Peza tells BPOs: Return to your offices while we pursue WFH appeal

The Philippine Economic Zone Authority (Peza) said it would ask a review board headed by Duterte’s chief economic manager to reconsider a decision requiring business process outsourcing (BPO) firms back in the office by April 1.

In the meantime, Peza is advising BPOs to comply with the decision of the Fiscal Incentives Review Board (FIRB), which is chaired by Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III.

“Peza will still file its appeal for reconsideration on the denial by the FIRB. We hear the concerns of our investors and their workers and we will continue to lobby for it,” Peza Director General Charito Plaza said in a statement on Monday.

“For the meantime, I call on our enterprises to follow the decision of the FIRB to avoid any penalties,” she added, while noting they also wanted the FIRB to consider a hybrid working scheme whereby 40 to 60 percent of the industry would work from home (WFH).

Government guidelines placed earlier in the pandemic allowed the BPO industry, the largest employer in the private sector, to keep its tax breaks even with 90 percent of its employees working from home.

FIRB had said it would only allow this setup until the end of March despite several pleas from the Peza and the industry to extend this until September.

The pandemic has changed the way the industry viewed remote work, which used to be unimaginable.

Jack Madrid, president of the IT & Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP), said in a recent interview with the Inquirer that the industry realized it could still grow even with its employees doing work remotely.

23,000 new jobs in 2020

This setup has helped the industry thrive despite the lockdowns, creating 23,000 new jobs in 2020, even as the crisis pushed the country’s unemployment rate to its peak in 15 years.

Its workforce grew further by 8 percent in 2021, adding about 100,000 new jobs, while revenues went up by around 12 percent to a total of $28.8 billion, according to IBPAP data. By the end of last year, IBPAP said around 60 percent of the industry worked remotely.

“We have discovered that our work, the work of our industry, the work being done by the 1.4 million Filipinos, can be done at home,” said Madrid. “We were able to achieve that without sacrificing productivity and customer satisfaction ratings, based on what we have gathered. I think we did not lose any business. In fact, we grew.”

BPO firms abroad, including those in India, the Philippines’ biggest competitor, will likely allow employees to continue to work from home even after the pandemic, according to a previous Inquirer interview with officials of the Everest Group, a research firm that advises 1,000 global companies in outsourcing their services.

India is already adjusting its policies and tax breaks to support a remote work setup. The Philippines, said the officials, should do the same or get left behind. INQ