In an exclusive interaction with CXO Media and APAC Media, Shalini Pillay, GCC Head, KPMG stated, “As we get into specifics on ‘GCC leadership in a post-hybrid world’, one must acknowledge a very significant tipping point, which influenced business models and ways of working world over – the Covid Pandemic. It not only redefined a remote way of working, but also catapulted the GCC model into an entirely different trajectory.”
The discussion leads to a point where the dialogue indicated that the hybrid world of working is here to stay, rewiring not just business models but core leadership skills that will influence, manage and steer the way forward.
How are GCC leaders reimagining organisational culture when physical presence is no longer central to engagement?
One of the ways to define culture is “a system of shared beliefs and norms that define the way of working”. GCCs, which are an extension of global organisations, enabling the pace of tech adoption, driving transformation and impacting the top line and bottom line, are meant to truly mirror the culture of the global organisation. The hybrid way of working is a global phenomenon and one that organisations are addressing at a global level, with geographic and cultural nuances being factored.
Also, one must note that in an increasingly competitive market, global brands stand out for the tenets of their culture and way of working, which is what can be a big differentiator for talent to consider.
GCCs are digitally engineering culture, making it purposeful, inclusive, and experience-led, even in the absence of physical presence.
Culture is no longer tied to a location—it lives in behaviours, systems, and leadership actions across a boundaryless organisation.
The shift is not just about moving work online, but about redefining how culture is experienced, reinforced, and sustained in distributed, digital-first environments.
Some of what is influencing and enabling this shift:
- Embedding the tenets of Culture into the organisational way of working
- Being purpose-led, connecting individual purpose to that of the global organisation
- Managing by Trust and not Control and Oversight
- Inspiring to drive outcomes
- Redefining performance norms
- Leveraging technology to enable digital collaboration
- Redefining physical spaces as collaboration hubs and experience centres
GCC leaders are actively working on the above, while also equipping themselves with the requisite skills to embed organisational culture in the new hybrid world.
In what ways are leaders balancing empowerment and oversight when teams operate across hybrid and remote formats?
Leadership capabilities that are today considered non-negotiable in the distributed, digital-first model include:
- – Digital fluency
- – Collaboration skills
- – Outcome-oriented execution
- – Empathetic and Inclusive leadership
- – Change Agility and comfort with Ambiguity
- – Ability to build Trust and Credibility
- – Delegation and Empowerment
- – Entrepreneurial skills and Stewardship
- – Learning agility
As GCCs continue to evolve, moving up the value curve, taking on greater accountability and global roles, embracing new technologies to enable the global organisation to transform for the future, honing these skills is an imperative.
Balancing empowerment and oversight in hybrid and remote formats is one of the most nuanced challenges leaders face today.
Too much control stifles autonomy and trust; too little leads to misalignment, underperformance, or cultural drift and hence the balance demands:
- – Complete clarity to drive outcomes
- – Effective delegation and empowerment
- – Frequent communication
- – Defined cadence for staying connected
- – Leveraging data and tools for oversight
- – Entrepreneurial mindset, enabling teams to experiment
Working cross-border, with distributed teams and with everyone aligned to a shared vision, driven to achieve a common set of outcomes, takes some effort to ensure some of the above are effectively implemented, while being agile to make the necessary tweaks along the way.
How has the shift to hybrid accelerated or challenged the evolution from cost centres to product innovation hubs?
The hybrid model has furthered the evolution of GCCs from cost centres to product innovation hubs in multiple ways:
- – It has made the access to skills location agnostic, allowing one to access talent across the global landscape
- -The shift from siloed processing to taking end-to-end accountability and hence driving focus on outcomes
- – Leveraging digital collaboration tools and technology to work seamlessly with global onshore counterparts has fueled innovation
- – The hybrid model has been extended to collaborating with the wider ecosystem, including tech service providers, OEMs and startups, furthering the desired environment to drive innovation
How are GCCs revisiting site strategies: from large campuses to satellite or virtual-first setups?
GCC site strategies have evolved significantly: the large-campus model—once a symbol of scale, control, and cohesion—is giving way to more agile, distributed and virtual-first strategies.
