Talents Walking Out—and GCCs Are Taking Notice
While GCCs (global capability centres) are riding high in India, the reality is not all sunshine and rainbows. The challenge of employee retention continues to plague the tech and GCC sectors. In 2022 and early 2023, as reported, offer dropouts (no show) in the tech sector was as high as 40%, and infant exits (employees leaving within six months) were also notable, ranging from 10% to 15%. Even though the number of offer dropouts has decreased due to a shift in demand, the supply-demand balance in tech hiring remains skewed. GCCs, in particular, have been experiencing higher infant exits, which can be attributed to culture-related issues. Alouk Kumar, founder and CEO at Inductus Group, told AIM that the retention crisis in GCCs is a multifaceted challenge rooted in workforce expectations, structural organisational limitations, and hyper-competitive market dynamics. Today’s GCC professionals, he said, particularly those in early- to mid-career stages (typically 2–10 years of experience), exhibit a high degree of mobility, driven by a desire for accelerated careers and diverse, high-impact experiences. Talking to AIM, Roop Kaistha, regional managing director–APAC, AMS, said, “In greenfield GCCs, specifically, employees join with high expectations due to a salary hike, often causing a mismatch between their expectations and the company culture.” Greenfield GCCs at Risk Greenfield GCCs are those that are still in their formative stages, and employees joining these centres may often find themselves facing challenges that are not reflective of productivity expectations. Kaistha pointed out that the assumption that cost-cutting through offshoring would automatically lead to one-to-one productivity fails in practice. When it comes to new GCCs, employees may feel isolated, especially compared to their counterparts in well-established tech companies. She also added that the offer dropout rate in greenfield GCCs can still be as high as 20% (as per her prediction) if companies don’t focus on sustaining new hires. “The infantile exit rate at these centres can range from 8-10%,” Kaistha noted. Moreover, creating a thriving global culture within these GCCs requires delicately balancing local cultural nuances, particularly when employees work directly with foreign counterparts. According to an analysis of over 145 companies that established GCCs in India in the past 30 months, 40% of the leaders of these centres came from other GCCs, 17% from IT services companies, and 24% were internal leaders. “When a company is building a GCC, sending someone from the HQ or an experienced Indian leader abroad for a short period to embed the [international] culture in the GCC can work well,” Kaistha added. Moreover, the GCC sector’s high demand for talent also contributes to retention challenges, as competition among GCCs is intense while the talent pool remains limited. Kaistha noted that new hires, especially those under probation, are often targeted by competing GCCs looking for employees with shorter notice periods. Changing Job Roles With AI joining the workforce, entry-level, mundane, and repetitive jobs are gradually being phased out, making way for mid-level positions that require more domain expertise, business logic, and skills. This shift is quite visible in the Indian GCC market, where the culture and team dynamics are evolving. Talking to AIM, Nipun Sharma, chief executive officer, TeamLease Degree Apprenticeship, commented that this retention crisis demands innovative solutions beyond traditional hiring approaches. “For some of our clients, we have seen a huge shift where almost 60% of the roles used to be volume-based, involving junior hires with 1 to 3 years of experience,” Kaistha explained. Meanwhile, GCC employees cite limited visibility into long-term career pathways as a primary reason for seeking external opportunities. This is compounded by rigid hierarchical structures in some GCCs, which often fail to offer the dynamic growth trajectories that ambitious professionals demand, prioritising stability over transformational opportunities. “When professionals begin their careers through apprenticeships, they develop an intrinsic understanding of the company culture and processes while acquiring industry-relevant skills in emerging technologies like AI/ML,” Sharma said. Beyond everything, the ‘war for talent’ in the GCC ecosystem is intensifying, more than ever before, particularly for niche skills in AI, ML, cloud architecture, and data engineering.
‘Offer dropout rate in greenfield GCCs can still be as high as 20% if companies don’t focus on sustaining new hires’.
‘Offer dropout rate in greenfield GCCs can still be as high as 20% if companies don't focus on sustaining new hires’.
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Shalini is a senior tech journalist, exploring the latest advancements in AI. When she's not reporting on the latest innovations, you can find her immersed in her next literary adventure.