Wipro is expanding the use of its productivity-monitoring platform, TimeScope, across its India workforce as the IT services industry places greater emphasis on employee utilisation, operational efficiency and returns from technology investments.
The company initially deployed TimeScope to about 5,000 employees in May and has now started extending it to a wider employee base, according to a report by Mint. The platform is being introduced across fixed-price project teams, billable delivery roles, support functions and employees who are currently not deployed on projects.
TimeScope is installed on company-issued laptops and desktops and provides employees and managers with dashboards showing digital activity, login duration and time spent on work applications. The system tracks activity on applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Google Chrome.
Employees can access their own activity records, while managers can view utilisation data for their teams. Wipro has maintained internally that the platform does not track personal activity, keystrokes or screen content. It has also clarified that timesheets continue to be the final source for effort reporting and project accounting.
The platform is also being linked to attendance management. Under Wipro’s internal guidelines, a leave deduction may be initiated when there is no recorded evidence of work attendance on a scheduled working day. The company considers multiple indicators, including device login records, approved leave, office access data and client-site visits. Employees can reportedly raise disputes if they believe a leave deduction has been made incorrectly.
The move comes as large IT services companies increasingly look at technology-enabled ways to measure workforce utilisation. TCS has previously faced reports around employee monitoring tools, although the company denied tracking individual employee activity and said its systems were intended to monitor network performance. Similar productivity-monitoring initiatives have also been reported at Cognizant.
For Wipro, the focus on productivity comes amid pressure on margins and growth. Its operating margin was 16 per cent in the April-June quarter, down 130 basis points year-on-year, while the company has reported revenue declines over the past three years.
