‘Compromise’ Sought Between Gov’t, BPOs Over WFH Issue

In the ongoing standoff between the government and employees of business process outsourcing (BPO) firms, industry experts say there should be room for compromise.

“[The hybrid work ratio] should be somewhere between 30 percent and 50 percent of the total footprint,” David Leechiu, CEO and founder of Leechiu Property Consultants, said in an interview on “BusinessWorld Live” on One News on Tuesday, March 29. 

The issue is that beginning April 1, information technology or IT-BPO firms registered with the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) will have to compel at least 70 percent of their workforce to report back to office. That’s after a resolution allowing up to 90 percent of staff to work from home (WFH) without the company losing tax perks lapses on March 31, 2022.

Read More: BPO Employees Want Return-To-Work Order Suspended

Leechiu pointed out that the industry has continued to expand and thrive throughout the hard lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“If you look at the last two years, the BPO industry continued to hire people and that’s a validation that every time there’s a global crisis, the Philippines benefits from it by having Western companies move jobs to the Philippines,” he said.

That’s also the argument of the Alliance of Call Center Workers (ACCW), an employee group.

“We no longer have to brave traffic. Those of us who live in the province no longer have to rent in Metro Manila. Those of us who have children, we can take care of our children while [doing our jobs],” Emman David, the co-convenor of ACCW, told BusinessWorld Live in an interview on Monday, March 28.

“We have proven that work from home works and you know who agrees with us? Our employers, our clients. Our clients are usually very security conscious, but they decided to trust us with their information,” he said.

The Fiscal Incentives Review Board (FIRB), which has the last say in the matter and is chaired by Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, said in a statement that “the WFH arrangement is only a time-bound temporary measure adopted during the surge of the COVID-19 pandemic” and that people returning to the office would “pave the way for the recovery of local micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) that depend on IT-BPM employees for their livelihood.”

But their order comes on the heels of skyrocketing oil prices due to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which will burden all commuters – whether they take public transport or drive to work.

ACCW lamented that there has been no effort on the board’s part to listen to their side.

“The thing is, the government has not [even] agreed to a dialogue with us at this point in time,” David said. 

For a time, PEZA had lobbied on behalf of the industry groups and appealed to the FIRB to delay the return to office until at least December 2022.

But on Tuesday it backed down, issuing a statement saying they “hear the concerns” but that firms will have to “follow regulations as mandated by the law.”

In an earlier interview with One News, PEZA Director General Charito Plaza said they will instead push to institutionalize a WFH arrangement for BPO workers once the new administration comes in.

“But definitely, we will support the hybrid scheme because it is now being practiced by India and other countries,” Plaza said. India remains the world’s largest offshoring hub and is the Philippines’ biggest competitor in this industry.

“Tayo, because we are [bound] to follow the existing laws, we have to observe the 70-30 [onsite-remote ratio]. At the same time, ‘yung hindi naman maraming empleyado, baka pwede nang 100 percent go back on site,” she appealed.

Employee groups have been warning that many in their ranks would rather resign than go back to the office, which may lead to business disruption.

But Leechiu pointed out that most of the companies have renewed their office leases, signaling a return to pre-pandemic ways.

“I think because 98 percent of leases got renewed in the last two years, those leases will not terminate for another three to five years from today. So it's not like we're going to see this massive exodus of tenants,” he said. 

Leechiu pointed out that this follows the trend in the US – where big tech companies like Alphabet (Google) and Apple have announced a mandatory return-to-office policy beginning April.

“Many of the big tech firms and the banks [in the US] said we don't need the office anymore back in 2020,” he said. “And then in the second half of 2021 they realized that the setup doesn’t work and that they want everybody to go 100 percent [back] in the office as soon as possible. You're going to see [that] here also.”