Sykes Philippines assures employees not involved in fraud incident won't lose jobs

Sykes Philippines on Wednesday clarified that employees not directly involved in a recent incident -- said to be a fraudulent scheme -- will not lose their jobs, even as its client Google pulled out an outsourced work from the local firm.

In a statement, Sykes Philippines said it has already taken steps to address the incident where employees reportedly stole and converted some P60 million worth of Google gift cards into bitcoin.

"Contrary to social media posts, however, this has not resulted in the loss of jobs for any employees not directly involved in the incident," the firm said.

"While there have been business changes that may have impacted some groups, we have ensured that all our hardworking employees are reassigned to other programs," it added.

This comes as the firm confirmed that some of its employees were involved in an incident, but did not elaborate on the violations made and their gravity.

"In the past few months, we learned that a small number of employees violated our standards of conduct. We took swift action on those employees in accordance with company policies," said Sykes.

"Sykes has clear policies and procedures to prevent, identify, and handle instances of fraud within our organization," it added.

The statement was released after Google said it has chosen to let go of Sykes as its partner outsourcing firm in the Philippines.

"We are constantly assessing our business needs and have decided to shift this business to another vendor in the Philippines," Google said in a statement sent via mobile message.

GMA News Online has reached out for more details on the identity of the new vendor, but no response has been received as of this posting.

"We value the trust that our clients and employees put in us and will continue operating with the highest standards of quality and professionalism," said Sykes. -MDM, GMA News