Captive MNC centres in India struggle as war for talent impacts sourcing

Only 10% of Global Capability Centres have tie-ups with educational institutes to source talent

Global Capability Centres or the captive centres of multinational companies in India are feeling the heat of the war for talent as it impacts their effort to scale operations, said a survey.

According to EY’s GCC (Global Capability Center) Pulse Survey 2021, about 76 per cent of GCC leaders believe they need to improve their ability to attract and retain talent. In the last 18 months, the demand for niche digital skills has grown exponentially leading to a shortage of qualified candidates.

One out of five GCCs identified automation as a continued area for investment, reflecting a coming of age of automation.

One of the reasons why the GCCs are finding sourcing of talent difficult is the fact that many have not invested in building relationships with educational institutes. The survey found that currently only 10 per cent of GCCs mentioned campus hires as a significant source of talent and 67 per cent prefer to source their talent through lateral hiring from other GCCs, Indian organisations and service providers.

This also meant that the hiring process has become complicated and many GCCs are facing issues where potential employees increasingly ask for higher remuneration (above the benchmark), increased rate of last minute declines affecting timely delivery of commitment and sometimes fraudulent representation of skills.

The EY study incorporates the first-hand perspective of 57 GCC leaders in India to highlight current trends and industry priorities including their strategies around digital adoption, expansion of existing service portfolios, the future of work, talent management, return-to-work strategy, enterprise & cyber risk.

Arindam Sen, Partner, GCC Sector Lead - Non-FS, EY India, “We are increasingly seeing product-based innovation, use of technologies like artificial intelligence and analytics to drive process efficiency and enhanced service portfolio becoming key business drivers. With the abundant skilled digital talent in India and keeping future of work central to their strategy, GCCs can deliver on their digital transformation agenda.”

Most GCCs see themselves as an incubation engine with structured ideation processes where 68 per cent of GCCs are operationalising their parent organisation’s digital strategies by providing scale, found the survey.

As GCCs continue to focus on transformation and innovation, the requirement for talent with niche skills in the areas of artificial intelligence/machine learning, cloud and open stack development, business intelligence, and cyber security continues to increase.

Almost 76 per cent of the respondents indicated an intent to move up the maturity curve by building a center of excellence and driving adoption, among others.

The ‘future of work’

When it comes to create organisational culture 51 per cent of the respondents found having a digital mindset as a key focus area for cultural change followed by diversity and inclusion, innovation and workplace flexibility. The ‘future of work’ clearly emerged as Hybrid’, with 50 per cent of survey participants believing that half of their workforce will work remotely for the next 12 months. GCCs realised the need to enhance their overall Employee Value Proposition (EVP), where 64% will redefine their EVP to make it more employee centric.

Subir Mehra, Partner, GCC Sector Lead-FS, EY India, “Upskilling and reskilling employees with niche and next-gen technology skills remains the need of the hour to augment the talent pipeline. In the long-term, collaboration with start-ups, industry bodies and educational institutions will also play a key role to build a business-deployable pool of resources. These steps will help GCCs continue to act as an innovation engine and drive new ideas across their organisation.”

With more and more employees working remotely, GCCs believe there is an elevated risk associated with data leakage. Over half of the survey participants believe that a major risk to their current operations is their inability to deliver transformation programs at a desired pace. 58 per cent of GCC leaders, feel that there is an increased risk of a data breach due to increased remote working, while 73 per cent feel there is a risk to confidential information due to increased cyber-attacks. Forty-three per cent of the survey participants currently have cyber teams, while 33 per cent have centers of excellence in other locations.

Further, GCC leaders were fairly confident about their ability to manage endpoint security with 60 per cent GCCs believing that risks associated with a high turnover of employees or access management were well managed.