Outsourcing firm Transcom Asia has denied there will be massive layoffs in its Bacolod operations following reports that close to 170 call center agents were retrenched this week.TRANSCOM ASIA is said to have implemented a strict performance audit, which meant letting go of some workers.
“Nobody has been exited. We need to go through process until we identify justification and until such time, I don’t want to speculate,” Philippine country manager Siva Subramaniam said in an e-mail yesterday.
On Tuesday, a text message from a call center agent circulated, claiming that when workers reported for work on Monday, six were being terminated because they had failed to reach certain targets.
As of press time, however, none of the complainants have publicly come out despite earlier reports that two of them were planning to file a case against the outsourcing company.
Mr. Subramaniam said he could not reveal exactly how many people would exit by the end of the year, if ever it happens, adding “this is a private matter between Transcom and the employees.”
“All I can say is that we have no massive layoffs and this whole affair has been blown out of proportion by the media,” he added.
Transcom Asia, one of the four major call centers operating in the city, opened on Aug. 1 in a 1,000-seat facility at Lopue’s South Square.
“We committed to 2,000 agents. We do have in excess of 2,000 agents in Bacolod already and still recruiting. We have had little or no challenges. We continue to get a lot of good candidates locally,” Mr. Subramaniam said in the e-mail.
Meanwhile, Bacolod City Councilor Jocelle Batapa-Sigue, chairperson of Bacolod-Negros Occidental Federation for Information and Communications Technology (ICT), said on Wednesday she had contacted a Transcom Asia official who also denied reports of a massive retrenchment.
The firm is “exiting the bottom 10% of the staff which is a common process they go through every quarter,” said Ms. Batapa-Sigue, who is also the president of the National ICT Confederation of the Philippines.
Transcom undergoes a normal process of regularly reviewing the performance of its workers, and those who fail to meet certain criteria are “exited to keep the health of the business,” she added.
However, before such “exiting” could take place, call center agents are trained and allowed to work for three months to see if their performances improve, Ms. Batapa-Sigue said. — Nanette L. Guadalquiver
Source: http://www.bworldonline.com/main/content.php?id=3409
