable payout since the Covid period.
TCS rolls out wage hikes
TCS also became the first IT company to begin rolling out salary increments from April for FY26. The company released its new cost-to-company (CTC) structure in line with changes under the new Labour Codes.
Moneycontrol had earlier reported that employees received an average salary hike of around 5% in the latest appraisal cycle.
TCS broadly categorises salary hikes based on performance bands such as A+, A, B and C, with top performers typically receiving higher increments and variable payouts.
For the current cycle, employees in the top-rated A+ category said hikes ranged between 9% and 13%, while those in the A band largely reported increments of 5-9%.
Employees in the B band mostly reported hikes in the 1-3.5% range, while many in the C band said their increments were negligible or even negative.
