Document and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) company Xerox indicated last Thursday that the issuance of bonus payments to workers by a payroll system was a mistake which has been corrected, following reports from employees in its Jamaican workforce that bonus payments which had been assigned were withdrawn.

Workers on Thursday said pay advice posted online from the Monday preceding December 22 indicated a sum labelled “bonus”.

However, when many visited the bank last Thursday, they found only their basic pay, without the promised sum.

It is traditional for some companies to give bonus payments to workers at Christmas, both as a reward for hard work and as profit share.

The Jamaica Observer understands that mass confusion reigned on December 22 when the discovery of the reversal was made. Workers said that the response of management was that assignment of the bonus in the first place had been a mistake.

Queries made by the Business Observer to the company confirmed this as the reason for the bonus reversal.

According to Kevin Lightfoot, Director – Global Communications of Xerox, who is based in Dallas/Fort Worth in Texas in the United States: “Xerox has clear policies regarding its payroll and remuneration schedules, including its bonus plans. All employees who are eligible for bonuses will receive those incentive payments. Unfortunately, some inaccurate information was temporarily posted on an internal payroll system that has since been corrected and updated with correct information regarding incentive payments. If employees have questions about a bonus payment, they should escalate to their manager.”

Lightfoot added, “There has been no impact to our business operations.”

Xerox’s BPO operation is a Fortune 500-scale business process services company with expertise in transaction-intensive processing, analytics and automation. For the company, which also provides digital technology software and services, the BPO arm represents US$7 billion in 2015 revenue and 96,000 employees worldwide.

Xerox employs some 6,500 people in Jamaica — making the Jamaican team the fourth-largest concentration among the company’s 130,000 workforce, following the US, India and the Philippines.

With 11 locations on the island, Jamaica provides support for corporations operating in industries such as health care, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, retail, transportation, and high-tech.

In June 2016, country manager Leroy Reid told the Nearshore Americas weekly journal that Jamaica was outshining other groups in North America.

The Nearshore interview written by Bianca Wright is entitled “Why Xerox Jamaica’s BPO Workforce Is Far Outperforming Its North American Counterparts.” It was posted online at nearshoreamericas.com on June 1 this year.

“The huge workforce combines loyalty and productivity, boasting the lowest attrition rate among all Xerox locations and consistently high client quality ratings. A recent 98.5 per cent quality rating for a healthcare client, for example, was directly related to driving higher plan enrollment,” the article said.

In further comment the publication said, “Reid, the VP and Jamaica country manager at Xerox, is passionate about what the people of Jamaica have to offer, particularly his own employees: ‘I am so amazed, so pleased with the capacity, the capability and the commitment of our people. Without them, Xerox in Jamaica would not be a success, the BPO sector in Jamaica would not be a success, and the government would be struggling to identify a sector that can deliver job creation at the same pace as the BPO industry’, he said.”

In late 2009, Xerox bought the Dallas-based ACS, parent of the Jamaican company E-Services, for about US$5.75 billion in cash and stock, continuing its expansion as the largest single BPO employer on the island.