It’s a nervy time to be a frontline worker in a call center or back-office hub. Startups are advertising ‘AI employees’ and the likes of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz are talking of AI ‘productizing and unbundling’ the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector that executes the core functions of corporations around the globe. No doubt customer service, HR, and IT workers in the industry are wondering how their employers will respond—and whether their livelihoods are at risk.
At first glance, then, it’s surprising to see the world’s largest BPO firm, Paris-headquartered Teleperformance, ranking 16th on this year’s Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For – Europe list.
The €10.2 billion ($12 billion) revenue company, widely known as TP, has managed to keep its 500,000 people happy in the AI age by maintaining a human-centric culture even as it implements AI into internal and client-facing processes.
Alan Winters, TP’s global chief privacy and data ethics officer, and until very recently its chief people officer, says that some employees worry about being displaced by AI, but the key is to be transparent about what you’re using AI for and why. “People need to understand what’s happening. They’ll make the decision they need to for themselves, but the more they understand, the less fearful of change they will be,” he explains.
