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AS part
of a plan to enhance the pool of workers in the
country’s business process outsourcing industry, the
Business Processing Association of the Philippines, or
BPAP, will conduct a national assessment certification
exam starting next year.
Maria
Jamea Garcia, executive director for talent development
of BPAP, said the move is aimed at attracting people
from other industries, like banking, engineering,
information technology and accounting, to work for the
outsourcing industry. “With the great potential of
outsourcing industry in the global market, we can expect
that there will be other requirements from clients
around the world aside from the usual customer service
and selling operations,” she said in a recent media
roundtable.
Garcia
said BPAP is encouraging as many people as possible to
work for the outsourcing industry. BPO companies offer
global standards in terms of facilities, training and
benefits, she added.
The BPO
sector is one of key players of the economy. In the last
10 years, it has provided employment to 235,000
Filipinos and earned $3.3 billion, or the equivalent of
two percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, for
the economy.
In its
road map 2010, the BPAP said it aims to employ 1 million
workers—a plan that carries the potential to contribute
$13 billion to the economy.
Garcia
said the certification program will not be a board
examination-type of testing. “It will be just a test to
determine the skills of the examinee mainly in English,”
she said.
Those
certified by the BPAP may go directly and apply with a
BPO company. “We hope [the] poaching of agents will be
minimized [once] the certification program is in place.
This will give prospective applicants wider choices when
they apply for a job,” Garcia said.
Also in
the roundtable, BPAP chief executive officer Oscar Sañez
said the organization is also partnering with Instituto
Cervantes to train more Spanish-speaking agents. “We
need to fill up the growing requirement of
Spanish-speaking agents because the Spanish and Latin
American markets are so big,” he said.
Sañez
said entering the Hispanic market will boost relations
between the Philippines and the Americas.
Since
there is a shortage of agents who can speak Spanish,
Sañez said BPOs are offering a starting salary of
P30,000 per month.
The BPAP,
Sañez will also launch a program to train agents in the
Japanese language for the outsourcing requirements of
Japan.
Aside
from good entry-level salary, studying Japanese gives an
agent the option to work in a time zone that is not much
different from Philippine time, Sañez added. |
