From Office to Everywhere: HR Leaders Navigating Workforce Models 

A New Era of Workforce Models 

The pandemic reshaped how organizations think about work, leading to an ongoing redefinition of workforce models. HR leaders across industries now face the challenge of determining which model best fits their company’s needs. Should teams return to the office, embrace fully remote work, or strike a balance with a hybrid workforce? 

While some businesses push for a full return to office, the trend—especially among Global Capability Centers (GCCs)—is shifting toward hybrid and remote models. These structures offer flexibility and access to global talent but bring unique challenges in productivity, engagement, and maintaining company culture. 

This surge in remote and hybrid workforce models is reshaping industries worldwide. By examining trends and strategies, HR leaders can navigate this new landscape, fostering innovation and building resilient, future-ready workforces.

1. Meeting the Best-in-Class Workforce Model: Navigating Unique Challenges 

HR leaders today are tasked with not only choosing the right workforce model but also overcoming the unique challenges that come with each one. Whether remote, hybrid, or in-office, each structure offers benefits and requires thoughtful navigation. 

• Remote-Only Model: This model offers employees greater work-life balance and allows access to a distributed talent pool. However, HR leaders face hurdles in maintaining productivity, engagement, and innovation without in-person collaboration. There’s a risk that employee satisfaction and delivery quality may be affected by the absence of a physical office environment. 

• Hybrid Model: Offering flexibility and the best of both worlds, hybrid work is gaining popularity. However, it can lead to employees feeling disconnected from office culture. HR teams must work harder to ensure equitable evaluations between in-person and hybrid employees, and they must be deliberate in maintaining team cohesion. 

The trend toward hybrid/remote work is here to stay, with full return-to-office models being more common in Start-ups or industries that require constant in-person collaboration. It’s essential to explore these work models because they significantly impact productivity, talent retention, and the operational strategies of Global Capability Centers (GCCs), shaping the future of work within these organizations. 

Current State: Workforce Model Trends Across Industries

Organizations worldwide are constantly experimenting to find the ideal balance between flexibility, productivity, and collaboration. Zinnov’s Employee Benefits Study 2024 offers valuable insights for HR leaders looking to adapt their employee benefits strategies to meet the demands of a hybrid, post-pandemic world. The study underscores the importance of tailored benefits that cater to diverse, multi-generational workforces, with a particular focus on the unique expectations of Gen Z employees. Covering over 86+ India GCCs and 150+ centers across sectors like Software, Engineering, BFSI, Automotive, Telecom, Semiconductor, Gaming, and others, the report showcases how GCCs in India are evolving their models each year to align with these priorities. 

From 2023 to 2024: How GCCs in India are Embracing Workforce Models 

• Remote-Only Model: Adoption decreased slightly from 5% to 3%, signaling a shift toward in-person collaboration. 

• Hybrid Model: Usage rose from 73% in 2023 to 79% in 2024, highlighting the growing popularity of a flexible work environment. 

• Work-from-Office Model: Remained stable at 12%, showing that some organizations still prioritize a full-time, in-office presence. 

• Undecided GCCs: Decreased from 10% in 2023 to 6% in 2024, indicating a clearer stance among companies regarding their workforce strategies. 

These numbers reveal an industry-wide reassessment, with hybrid and remote work taking center stage. Understanding how individual organizations implement these models offers valuable insights into the strategies that can drive success in this evolving landscape. The upcoming case studies will illustrate how HR leaders are constantly driving value for their GCC by implementing remote-first and hybrid models. 

2. Voice of the Industry  

A. Flexera India: How Flexera Creates GCC Value through a Remote Workforce Model 

Flexera India has embraced a remote-first approach, offering flexibility while motivating employees to focus on in-person collaboration. In our interview with Dolfred Norbert D’Souza, Director of HR at Flexera, he shared how the HR team has successfully shaped a high-performing remote engineering workforce while driving global product innovation. 

Note: Remote-first offers both remote and office-based options, while remote-only is fully remote with no in-office opportunities. 

Since its incorporation in 2017, Flexera India has steadily increased its focus on ER&D and innovation, driving over 65% of the company’s global product development, and playing a crucial role in shaping their Platform & Data Strategy. The India GCC has been instrumental in developing a unified platform for IT management and leading Hybrid FinOps initiatives, which help clients worldwide optimize cloud spending and enhance financial control. 

Flexera’s core values of collaboration and social responsibility have also been central to its employee engagement strategy. Initiatives like AIKYA promote teamwork through volunteer activities with NGOs, while wellness programs, such as self-defence training, enhance physical health, build confidence, and improve personal safety for team members. 

Successes

• Strategic AI Leadership: Flexera’s AI Center of Excellence (CoE) in India drives global AI/ML/Gen-AI capabilities by providing insights and recommendations for IT cost optimization and data-driven decision-making. India team members play a vital role in shaping and delivering on global roadmaps, while the VP of AI promotes an AI-focused culture through sessions on AI/ML and Generative AI worldwide. 

• Early Success of Teams: As a remote-first company, an early success was establishing a team in India focused on cloud offerings. This team now leads customer interactions, drives product development, and co-creates features. 

