BTR Fiji to employ almost 100 Fijians in a year's time

BTR Fiji which is an organisation that provides business process outsourcing services will be employing close to 100 people in the Western Division in the next 12 months as they have partnered with Market Development Facility that will facilitate developments and will market Fiji’s emerging business outsourcing industry.

Business process outsourcing organisations provide services for other organisations or businesses such as operating their customer service centres, doing accounting work for them and providing IT services.

Business Solutions, Tourism Services, Resource Management (BTR) Fiji Director, Brad Russel says they currently have 20% of their team working in the contact call centre environment but their main focus for growth is around back-office duties which includes administration support, accounts clerk executive or personal assistance, human resource recruitment specialists and payroll processing personnel.

He says they currently have 55 staff working from their headquarters in Votualevu Nadi and from another office in Suva.

Russel says they have the infrastructure already in place at their Votualevu Office to accommodate the job growth.

He adds once this target is achieved they will continue to raise the bar and grow more jobs for the West, and Fiji.

The Market Development Facility stated in a recent report published by IBIS World that Australia's outsourcing business was currently valued at FJD$57 billion, and the biggest beneficiaries are the Philippines and India.

Russel says Fiji can capitalize on this as we have are an English speaking nation and are close to Australia with four to six hours flight time from the East Coast to Fiji, plus a two hour time difference without daylight savings allows travel between countries and business conducted with the same working day across more hours, thus saving costs.

The Director adds that there is a need to invest in technology infrastructure as the cost and speed of the internet, could be a dissuading factor in opting for BPO providers in Fiji.

He adds that in order to remain a competitive BPO location Fiji must keep up with the developments happening in both India and Philippines.

Russel has also highlighted that BTR is currently in the planning stage of developing short courses for those that have been affected by job losses to maintain skills or to upskill them to be able to take on new roles, outside of the tourism industry.

He says prior to COVID-19 Fiji's people and culture drew tourists to the shores through the Bula spirit and that same spirit reigns post COVID-19 optimising resilience, perseverance, adaptability and collaboration and all qualities need to be embraced and maintained for Fiji to survive the brutal economic impact of the pandemic.