Making a difference by creating more job opportunities

MANILA,Philippines — Trixie Whyte with her late husband, Brendan (a British national), set up Q2 HR Solutions in the spare room of a house in Makati in 2000. “We felt that we could do something noble by providing job opportunities for Filipinos,” Whyte, who sits as founder and chairwoman of Q2, says.  Whyte was born and raised in the Philippines, and remains a Filipino citizen.

Q2 has now grown to become a full-service HR company that has diversified its portfolio to include sourcing and recruitment, HR outsourcing, managed services, background investigation, organizational consultation and development, assessments, and other bespoke HR solutions. It currently has more than 3,000 deployed employees, and to date has served over 1,000 clients.

Q2 HR Solutions’ portfolio includes recruitment by design, a business unit handling executive search, permanent placement, and recruitment process outsourcing. Its HR by Design business unit offers strategic HR consulting, interim HR, organizational development and design, and assessments.

Global standards, Filipino values

Integral to the company’s success and continued growth is ensuring that they deliver quality service, with their internal process and policies up to par with global standards, from the very beginning. Starting with their first three multinational clients in the banking and pharmaceutical industry sectors that have remained with them to this day, they’ve added several of the country’s top corporations as their clients.

The commitment to quality service and global standards has made Q2 HR Solutions the first Filipino company awarded a Platinum Accreditation in 2016 by Investors in People (IiP), outside of the UK.

While the company sets its standards at a global scale, at the core of the business are their Filipino values and the commitment to help uplift Filipino lives through gainful employment. “We live by our core values, IMaGIn, which stands for: create positive impact; Embody Malasakit; Grit, we never give up; We are Grateful, we celebrate life and make the most of what we have and we aim to pay it forward and We Innovate through non-stop learning and looking beyond the current state.

A 20/20 vision

At the heart of the organization is Whyte as the visionary who believes in the capabilities of the Filipino. “I have seen our talent pool grow. I remember when the BPO industry started in the country, and we were called upon to fill all those positions for call center agents. This industry started from scratch, and now look at how it has grown,” she explains.

She has also seen how Filipino workers are in demand overseas. This is why she diversified and founded Orange International Recruitment, an overseas placement firm with a license to source and deploy Filipino professionals and skilled workers abroad in various industries including healthcare and construction.

As it marks its 20th anniversary in September 2020, Q2 has earmarked an aggressive growth plan that includes expanding their managed services internationally to create demand for their various business lines. She has already established a presence in Australia with The People Expert, a new subsidiary of the Q2 HR Solutions Group of Companies, which aims to deploy health care workers.

Whyte’s exposure with Orange International, sending nurses to England via a partnership with the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and establishing People4People’s managed service, have paved the way for this new venture. She is looking to further replicate this business model in other countries; plans are in place for expansion in Japan, UK, Sweden and Canada.

There are foreign businesses coming in too. She has assisted them in setting up their manpower resource and presence in the Philippines and helped build capabilities and manage their risks through a build-operate-transfer model.

For Whyte, her company’s growth has her countrymen at heart, with the knowledge that Filipinos are world-class experts and a rich resource for the country’s continued economic growth.