• Global Roles: Flexera’s global leadership across R&D and Product ensures high-quality deliverables from India. The decision-making autonomy and co-location of teams minimize time zone dependencies and increase operational flexibility. 

• Global Customer Conversations: Flexera’s remote-first model enables seamless communication across 6 global locations and time zones, enabling teams to engage with customers in real-time and provide insights that drive product development and innovation. 

• Product Ownership in India: For certain products, there is partial local ownership of key product decisions, allowing for quicker action, reduced global dependencies, and better alignment with Flexera’s overall strategy. 

• Diversity and Inclusion: Flexera boasts a 38% female representation, with proactive efforts to promote cultural diversity across its teams. The focus on diversity is rooted in the belief that inclusive teams with a wide range of perspectives lead to more innovative and well-rounded solutions. 

Innovative Programs Driving Engagement: 

In addition to maintaining high engineering standards and scaling quickly, Flexera prioritizes collaboration through initiatives that drive engagement and innovation in a remote-first setup. 

• Day of Connection: Flexera organizes quarterly in-person events to foster relationships through team lunches and outings. These initiatives extend beyond social gatherings, including training sessions on relevant topics, networking opportunities through hosted events, and participation in conferences/summits. 

• Bangalore Leads: Flexera hosts a monthly knowledge-sharing series that brings teams together to showcase success stories in product development, customer use cases, strategic roadmaps, and future plans.  

• FlexHack: A global hackathon driven by the India team, focused on sustainability and security, while aligning innovation with business priorities that are now integrated into Flexera’s product roadmap. 

Challenges

Despite these successes, Flexera faces ongoing challenges in ensuring remote employees feel equally integrated into the company culture. Maintaining a strong sense of connection and inclusion in a virtual environment remains a priority for HR leaders, and it is an area of continuous focus as the remote-first model evolves. 

B. Sony India Software Centre (SISC): How SISC creates value for its GCC through a Hybrid Workforce Model

In 2022, Sony India Software Centre (SISC) transitioned to a hybrid workforce model under the guidance of Vinutha Raja, Associate VP and Head of HR. After two years of fully remote work during the pandemic, SISC began a gradual and flexible return to the office. This approach now includes a mandate of two in-office days per week, allowing employees to balance the benefits of remote work with in-person collaboration. Established in 1997, the company initially set up as an offshore center, SISC has since evolved, with India now playing a key role in owning the end-to-end product lifecycle, from conceptualization to delivery in Enterprise Applications, Entertainment and Electronics.  

The effectiveness of Sony India Software Centre’s (SISC) hybrid workforce model is rooted in its ability to blend creativity, collaboration, and market responsiveness while maintaining both in-office and remote engagement.  

Successes

• Business Realignment: Sony has shifted its focus from Electronics to Content Creation and other non-electronics businesses to better align with current market demands and reduce dependency on underperforming sectors. 

• Innovation Hubs: SISC hosts various innovation initiatives, such as the Code Premier League (CPL) and the Open House event. These locally driven platforms encourage employees to create solutions that can be showcased internally and, in some cases, get commercialized. Sony also promotes innovation through events like the Sony Technology Exchange Fair, offering global visibility for innovations developed in India. 

• Global Collaboration: SISC’s participation in global events such as the Sony Technology Exchange Fair (STEF) gives employees valuable exposure and the chance to engage in Sony’s global initiatives. STEF enables Sony teams worldwide to showcase innovative ideas and technology prototypes that support Sony’s strategic business goals. 

• Global Product Support: The teams in India directly support global customers, reporting directly to Sony’s primary business units, including PlayStation and Sony Pictures, headquartered in the U.S. 

Challenges 

A key aspect of Sony’s hybrid operations is its ongoing shift from traditional time-tracking to a more flexible, outcome-based model. This approach offers employees greater flexibility, but also requires continuous focus on real-time performance monitoring and maintaining high-quality deliverables. Managers are actively working to balance flexibility with the company’s productivity and performance goals. 

3. The Way Forward: A Roadmap for HR Leaders 

The future of remote and hybrid workforce models presents HR leaders with both challenges and opportunities. To thrive, leaders must embrace new strategies that promote agility, innovation, and employee well-being. Here are key recommendations for HR leaders navigating this transition: 

• Embrace Digital Fluency and Emotional Intelligence: Equip leaders with the skills needed to manage diverse, distributed teams effectively. 

• Build Trust and Ownership: Encourage employees to take ownership of their work, fostering trust and autonomy in hybrid/remote environments. 

• Combat Proximity Bias: Create policies and practices that mitigate proximity bias, ensuring that all employees, regardless of location, have equal opportunities for growth and recognition. 

• Support Mental Health: Develop initiatives that address mental health challenges, creating a supportive environment where employees can thrive in any work model. 

• Lead with Authenticity: HR leaders must embody company values and reinforce the employee value proposition (EVP) through authentic, visible leadership. 

The shift in hybrid workforce models strategically aligns organizational goals for innovation and performance with the multi-generational workforce’s demands for flexibility, ownership, and equal opportunities. This alignment enables companies to attract and retain top talent, one of their greatest advantages.