Manpower shortage slows BPO growth

CEBU, Philippines - The problems on human resource supply continue to impede the Business Process Outsourcing industry in Cebu from achieving a fully-emerged status, this according to the Cebu Investment and Promotions Center (CIPC).

“To become an emerged international BPO destination, we need more people. We just don’t have enough people. Today, we don’t have to attract more BPO investors, because everybody is expanding, no one is downscaling, the problem is we don’t have human resource,” said CPIC managing director Joel Mari S. Yu.

According to Yu, if Cebu can produce 100 thousand people outright, existing BPO companies here will hire them all. However, because of shortage of manpower, existing BPO companies now are struggling to get people from outside of Cebu and neighboring provinces.

Cebu has been named as number one emerging BPO destination by Tholons for two consecutive years from 2008 and 2009. This time, the challenge of Cebu is to become an emerged destination for BPO.

In October of last year, Tholons, a leading full-service strategic advisory firm for Global Outsourcing Investments, released its latest report putting Cebu as number one Emerging Outsourcing City” in the world. This is for the second time around.

The same report in 2008, also put Cebu in the number position as an Emerging Outsourcing City, bested other cities in the world such as Shanghai and Beijing in China, Krakow in Poland, Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.

Yu said unless this manpower shortage will be addressed, Cebu can easily be deemed as the top BPO destination in the world.

At present, Cebu only employs a total of 60 thousand people working for the BPO related companies. In Metro Manila on the other hand, the industry employs over 500 thousand people.

Cebu produces an average of 23 thousand graduates a year, supposed five percent will quality to immediately work in BPO companies, Yu said “we can only supply 1,500 people a year,” Yu said.

Including graduates of informal training programs established by private companies and some BPO in-house training facilities, Cebu can only provide 5,000 people than can immediately qualify for BPO jobs.

“The problem is still human resource. We don’t have enough people. One of the requirements in achieving an emerged destination, is the availability of manpower,” Yu said.

In his recent visit to Cebu Avinash Vashista, chief executive officer and founder Tholons urged Cebu to strengthen its manpower niche in order to sustain, or improve its position as leading BPO destination in the world.

The scale and quality of the manpower here is tremendous,” Vashista commented, adding that while India and China’s local workforce maybe “ten to twenty times more” than in Cebu, the latter’s IT employers have proven themselves to be of world-class quality.

Cebu’s strength in having high quality workforce, he noted, has been a significant factor in the province’s ranking last year by Global Services and Tholons’ as the number one emerging BPO destinations among 50 key cities in the world.

“Cebu is now a leader among emerging BPO destinations but Cebu has to move and become one of the emerged destinations,” Vashista challenged local ICT players.

Vashista pointed out that in the bid to be among the line of emerged BPO cities in the world, Cebu has to further protect its manpower supply by engaging in more programs that will enhance the quality of its IT and IT-related graduates to increase their probability to be hired by IT and BPO companies.