Sagility’s new Angels facility to provide over 1,200 jobs

GLOBAL SERVICE provider Sagility officially opened its fifth facility on Tuesday at Angels in St Catherine, which will provide employment for more than 1,200 more Jamaicans.

They will add to the more than 3,600 persons who are already engaged at four centres in Kingston.

Sagility provides business process management services in healthcare.

Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce, Senator Aubyn Hill, in his address at the opening ceremony, said that the new site is expected to generate significant income for St Catherine.

He noted that Jamaica continues to benefit from the economic contribution of the global digital services sector.

The minister said he is satisfied that Sagility employs “very qualified and highly specialised persons from within the healthcare sector”, noting that this aligns with the national mandate “to push Jamaica higher up the value chain of service delivery within the outsourcing sector”.

“This growth and expansion by Sagility confirm the capability and the capacity of Jamaica to move higher up the value chain,” he pointed out.

Hill said that Jamaica continues to be the best choice for investment in the region, citing, among other things, the growth in employment and reduction in the debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio.

“We have now corrected our debt-to-GDP situation [and] it’s much better than it was in 2013, when it was 147 per cent... . We expect that by the end of this year it will be 77 per cent, and much better than before the pandemic,” he pointed out.

Meanwhile, Sagility has recorded exponential growth since starting in Jamaica with only 50 employees in 2015.

Delivery Head for the Americas, Anand Biradar, said that St Catherine was strategically chosen as the site for the company’s new facility because it provides 45 per cent of the working population in the BPO industry.

“So, the Angels site checks all the marks, and it makes an ideal spot for us to invest in,” he noted, adding that persons employed at Angels should not have to travel for more than 20 minutes to get to work.

Biradar informed that the company is looking to introduce remote work in January 2024, in keeping with the framework developed by the Jamaica Special Economic Zone Authority for companies operating in these zones.

“As we emerge out of COVID into balancing work from office [and] working from home … Jamaica is looking to the 70-30 model, where 70 per cent of the workforce is working from the office and 30 per cent from home, effective January 2024,” he said.