Singapore-based BPO firm looking to hire 2,000 work-from-home staff in Philippines

Singapore-based business process outsourcing (BPO) firm Everise Holdings on Monday said it was looking to hire some 2,000 work-from-home employees in the Philippines to boost its Manila operations.

In a statement, Everise cited the need to boost its Manila headcount which currently stands at 3,000, and the global headcount at 12,000.

The additional manpower will help cater to new customers of the company, as well as extended agreements with previous customers.

"We are a people-first company who has entrepreneurship and innovation in our DNA," said Everise founder and chief executive officer Sudhir Agarwal.

"It is critical that we live these values during a crisis to offer a superior brand experience," he added.

Over the weekend, Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said there could be some 6,000 job openings in the BPO industry due to the resurgence of the sector amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Data released by Leechiu Property Consultants (LPC) last week showed that the BPO sector accounted for 37% of office space demand from January to May this year, even with the quarantines.

According to Everise, it has invested millions of dollars to develop talents, tools, and infrastructure and security practices over the past two years to enable staff to work from home.

"We engineered home-based operations such as remote recruiting, virtual training and on-boarding, and business intelligence," said Agarwal.

"As a result, all of our solutions, including omnichannel customer service, tech support, fraud detection, and community moderation, chatbots and natural language interactive voice response systems, can be delivered from home," he added.

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) earlier this month reported an unemployment rate of 17.7% in April, reflecting an increase of 5 million jobless Filipinos to 7.3 million.

Bello countered the PSA's numbers, claiming there were only 69,000 unemployed Filipinos during the period.

Bello's claims were refuted by the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI), the country’s largest business organization, which said that its members alone reported a total of 3.5 million unemployed Filipinos. -NB, GMA News