Physical spaces have been transformed into collaborative experiential zones where teams come together in a more purposeful manner, while balancing their WFH routine on specific days of the week.
GCCs are increasingly planning their real estate strategies driven by the talent landscape that is leveraging talent clusters across Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities, their proximity within a city to potential workspaces/hubs and infrastructure considerations, which influence the ability to attract talent. The physical office space is being positioned to reinforce the brand/strategic positioning, where sites are being aligned with strategic capabilities (e.g., Digital COEs, ESG innovation hubs, etc).
The model has clearly moved to a distributed model, between the main hub, remote WFH and emerging satellite offices.
How are GCCs attracting and retaining niche tech talent in a borderless hiring era?
In the borderless, hybrid-first era, GCCs are competing on innovation, culture, and flexibility—not just compensation or location—to attract and retain niche tech talent (AI/ML, cybersecurity, product engineering, cloud, blockchain, etc.). Some aspects being increasingly used to attract and retain niche talent are:
- – The strategic narrative and purpose underlying the GCC setup, ie innovation/transformation hubs, with a clear charter to drive and make an impact
- – Global roles being based out of the GCC and hence positioning a more empowered hub
- – Career paths that are reflective of investments being made in deep skilling
- – Global mobility, which truly begins to reflect cross-border
- – External branding through tech hackathons and events, academia partnerships, etc
- – Innovative compensation models linking contribution to outcomes
- – Tenets of culture and covered above, also influence the EVP quite significantly
Beyond all of the above, hygiene factors around employee wellness, workspace ambience and all other perks that enable one to stay attractive in a fiercely competitive environment.
Are current L&D strategies adapting fast enough to support continuous upskilling in digital, AI and data roles?
Most L&D strategies are evolving—but not fast or deep enough to fully meet the demands of continuous upskilling in digital, AI and data roles.
While there’s widespread intent and investment, many organisations are still catching up in terms of speed, personalisation and integration with business outcomes.
Organisations are working on a bunch of different elements towards meeting the urgent skilling requirements:
- – increasingly embedding learning into the work environment
- – strategic partnerships with academia focused on customising learning paths
- – modular online skilling programs, through building curated playlists on platforms like Coursera, Udemy, etc, which allow employees to curate their own digital learning wallets- hyper personalisation
- – enabling innovative environments which allow for experimentation and building POC’s which go a long way in the wider skilling agenda from an experiential learning perspective
- – drawing a close linkage between learning paths and career paths and hence shifting to outcome-driven L&D
How are GCCs making inclusion efforts equitable when remote work may deepen visibility gaps?
In a hybrid environment, visibility gaps, unequal access to leadership and proximity biases can unintentionally create divides across gender, geography and certain unique personas.
There is a growing focus and attention on the DEI agenda:
- – Hybrid working ways designed to address location biases
- – Increasing awareness of unconscious biases
- – Creating communities of belonging
- – Running advocacy campaigns
- – Structured recognition programs built into the performance management process
One must also remember that technology has also been a great leveller and, at one level, with the right culture and frameworks implemented, can also provide equal opportunities for all. The WFH model has enabled flexibility and, hence, at one level also supported better work-life balances and in turn positively influenced gender diversity.
How do leaders see the GCC footprint evolving over the next decade: more locations, smaller teams, or niche expert centres?
The GCC model continues to evolve, and in fac, one increasingly reflects on the GCC concept itself, blurring into a seamless extension of the global footprint, and of the model morphing into capability hubs that will be built around talent clusters across the globe.
The mega hub model is already disappearing, and one is seeing the emergence of a ‘network of centres’- across geographies, and across tier 1/2/3 cities- taking advantage of specific talent clusters as they emerge.
One will see niche capability hubs being developed, around niche emerging technologies (eg AL/ML/GenAI, Cybersecurity, ESG, etc) and functional capabilities like product engineering, supply chain and procurement, call digital marketing, etc.
Finally, the GCC model is no longer about doing it all within one’s organisation, but is an effective hybrid of working along with the wider ecosystem to leverage capabilities in the most effective manner.
The ability to work with vendor partners, startups and academia is what is driving the agile, scalable future of GCCs
