Health scare in sunshine industry

IT seems there is another more potent threat to the country’s robust business-process outsourcing (BPO) industry other than the passage of a bill in the United States Congress that would require call-center operators to identify their location while giving US callers the option of choosing a local operator.

According to the story written by BusinessMirror correspondent Jonathan Mayuga that we ran on Thursday, the surge of “lifestyle diseases” among employees in the BPO industry is causing alarm among health experts who blame a number of “behavioral risk factors” due to the nature of their work.

Aside from their irregular sleeping practice, call-center agents are exposed to health risks brought about by their unhealthy diet, lack of exercise, excessive cigarette smoking and drinking.

Anthony C. Leachon, a member of the Board of Regents of the Philippine College of Physicians and consultant of the Department of Health on noncommunicable diseases, said worse, more and more patients of these lifestyle diseases like diabetes and heart disease are younger people, some of them not more than 35 years old.

Leachon said most BPO employees work at night and sleep during the day, which is not normal.

A study commissioned by the International Labor Organization (ILO) is now being conducted by a team from the Ateneo de Manila University’s Clinical Psychology Department on the lifestyle in workplaces, which include BPO companies.

As part of the study, the DOH is expected to come up with a protocol to help address the increasing prevalence in lifestyle diseases in the BPO sector, said Leachon.

Obviously, there are human and labor issues in the BPO industry that demand immediate attention from the government, labor organizations and industry players.

The high attrition rate in BPO workplaces is already proof of this. Young, energetic, enthusiastic people are enticed by the “work for fun” ads in call centers and realize that the work is difficult and highly stressful. The high stress level leads to a number of illnesses and employee burnout, as studies have already shown.

But what are we to do when such is the nature of the work to begin with? Indeed, there are several work issues in the BPO industry that create dilemmas, and not just for the government.

Take the night work shift, for instance. The Institute for Occupational Health and Safety Development (IOHSAD) said studies have shown how night work increases the risk of getting breast cancer for women shift workers, noting that cancer caused by shift work is not a compensable disease in this country.

The ILO book, Offshoring and Working Conditions in Remote Work, also said night work is associated with health issues such as sleep problems and fatigue. Nearly half of BPO employees surveyed in the book, including those in the Philippines, reported suffering from insomnia.

But despite this, in June 2011, President Aquino signed into the law the bill that lifted the night-work prohibition for women workers, seeing it as an equal-opportunity and anti-discrimination measure.

The reason behind the lifting of the ban on night work for women seems sound. The BPO industry is the biggest employment generator in the country, and almost 60 percent of its workers are women, so why should women be hassled by being required to seek an exemption from the labor department before they are allowed to work for BPO companies?

Also, night work is common among BPO workers, especially call centers, as they serve customers mostly in the United States in real time. So what choice do most workers have if these are the only jobs available to them in the country right now? It would not be right for anyone to ask them to shun these jobs, much more for the government to deprive them of the right to work.

But, as the ILO has also noted, it is also true that a good business model cannot be deemed good if it has such a high attrition rate.

There are other causes of stress-related health problems in the BPO industry for which something can actually be done about, like the excessive and tedious workload and performance demands.

The BPO industry could redesign work processes, especially in call centers, to allow workers to have more autonomy and make use of their qualifications.

People are the backbone of any industry. You have to take care of your people first. If you have a high incidence of illness, absenteeism and resignations, that can’t be good for business.

Looking at the long term, we are sure industry players would want to reduce the high stress levels and the health problems associated with it, so they can have more healthy workers for their labor pool and keep their costs down. It costs less to keep workers happy and costs more to hire and train new workers for the same jobs.

Of course, there is job dissatisfaction everywhere. In a perfect world, workers would love their jobs, work hard for their employers, get paid well, and stay in their companies forever.

We are not asking the BPO industry to be perfect, but if industry leaders could only change some of their practices, surely more young Filipinos would make a career out of their BPO jobs instead of looking at it as something to do for a few months. –The BusinessMirror Editorial