BPO manpower supply ample, but skills scarce

Cebu continues to enjoy the influx of new investors in the thriving business process outsourcing industry despite the economic slump around the world.

An Australian BPO company believes that Cebu still has enough room for growth and more than enough talents to supply the demand of the industry, however still needs to be honed to meet the standards of emerging trends in the BPO business.

“Cebuanos are good employees with high work ethics and you can do a lot of things in your business with people like that. Here, employees even from the lower level positions are of higher quality than most Americans or Australians but they have to believe in themselves because they have no idea how intelligent and capable they really are,” said Techgrowth Solutions Inc. chief executive officer (CEO) Michael Burdette.

Burdette noted that Filipinos connect better with the Australian and the American market which makes it a perfect place for their company’s growth.

Technology Growth Solutions (Cebu) Inc. formerly known as Logged On Cebu Inc. wholesales web design and implementation to Australian, US and European companies and they are currently expanding their business to include other back end operations such as copywriting.

Burdette underscored that at this time of global meltdown, most investors will rather go for good and viable projects and Cebu has enough number of skilled talents with high level of English proficiency considering the province’s high level of education system and its prime location which makes it an ideal destination for foreign investments.

However, he stressed on the need to provide further training especially on other back office solutions and systems, which is a growing trend in the sector that requires far different set of skills from that of the contact center industry.

He said that although Cebu has a huge pool of talented workforce, these workers need more training to improve their skills further to meet the requirements of the back office solutions segment.

Looking at today’s gloomy perspective of the economy, Techgrowth Solutions Inc. believes that a possible back lash could happen in the industry but they also anticipate a growing trend for more knowledge-based positions as demand for outsourcing will likely increase as companies abroad would seek for measures to cut on their costs.

“Some companies do not invest in training but Cebu has a huge pool of manpower. Investors just needs to look harder to find these talents,” added Burdette.

He stressed the vital role of the academe in forming the skills of the labor pool and said that as skills are changing in the industry, the curriculum in the country’s academic institutions must also be attuned to meet these changing demands.

“Usually they do not reinvent their curriculum. There are less and less programming subjects. The skills required by the industry are changing everytime but their curriculum does not follow,” said Burdette.

He said that their company is willing to help the academe develop a better curriculum attuned to the changing demands of the industry so that new graduates will be guaranteed a job after they finish schooling.

"We want to help develop their skills and we feel that it’s our obligation to contribute to the country’s education system to change the employment structure and teach people to be self sufficient. Foreign investors also have an obligation and we want to push the government, the private sector like the banks and the academe to get our acts together so that there will be no road block for influx of more investments here in Cebu," said Burdette.