Call center workers’ plea to BPOs: Don’t require attendance during massive flooding

MANILA – Call center workers are asking business process outsourcing (BPO) companies to be more considerate of their employees’ health and safety when heavy rains pour and cause floods as they did the past couple of days when the southwest monsoon enhanced the now typhoon Maring.

BPOs should not require all their employees to report for work during massive flooding, call center workers organized as the BPO Industry Employees Network (BIEN) Philippines said in a statement.

“It was business as usual. And we have received a lot of reports that different call centers were requiring (their employees) to go to work — although in a subtle way,” BIEN Philippines spokesperson Ian Porquia told InterAksyon.com.

A single absent or even tardiness is detrimental to the performance metric of agents and is being used by companies as grounds for termination, BIEN Philippines said.

“(We) understand the nature of a call center where it needs to meet the demand of clients especially for phone banking, customer service and technical support accounts, but companies should be more considerate of their employees’ safety and welfare amidst massive flooding and heavy rains,” it said.

Porquia said more than half of the estimated 700,000 call center workers are in Metro Manila, which according to the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) was at least 50 percent underwater Tuesday.

BIEN Philippines is also calling on the Information Technology and Business Processing Association of the Philippines (IBPAP), the “enabling association for the information technology and business process management (IT-BPM) industry in the Philippines,” to remind their member-companies to implement standard industry practices that ensure the welfare of their employees during such dangerous times.

Suggested reforms

Some commendable practices include allowing employees to skip work and avail of their emergency leave and assured employees that no sanction will be imposed on them, the network said.

Some employees who were already at work were given the option to stay. They were assured of their welfare and safety while inside their offices, given free food, and other needs since travel is no longer possible, it added.

For its part, the network of call center workers set up a hotline for BPO employees where they can post and report their work-related difficulties amidst the massive flooding and heavy rains: at cellphone number 0918-2182678, email tobienphilippines@gmail.com, or Twitter account @BIENPhilippines.

Registering an almost $13 billion in direct investments, the BPO industry contributed to the growth of the service sector, which is next to OFW remittances in terms of contribution to the economy, BIEN Philippines said. –InterAksyon.com