GLOBAL professional-services provider Accenture said on Tuesday it will continue to invest in Filipino talent to help maximize their full potential in today’s digital age and, eventually, become future-proof.
“The digital revolution is unprecedented. It calls for different kinds of talents than we’ve seen before. But we still need people, and we will still need people in the future,” Accenture Human Resources Director for Asia Pacific and the Philippines Jesper Madsen told reporters during the company’s press briefing in their newest office in Uptown, Taguig City. “At Accenture, talent is the most important asset. We want to make our people future-proof [and become] talents of the future.”
The company—which provides a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations for various clients here and abroad—currently employs 45,000 employees across their 23 sites located in Metro Manila, Cebu and Ilocos.
In 2015 Accenture spent more than $5 million on learning, delivering more than 1.9 million training hours to local employees.
This was included in its global investment of $841 million on the training of professional development of their work force worldwide, from September 1, 2014 to August 31, 2015, delivering 15 million hours of training, at an average of over 40 hours per employee.
“So we invest very heavily in training [our people],” he said, declining to divulge the company’s budget for this year when pressed about its investment plan.
He bared their continuous hiring across all business segments, approximately “in the thousands” throughout the end of its current fiscal year.
To develop each worker’s multi-skills, Accenture provides a combination of classroom-based training and digital technology and collaboration tools, such as myLearning Mobile Interface, Accenture Learning Boards, and Accenture Connected Learning Classroom.
The Accenture Careers Marketplace tool is also available, wherein employees can search and apply for open roles in all its locations around the world.
To date, around 1,100 Filipinos have been deployed overseas through the company’s Global Careers Program that allows employees to work abroad for a period of time, meeting with the clients directly for onshore projects.
Apart from investing in the career growth of its people, Accenture also gives them a “uniquely human environment,” where there is diversity across abilities, age, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.
Madsen said 50.5 percent of their employees in the country are female, which shows there is gender equality across all levels of employment within the organization.
For the members of the LGBT, Accenture has also implemented the Neutral Gender Benefit that allows their employees to extend their benefits to their partners regardless of their sexual orientation or preference, he said.
Also, persons with disability or PWDs are given equal-employment opportunity as their normal counterparts.
“For us, the key thing is the talent,” he said, while noting they also support and inspire the employees to pursue their passion and interests, as well as engaging them in volunteer work through their corporate citizenship projects.
Madsen revealed their plan of enabling further their employees become future-proof.
“One of the things we’re looking at at the moment is how people work in the future. Travel time is an issue in the Philippines for many people. So we’re looking at how we can optimize the time for employees or the people working in Accenture. That’s clearly something we have on the card at the moment,” he said.
“I think there’s a lot more we can do around the development side of our people. As we move more toward agile technologies, we will see more people working in a different way. So the whole working space—the way we set up in terms of how people work together—I think, is another area where we can do more,” he said.
Accenture was recently recognized by JobStreet.com as the “Third Most Aspired Company Filipinos Would Like to Work For.”
Moving up from fifth in 2014 to third in 2015 and 2016, the company is noted for its client-value creation and employee development.