The impact of coronavirus outbreaks is severe in many countries around the world. Businesses are unfolding new dimensions to accelerate growth and productivity. The global economy is still struggling to define the next normal. And Global Capability Centres have played a crucial role in defining how to succeed in this next normal.
GCCs helped in concentrating workers and infrastructures to keep going with business productivity growth. With the spread of the global pandemic, many entities adopted remote working, while the physical facilities of GCCs are shuttered. Surprisingly, the GCCs have been able to maintain the service levels even during the crisis. Amidst the uncertainties, the response is a clear combination of will, commitment and resolve on part of the GCCs.
Performance of GCCs during the crisis period:
GCCs identified three key performance metrics during the lockdown.
- Flexibility:
With the onset of COVID-19 and the succeeding lockdown, the GCCs swiftly transit their entire work staff to the remote-working arrangement. The majority of these centres have been able to successfully make this transition with at least 90 percent of employees adapting to the work-from-home scenario. Some organizations have created roaster-based WFM post the lockdown, enabling 25 to 50 percent of employees to work from home. The arrangement ensures long working hours with companies managing production peaks, and at the same time, offering employees breaks to manage their responsibilities at home. This flexible approach has significantly augmented the long–term resilience of GCCs. - Stability:
Two core factors determined the continuity of the new work pattern. In terms of client experience, the top-performing companies can manage WFM facilities while ignoring a decline in service-level agreements. On the contrary, average GCCs witnessed a 10 percent drop in their service performance in terms of job roles and complex tasks. Considering the employee experience, the top-performing entities recorded employee satisfaction with a higher level of engagement with the organization. The leading companies are spending 30 percent of their time on mentoring and training their WFM teams. This has helped employees feel connected and supported in the long run. - Collaboration:
Companies who had already crafted responsive capabilities can easily adapt to the complexities of remote working. The digitized operational practices and technologies to keep workers engaged and motivated have been the primary drivers of business productivity. On the contrary, entities that failed to collaborate among their team members suffered inefficiency in terms of productivity. Many organizations had to conduct multiple huddles to keep employees focused and motivated. However, lack of motivation creates a loss of employees, and these, in turn, are significant inhibitors to efficiency.
The surge of massive changes due to the global pandemic has forced organizations to accelerate the practice of collaboration, flexibility and inclusion to foster growth. Some companies have achieved 100 percent success across all these three metrics and have also been able to set a standard for operations and quality delivery of services. For making remote working generate more productivity, GCCs are reorganizing the norms of traditional work culture. They are creating new boundaries to make work from home more sustainable and goal-oriented.