CONCENTRIX + Webhelp, a business process management (BPM) firm and the largest private employer in the BPO space in the country, commits to adding more jobs in Cebu with the opening of its newest site in Cebu Exchange Tower.
The Cebu Exchange site is the company’s ninth office in Cebu and 52nd in the country. It reinforces Cebu’s position as a significant hub for global business operations, said Amit Jagga, Concentrix + Webhelp’s senior vice president and country leader for the Philippines.
Concentrix + Webhelp is present in 20 cities in the Philippines and employs over 100,000 full-time employees.
Board of Investments-Cebu head Floreza Alpuerto said the expansion of Concentrix + Webhelp is a big boost to Cebu’s growing economy.
“This P900 million-plus project here at Cebu Exchange is expected to pour in around P1.74 billion worth of output to the economy and an estimated P1.23 billion contribution to household income,” said Alpuerto during the site launch on Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023.
The green office tower located just across Cebu IT Park houses over 4,500 employees (from both new and existing businesses) of Concentrix + Webhelp and is now the largest staffed site in the Philippines. It consolidated its two sites (i1 and i2) in Cebu IT Park into Cebu Exchange and hired a thousand more employees.
Dagny Estacio, senior director of client success, clarified that they aren’t giving up their spaces in these two office buildings as they still serve as their swing space.
‘Workplace of the Future’
The Cebu Exchange site was dubbed at the launch as the “Workplace of the Future,” as it houses a combination of innovative, state-of-the-art amenities that meet diverse workforce needs and sustainable facilities aligned with the company’s environmental, social and governance focus.
The new site features amenities like a tech zone, workout and wellness zone, quiet zone, site clinic and lactation room, all-gender washrooms, and other flexible, inclusive spaces such as the entertainment and social zones which are multi-purpose activity areas that employees can freely use.
According to Jagga, the Cebu Exchange site currently occupies five floors of the office building but they plan to add two to three more floors due to the site’s good location and as the businesses of their clients improve.
“We are always on the lookout for opportunities,” said Jagga, adding that even as technology makes business operations efficient, companies like them still need more people to handle complex tasks.
“We are seeing that we do not need as many people as we needed in the past to do the same level of work. And that’s the reality, which is not just for the BPM business but all businesses across the world today. There is efficiency that is being built in... but I do believe that even after generating efficiency, we’ll need more people in the Philippines,” he said.
He hinted at more job hiring activities to happen approaching the holidays.
“We are in the middle of our season. As you know, there’s a lot of spending that happens towards December because of the Christmas holidays. People spend a lot across the globe. It drives a lot of volumes for us in the Philippines, and that’s what we are doing right now. We’re hiring lots and lots of people by thousands of people to make sure that we take care of the season appropriately,” he added.
Moreover, Jagga is optimistic that the IT-BPM industry will hit its 2028 revenue and job generation goals to be driven by the new jobs that will emerge from Generative AI (artificial intelligence) and the Philippines still being a competitive destination for offshore jobs because of its talent supply and cost of doing business.
“GenAI is generating a number of new jobs for the Philippines as we are getting more and more projects in that area. Plus what is happening especially in North America and Europe, where there is a lot of inflation and there is a lot of cost pressure, there is a renewed focus on offshoring and the Philippines is one of the most important hubs that we have across the globe, from an offshoring arbitrage perspective. So that’s also helping the Philippines grow the number of jobs,” said Jagga.
Jobs in 2028
Under the Roadmap, the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines hopes to create 2.5 million jobs by the end of 2028.
At present, Concentrix + Webhelp is focusing on “a lot of reskilling and making sure that its staff is ready for the future.”
These skills include systems integration, data labeling, content moderation, high-end IT, and tech support.
Jagga said the workforce is now moving up into higher skills and because they are in the customer experience business, he said the company is “in need of people who are able to have much better communication. We need people who are able to connect, have a higher level of comprehension, and are able to focus on more complex issues.”
Office deals in Cebu reached 43,000 square meters, up 15 percent year-on-year, according to the first semester 2023 update of Colliers Philippines. The province accounts for 48 percent of total deals outside the capital region which reached 90,000 square meters, up 10 percent from the same period last year.
Other provinces and cities that cornered substantial office space deals during the period include Pampanga (24,400 square meters), Davao (10,300 square meters), and Cagayan de Oro (6,800 square meters).
According to Colliers, Cebu will remain on the radar of major IT-BPM firms given the availability of a skilled workforce, quality but relatively cheaper cost of living, good infrastructure network, and availability of high-quality office space.