The Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry have now opened up job opportunities to non college workers or high school graduates as it implements the ‘outcome-based’ system rather than degree-based in the hiring of workers.
The applicant has to pass the skills and competence assessment test before he can be hired even if he is only a high school graduate.
Non-college workers are mostly assigned to the most basic work in a call center like encoders and basic finance and accounting tasks. The higher technical level works like IT are assigned to college or degree holders.
The voice sector accounts for 67 percent of the entire BPO industry, which currently employs 640,000 call center agents.
With this development, Benedict Hernandez, president of the Business Process Outsourcing Association of the Philippines (BPAP), said that BPAP is pushing for a ladderized-system of education to enable these high school call center workers to move up the education and finish a degree.
Companies are also sponsoring the tuition of their call center agents, who are going to college or even for those taking up masters.
‘Since these workers would be grateful at their companies for making them finished college they would be more loyal and continue to stay longer in their jobs,’ according to Hernandez.
The BPO sector, which workload is mostly done at night, has a high attrition rate of 60 percent.
With this, the industry has continually come up with measures to help address the talent supply gap.
The Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) has also a program that provides further training to near hires so they would eventually be hired once they apply again in a BPO firm.
The BPAP has already forged a strong partnership with the academe and government, particularly the Department of Education, in coming up with a curriculum and courses for students who would like to have a career in the BPO industry.
