While Indian GCCs performed impressively in the empowerment and ethics pillars, they lagged behind when it comes to innovation and agility
Indian GCCs recorded an overall workplace culture score of 82, according to Deloitte’s India global capability centres (GCCs) Culture Sensing Report. The report analysed workplace culture in Indian GCCs by conducting AI-driven sentiment analysis on data shared by employees on social media.
Among sectors, technology, media and communication GCCs led with the highest score of 83, while life sciences & healthcare and consumer businesses were close behind at 82. Financial services, along with energy, resources and industrial GCCs, followed with a score of 81.
Culture scores
The report measured culture scores across five pillars which included empowerment and inclusion, ethics and sustainability, growth and learning, performance and results and agility and innovation. Interestingly, while Indian GCCs performed impressively in the empowerment and ethics pillars, they lagged behind when it comes to innovation and agility.
Speaking to businessline, the study’s author and Partner at Deloitte India Saurabh Dwivedi said that the findings reveal a gap between intent and execution on the GCC innovation front.
“Over the past few years there has been much talk about GCCs moving up the value chain, going from being just a backend office to innovation hubs for the parent organisation. However, analysing the employee sentiments points out the innovation may not be percolating down to the employees,” he said.
Laggard innovation
Dwivedi points out that the laggard innovation could be due to GCCs having certain rigid established protocols and workflows which causes a resistance to change. This perceived lack of implementation of new ideas may lead to potential delays and bureaucratic hurdles which may not be the right ecosystem that you need for innovation within the organisation, he said.
The financial services sector posted the lowest innovation score of 69. According to Dwivedi, the sector showed an overwhelming sentiment of a strained work-life balance and mismanagement of workload with tight deadlines impacting the ability of the employees to innovate.
Dwivedi also mentions that GCCs learn certain talent practices and HR processes from each other explaining the close normalised culture score in GCCs across sectors.
Published on September 1, 2025