7 Workforce Planning Trends GCCs Must Prepare For in 2026
As GCCs mature from execution hubs into genuine strategic engines, the way they plan for talent has to grow up too. Writing in CXO Today, Zinnia India's Head of People, Surabhi Sharma, sets out seven ways she expects workforce planning to change in 2026 — and the common thread is a move away from counting heads toward building capability.
Capabilities, Not Headcount
Sharma argues GCCs need to stop asking “how many people do we need” and start asking “what capabilities must we build,” identifying gaps in areas like AI fluency, digital product thinking, and cybersecurity rather than filling static job slots. That extends to redesigning work itself — rethinking tasks and decision rights rather than layering automation onto old processes — and planning explicitly for a blended workforce of people and AI copilots working side by side, with clear accountability for both.
Mobility Over Hiring
On the people side, she highlights internal mobility (moving talent across projects and functions instead of defaulting to external hires), a shift toward Tier II and Tier III talent hubs driven by access to skills rather than just lower cost, and reskilling treated as a core business continuity plan rather than a nice-to-have learning program. Success, in her view, will increasingly be measured by capability readiness and speed of deployment rather than headcount growth.
Workforce planning is no longer just about preparing for future talent needs—it is about shaping how future value gets created.
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Want to dive deeper? Read the complete list of trends on CXO Today.
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