BPO sector leading the way to the new frontier

Jamaica is being recognised for the ease at which its workforce has adapted to the current work-from-home reality, given the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the Jamaican authorities implemented various lockdowns, companies moved dramatically toward online channels, and had to accelerate their digital transformation process to accommodate rising demand for digital services. The business process outsourcing (BPO) sector is one of those leading the work-from-home transformation.

Gloria Henry, president of the Global Services Association of Jamaica (GSAJ), said the sector has been preparing itself for this adaptability. The GSAJ is the lobby association for BPOs in Jamaica.

“When it comes to our digital capabilities, I’d say we were in a good state of readiness, which despite the challenges allowed us to maintain certain levels of business continuity,” Henry remarked.

She pointed out that all the steps Jamaica took during the last few years were key to quickly incorporate technology and new practices like work from home.

BPO moving to work-from-home mode

Industries such as BPO, which employs 43,000 workers across the island, managed to move a large number of people into the work-from-home mode. Jake Becker, VP of Operations at Teleperformance Jamaica told Nearshore Americas newsletter that at the beginning of the pandemic his BPO company demand was met with a peak of 50 per cent of staff moved to work from home.

According to him, “our team members were escorted to their homes to help with set up and test system speeds. We reached a point where our clients couldn’t decipher our brick-and-mortar agents and at-home agents. This has been a process in which the government has played a big role in our decisions for how to scale work from home agents”. 

The GSAJ president explained that the ability of companies like Teleperformance to rapidly adapt their business operation is not a casual result.

“We had started upscaling the value chain with various GSAJ projects. We were already working to prepare the smaller firms, helping them to repurpose their business models so that they could be more prepared for the future. Larger companies were definitely in a better capacity to adapt,” Henry explained.

Work from home aided by digital transformation

Jamaica has made significant progress in implementing new technologies to support its digital ambitions. Leading telecommunications providers such as Digicel and Flow have heavily invested since the beginning of the pandemic to keep up with the demand growth, thereby aiding the push towards work from home.

In the case of Flow, the telecoms company has provided over 60 per cent of Jamaica’s fixed broadband service and 95 per cent of the country’s LTE mobile network, through massive investments to expand its capabilities after experiencing a 47 per cent increase in bandwidth consumption in 2020. Flow is also partnering with the Jamaican government to facilitate remote learning.

In a region where the pandemic has shown many government shortcomings, Jamaica’s public sector took consistent steps to accelerate the transition to digitalisation. Special Economic Zone regulations for Jamaica, which supports many of the firms within BPO sector, initially disrupted the industry’s ability to effectively transition to remote working.

Henry also told Nearshore Americas newsletter that, “Jamaica wasn’t a country that needed to correct labour laws to allow for remote work. We already had a framework for it, but we needed to get Government approval for a special facility under the Special Economic Zones Act to legally move computers from the special economic zones to agent’s homes”.  

The Jamaican government also designated the BPO sector as an essential service under the Disaster Risk Management Act, allowing it to continue to work during moments of lockdowns and curfews. For Henry ,this proves how important the industry has become to Jamaica as a major employer and foreign exchange earner.