India’s GCCs lead in empowerment and inclusion, driving employee-centric growth: Deloitte India analysis, ETCIO

India’s Global Capability Centres (GCCs) are redefining themselves as culture-driven, employee-first organisations, strengthening the country’s position as a global hub for advanced services and innovation. The Deloitte India GCC Culture Sensing Report 2025 reveals a strong Culture Index of 82/100, where nearly 95 percent of organisations excel in empowerment and inclusion through transparent policies, equal opportunities and robust CSR initiatives. Collaborative leadership, strong wellness programmes and flexible, supportive policies are helping GCCs build resilient, high-performing workplace cultures.The report underscores how GCCs are embedding diversity and inclusion, with wellness initiatives, supportive leadership and psychological safety enhancing engagement and workplace experience. This drives stronger talent retention and higher productivity and positions India’s GCCs as a benchmark for people-first sustainable growth.

The financial services sector is leading in providing robust learning opportunities, with 81 percent of GCCs offering strong skilling and development pathways. However, persistent challenges remain across industries, including favouritism, promotion biases, wage competitiveness and limited access to advanced tools, that continue to weigh on employee sentiment. Agility scores also average just 74, with only 23 percent of organisations demonstrating high adaptability, signalling resistance to change that could slow innovation and responsiveness.

Adding his perspective, Saurabh Dwivedi, Partner, Deloitte India, said, “Our study of 100 GCCs reveals inclusivity and ethics as strengths, with scores of 90 and 85. Financial services and technology GCCs show the most consistent empowerment, while consumer and energy reflect uneven maturity. Agility and innovation remain the weakest. Only 23 percent score above 80, compared with 95 percent for inclusion. The next frontier is clear: embedding innovation and performance discipline to transform India’s GCCs into resilient, future-ready organisations on the global stage.”

These cultural strengths highlighted in the Culture Sensing Report, spanning empowerment, inclusion, ethics and innovation, are reinforced by Deloitte’s GCC framework, which positions India as a global epicentre of innovation and transformation. The framework projects India’s capacity to host up to 5,000 GCCs and generate millions of jobs, building on strong momentum with over 1,700 centres already operational by FY24, employing 1.9 million professionals, contributing US$64.6 billion in revenue and expanding into tier II and tier III cities with more than 82,000 roles.

The future of India’s GCCs will be defined by scale, efficiency and the strength of their people-first cultures. Sustainable and inclusive growth will hinge on targeted efforts to standardise wages, advance gender parity and accelerate workforce development. The report calls on organisations to adopt comprehensive compensation strategies and make long-term commitments to improving workplace conditions and career progression, particularly for India’s vast and critical workforce. This coordinated approach will maintain India’s competitive edge and ensure GCCs continue to drive the nation’s economic growth and innovation ambitions.

• Published On Sep 4, 2025 at 12:30 PM IST

Join the community of 2M+ industry professionals.

Subscribe to Newsletter to get latest insights & analysis in your inbox.

All about ETCIO industry right on your smartphone!

_{Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.}