Growth & Jobs | Laws needed to encourage greater flexibility and global competitiveness of BPOs - Professional

LOWENFIELD ALLEYNE, managing director of Total Credit Services, a member company of The Jamaica National Group, is urging the Government to increase the use of technology to improve service delivery from the public sector, and, where possible, to use public-private partnerships to benefit from private-sector investments and expertise in technology.

Jamaica’s business process outsourcing (BPO) sector, he noted, is an ideal and proven partner and one the Government could rely on to handle aspects of its non-core services and focus instead on its core functions.

“The BPO sector is very agile, responsive, and has the expertise to invoke efficiency. Clients of BPOs find that there are some things that used to be a challenge, but after they have been divested, they operated differently and are more profitable. The same can be true for government,” he said while addressing the Ministry of Finance and the Public Sector Civil Service Week public forum recently.

The forum was held under the theme ‘The Public Sector: Anchoring Technology for Sustainable Growth and Efficiency’.

Alleyne, who was one of the speakers at the forum, referenced recent public-private sector partnerships, such as the back-end support for the Ministry of Health and Wellness’s 888-ONE-LOVE COVID hotline, and the Ministry of Finance and Public Service’s 888-4WE-CARE contact centre, as examples of successful partnerships with the BPO sector.

Turning to the performance of the BPO industry during the pandemic, Alleyne said the sector was the “life vest for a drowning economy”.

He noted that since the pandemic, the sector generated a 15 per cent growth in jobs, moving from 38,400 to 44,000 jobs, and contributed US$780 million to the economy in just one year ending June 2021.

“We have resiliency in this industry. Our uptime is in the 90 percentile range and we cannot afford to go down,” he pointed out, noting that the sector supports key industries, such as the financial, healthcare, communications and utilities sectors.

To support that growth and overall performance, Alleyne said the Government should enact legislation that will encourage greater flexibility and global competitiveness for Jamaican BPOs.

“We want to see legislation enacted that allows for work-at-home [arrangements] or WAH, for instance, to be a permanent feature of the sector. The Government was good in allowing WAH during the pandemic, but to be globally competitive, we must be able to function like a 21st-century workforce,” he said.

Being a part of a global ecosystem of services providers, Jamaica’s BPO sector currently provides myriad work options for employees in terms of the flexibility to choose how they work.

“You don’t have to stay married to a 40-hour workweek. If you are somebody who operates best at night, we can allow you to do that. Where do you find that flexibility? We offer that in the BPO sector now, but permanent WAH would enhance that,” he said.

State Minister in the Ministry of Finance and the Public Sector, Marsha Smith, who was the keynote speaker at the forum, underscored the need for the public sector to integrate technology into day-to-day operations.

“As a country, and specifically as a public sector, we must make better use of technology, and specifically information and communication technologies,” she said.

Another presenter of the forum was Gary Campbell, director of technology in the Ministry of Science, Energy and Technology.