OUTSOURCING company CSS Corp. sees its Manila operations as a primary driver of aggressive hiring through fiscal year 2021 after it had transitioned to 100% work-from-home operations prior to the lockdown.

“One hundred percent of our workforce currently is working from home without any disruptions to our customer commitments… but at the same time also making sure employee safety is first,” CSS Corp. Philippines Associate Vice-President and Country Head Arvind Appavu said in an online interview in March.

The technical support company, which Mr. Appavu described as “mid-sized” compared to larger outsourcing operations in the country, began moving its 1,500 employees to work-from-home operations on March 9.

President Rodrigo R. Duterte announced a Metro Manila community quarantine on March 12, then extended it to the entirety of Luzon on March 16. Metro Manila remains under a relaxed lockdown until the end of May.

Mr. Appavu said the company had seen a spike in demand as its customers mobilized to respond to the crisis.

“At this point in time, one of the things that we are seeing is there’s increased demand with most of our customers because of the nature of customers that we’re working with,” he said.

Most of CSS Corp.’s customers are technology companies, with telecommunications companies coping with demand to migrate connections to homes.

CSS Corp. also works with original equipment manufacturers that are now working with governments to support hospital networks.

The revenue growth of its Philippine operations is up 10% quarter on quarter in the fiscal year that ended in March 2020, ahead of the global company’s 4%.

The company will be onboarding 1,000 new employees virtually, and had given incentives to employees that had helped in the shift to work-from-home operations.

Mr. Appavu said the company would maintain its growth expectations set at the beginning of the year, but is watching for the further impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Outsourcing industry players recently said the Philippines might lose clients to other countries if it is not able to boost work-from-home connectivity, as well as ensure data security.

CSS Corp. said that prolonged work-from-home operations could create susceptibility to laptop and desktop hacking.

“To tighten the security measures further, we have doubled the monitoring on systems and networks to safeguard our data integrity,” it said. — Jenina P. Ibañez

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