Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) has moved out of its iconic blue and white, multi-story office building on John F. Kennedy Drive, the company’s Chief Executive Officer Garry Sinclair told Guardian Business yesterday, explaining that the move has led to huge cost savings for the company.

Sinclair said 90 percent of BTC employees now work from home, an arrangement forced on the company by the COVID 

pandemic, that he said the company means to make permanent.

 Teams needing to work in the office will now do so on a schedule, with most people spending fewer than three days per week in either BTC’s Perpall Tract or Poinciana Drive offices.

Sinclair said maintenance on the building and electricity have been generating high overhead costs for the company, which began to move staff out of the building with the onset of the COVID pandemic.

This paper understands that BTC, which owns the building, has no immediate plans to sell it. 

“We have brought the cost of operating way down,” said Sinclair.

“Our JFK building, we have moved out of that completely now. We’re not going back there. We’re going to adopt a hybrid work from home/work from office situation.

“But all of our administrative employees who would have populated the JFK building, now are going to be between Perpall Tract and Poinciana Drive.”

He added that customer service and productivity scores have improved since BTC adopted the remote working model when the pandemic began to affect The Bahamas.

“Productivity shot through the roof,” Sinclair said.

“Our customer experience scores, what we call our net promoter scores, have never been higher. They are higher than they have been in seven to eight years, so customers have really liked how we have adjusted to deal with them.”

According to Sinclair, the days of having employees come into an office five days per week “are behind us”.

“There are some units that are not going to have to come into the office at all and will permanently work from home,” he said.

Employees have been provided with free internet and free entertainment packages at their homes to facilitate their new work environment.