When Business Continuity Overshadows Employee Welfare: Lessons from the Cebu Earthquake
The September 30 Cebu earthquake rattled more than buildings—it exposed cracks in how organizations balance employee welfare with business continuity. Reports that some BPO firms forced staff to remain on production floors or offered incentives to continue working amid unsafe conditions reveal a troubling gap between legal mandates and operational decisions.
Employee Welfare Under Legal and Ethical Lens
Under Philippine law, employers are duty-bound to prioritize safety:
- Republic Act 11058 (OSH Law): Employers must provide a safe and healthful workplace, maintain accessible emergency exits, conduct regular drills, and suspend work when there is imminent danger; workers are protected when refusing unsafe work. (Lawphil)
- DOLE Department Order 198-18 (IRR of RA 11058): Operationalizes RA 11058, reinforcing the right to refuse unsafe work and DOLE’s authority to issue work stoppage orders in cases of imminent danger. (CDA PDF)
In contrast, business continuity agreements in the BPO sector often bind companies to strict service-level agreements (SLAs) with uptime/response targets tied to penalties and reputation—pressure that can push management toward premature “business as usual.”
The tension is clear: employee safety vs. client deliverables.
The Empathy Gap in Crisis Management
Incentivizing workers to remain during unsafe conditions with double pay or meal allowances may seem generous, but it signals a transactional, not empathetic view of safety. For employees, the choice is stark: protect their lives and family or protect their pockets. Without empathy, workers perceive management as valuing contracts over people.
Misaligned Expectations: When Communication Breaks Down
The Cebu earthquake didn’t only reveal a lack of emergency communication—it showed a deeper misalignment of expectations between management and employees.
In many companies, employees assumed that leadership would prioritize evacuation, while managers—pressured by business continuity targets—expected staff to keep operations running “until further notice.” The silence and confusion that followed were not just failures of communication but of clarity and foresight.
If no shared protocol exists for crisis response, that’s a leadership foresight issue—management failed to anticipate and define roles during emergencies.
But if a protocol does exist and employees were never informed, that’s a communication and HR accountability issue—for failing to integrate crisis roles and safety expectations into onboarding, orientation, and employment contracts.
In short: employees didn’t know what management expected, and management didn’t secure employee buy-in on what continuity really means. That gap bred frustration, fear, and mistrust—especially in a sector where people are both the product and the brand.
A Credible People First BCP
The complaint of some BPO employees exposed the seeming absence of credible business continuity planning (BCP):
- At company level: Many responses were reactive—“stay longer, earn more”—instead of tested evacuation drills, alternate site setups, or worker logistics.
- Industry-wide: Despite Cebu’s 200,000+ BPO workforce, it appears there is no unified continuity framework balancing Philippine OSH law with global SLA pressures.
By contrast, sectors elsewhere often co-design frameworks across firms. Examples:
- Philippines – PDRF (Private-sector coalition): Ongoing business continuity & organizational resilience programs, drills, and technical assistance that balance employee protection with recovery. PDRF
- Toyota – Great East Japan Earthquake (2011): Toyota prioritized people first and then rebuilt resilience—supplier mapping, faster assessments, and recovery protocols—before scaling production. (Toyota Global)
- Honda Thailand floods (2011): Suspended production, then restored it with future planning, including flood protection walls and supply chain adjustments. (Honda Newsroom)
What Peer BPO Hubs Did Right
- Chennai floods (2015): IT-BPO firms like TCS & Cognizant shifted workloads to other cities, arranged buses, and enabled WFH. (Economic Times)
- Accenture Philippines (Typhoon Odette, 2021): Publicly announced guidelines and assistance for employees affected by Typhoon Odette on its verified page. (AccentureJobsPH Facebook)
These examples prove continuity and welfare are not mutually exclusive. When people are protected first, organizations recover faster.
ASK Framework
- Align – Review SLAs with clients and integrate force-majeure/employee-first clauses; ensure BCPs comply with RA 11058 and DO 198-18, not just client contracts. (Lawphil)
- Strengthen – Train managers for empathy-driven crisis response, evacuation protocols, and ethical decision-making; safety officers should be as prepared as team leaders. (For structure, many firms map to ISO 22301 BCM good practice.) (BSI Group)
- Kickstart – Build trust with regular drills, transparent comms, and employee voice mechanisms; empower workers to report hazards without retaliation. (PDRF)
Moving Forward
The Cebu earthquake BPO response offers a hard but necessary lesson: continuity without clarity is chaos.
When expectations are unspoken, assumptions multiply. Some leaders assume loyalty means staying at your desk; some employees assume compassion means going home. Neither side is wrong—but both suffer when foresight and communication fail.
The way forward is to align expectations before the crisis—not during it. HR and line managers must define and communicate safety and continuity responsibilities clearly in orientation and job contracts. Management must model foresight, empathy, and preparedness, not just compliance.
Because when the ground shakes—literally or figuratively—it’s not the absence of policy that breaks trust, but the absence of alignment.
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