Call centers back 4-day work week

By Richmond Mercurio (The Philippine Star), Sep 3, 2017

MANILA, Philippines – The call center industry, the biggest private sector employer in the country, has expressed support to the proposed compressed four-day work week scheme.

“It is actually best because for the people, they spend a lot of time in traffic so if you compress a work week, they will have more time for themselves and their families,” Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) president Jojo Uligan said.

He also ruled out any negative implications the compressed work week schedule may bring to contact centers’ operations.

“Will it impact our industry? There might be an impact, but because of the type of work we do and schedules, we would probably make it without any impact to us,” he said.

“Anyway, the number of hours they are working in a week would not be affected anyway, right? So that’s what more important to us (employers) and what will happen is there will just be more rest days (for the employees),” Uligan added.

The country’s contact center industry employed 751,207 people as of end-2016.

It targets to add an average of 73,000 new jobs annually until 2022, bringing it to 1.2 million employees by then.

By 2022, CCAP also expects the sector’s revenue to rise to $20.4 billion from $12.8 billion last year.

The House of Representatives approved on third and final reading last week a bill that seeks to institutionalize a compressed four-day work week scheme to promote business competitiveness, work efficiency and labor productivity.

House Bill 6152 allows business and government establishments to go flexible on their work schedules instead of following a usual five-day work week.

The Employers Confederation of the Philippines had earlier aired support for the proposal to increase the normal work hours per day under the compressed work week scheme.