BPOs this quarter will primarily focus on improving and increasing their delivery of services to customers, the holiday season being a massive driver in business activity across many industries, especially in consumer-facing/customer service roles. So what do BPOs need to do to increase their output and provide better value to customers? Looking at their focus for this quarter, we see two main objectives:

• Increase the recruitment of temporary staff
• Reduce costs of operation

To meet these objectives, BPOs should be considering secure bring your own device (BYOD) solutions for their WaH deployments:

Recruitment of temporary staff.

1. Expanding their hiring pool

Why would they want to do this? Well, there is the risk of saturating the hiring market, where an organization with high staff turnover (such as BPOs) shrinks their hiring pool in specific locations, where the company ostensibly runs out of new people to recruit. As one can imagine, this makes a push for hiring new staff during busier periods (like now) more difficult. What can be done about this? Well, many BPOs are in a unique position due to the by-and-large acceptance of Work at home (WaH). It is easier for them than most companies to diversify their hiring locations. That said, issues can arise with the need to distribute devices around the country or potentially to different geolocations worldwide, due to potential logistical complexity.
To get the most efficient use out of WaH for hiring staff, BPOs should look to implement a BYOD strategy as this will allow them to leverage devices already with the agent regardless of location.

2. Expedite agent onboarding

When considering seasonal staff, agents must be brought through their onboarding as fast as possible to immediately begin work. BPOs recently have struggled with this aspect of the employee lifecycle due to their shift to WaH. This is both because of the time spent with device delivery and the added complexity of onboarding agents remotely. BYOD once again solves this issue. No longer will agents be waiting on devices to be delivered as they can simply use their own machines to work. Remote onboarding itself can also be expedited with a device readiness tool; these software based solutions ensure BYOD machines are compatible and compliant with the company’s needs.

3. Embrace a flexible system for agent management

Due to the demand this period can put on customers, the agents operating under these customers must be able to quickly adapt if their requirement changes or if updates are required (an example could be that the company in question now requires all agents to have specific security certification on their endpoints). This is why it is essential to have a dynamic central management system in place. IT must be able to quickly make changes to the settings & policies of agent machines, whether it is based on the requirements of separate customers, or a new change in security requirements. Most solutions meant to secure and improve BYOD offerings come with some form of centralized management.

Costs of device delivery

4. Eliminate logistical costs & delays

When attempting to supply WaH to remote agents at any scale, logistical complexities rear their ugly heads. As the hiring and fast onboarding of agents is a priority this quarter, devices must be sent out at a rapid pace. Taking on average of 2-3 days to reach the agent, companies can expect delays between hiring a new agent and the beginning of their actual onboarding process due to logistics alone. This is on top of the actual cost of operation for device logistics, often being 25% of the overall cost when supplying devices to agents. Check out this blog by Mark Hillary, who further breaks down the cost of laptop deployment for WaH agents. BYOD both eliminates time and money spent on device logistics. In order to get the most out of the BYOD model, BPOs should look towards software based solutions, ensuring company software to be centrally deployed to the agent’s device without any need for physical delivery.

5. Ensure against device loss upon contract completion

The reality is that not all of the staff being taken on in the coming months will stay on past January, often hired on short-term contracts to meet customer demand during this busy period. The resulting staff turnover often brings complications to any WaH deployment if there has been equipment sent to the agent. Upon completion or termination of their contract, the BPO has to attempt to recover the equipment that has been sent to the agent, or replace the equipment entirely. Embracing BYOD allows BPOs to save on costs by eliminating the need for the costly recovery/loss of these devices. BYOD solutions like Secure Remote Worker can allow for the remote uninstallation of software and applications, meaning not only are devices not causing any extra cost to the BPO, but the risk of data leakage from ex-agent machines is eliminated.

What solution should you be looking at? Look no further than Secure Remote Worker

So we can see that BYOD offers the answers to the issues of recruitment and cost, but is it secure? This is where Secure Remote Worker can benefit BPOs. Secure Remote Worker is the secure BYOD WaH enablement solution preferred by 7 of the top 10 global BPOs.

Conclusion

By using secure BYOD, a BPO can substantially enhance hiring, onboarding, and agent management; in terms of quality of hire, speed of agent acquisition, and ease of agent management. Further, BYOD can cut costs by eliminating the need for logistics and device recovery, all while ensuring a compliant and scalable remote working environment.