Friday, August 22, 2008 Why fight BPO? By Agnes Cinco-Sequino Universityof San Jose-Recoletos
NO doubt, the plight of the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in Cebu largely depends on its capability to fight the challenges it is facing at present, such as the availability, accessibility and sustainability of a talent pool and the willingness of BPO workers to stay in their jobs. The industry must also face uncertainties that may confront it in the future.
The three speakers in the Sun.Star Economic Forum (SEF)—Bonifacio Belen of CEDF-IT, Oscar Sañez of the Business Processing Association of the Philippines and Yogesh Malhotra of Accenture—agreed that the future of the BPO Industry in Cebu seems bright, considering the talents and capabilities of our workforce, the available infrastructure and the vast market that we can serve. But the big question lies in our capacity to sustain its growth and to cope with the demands that go with it.
The BPO industry has contributed a lot to Cebu’s service-driven economy. In the past five years, growth has been enormous. A lot of other businesses—small-, medium- and large-scale—came into the picture to support the needs of the industry. Of course, sales in products, like liquor, cigarettes and condoms in stores near BPO companies, also increased.
As surprising as it may seem, there is truth to this. This surely poses a great challenge to the academe where I happen to be a part of.
In the study that I conducted—“An Environmental Scanning of the BPO Industry in Cebu”—a good number of respondents were affected by socio-cultural factors, such as attitudes and levels of education of the workforce. All the while, I thought that the greatest challenge for the academe is to prepare our graduates to be acceptable to these companies in terms of skills.
But becoming aware of this social cost opened my eyes to a much greater responsibility—that trying to equip our graduates with the skills required by BPO jobs is difficult enough considering the factors affecting their capability to learn (such as poverty, broken families, peer pressure etc.), but to mold these young people to be more value-laden and morally right is a lot more taxing, knowing the kind of culture or “acceptable norms” that they see and need to adapt to once they join the pool of workers in the industry.
It is no wonder that more and more parents are becoming apprehensive about their sons and daughters being employed in these establishments. To see their children work on night shifts wouldn’t have been an option, if it were not for the monetary benefit that it brings to the family.
One of the participants to the forum asked, What good can we get from these jobs that are rejected in other countries? But I agree with Oscar Sanez’s response, which is to urge everyone to see the “positive side” of the BPO phenomenon. And why not? If it can improve our way of life and raise the standard of living of the people, we should support it. If we don’t, BPO companies might go somewhere else.
We cannot deny the fact that it has given us hope for a better future as the industry’s contribution to the economy continues to grow. But to face the challenges would require the concerted effort of the industry, academe and the government.
