English speaking skills place Phl ahead in BPO

CEBU, Philippines - The innate ability of most Filipinos, either those living in rural or urban areas, to speak English fluently is enough to say that the Philippines has a big advantage in the outsourcing industry, a BPO official said.

“That’s a plus points for us, we have that talent everywhere even in rural places, we can speak English although not super perfect gramatically correct,” Accenture Impact Sourcing Lead Guia Bengzon said during the ICT/BPM forum in Cebu Monday.

She urged Philippine outsourcing firms to tap the people in the provinces and provide them with outsourcing jobs. The initiative is called Impact Sourcing.

“What can we do as an industry?” she asked her colleagues in the BPO sector, challenging them to do the action now and identify what their organizations can do to achieve inclusive growth.

Their company first introduced Impact Sourcing in Africa and later on in India, reaching out to potential workers that were not given the opportunity to work in the industry.

“Our Indian counterparts have challenges in speaking English and fact is we are more capable,” she added, noting that it is now high time to bring employment closer to rural communities and discover the talents of people living there.

“We are the proponent of outsourcing so we should not be afraid to outsource ourselves,” Bengzon stressed.      

The company’s first rural BPO center started in Tanjay City, Negros Oriental employing 41 workers with the help of a local firm, Visayan Knowledge Process Outsourcing.

Because of this, she said, Tanjay’s average annual household income increased by 33 percent, from P139,600 to P186,000, adding also that each job they provided has impacted four to 10 members of the family.

She also added that the presence of rural BPO centers would also prevent residents from leaving their hometown and going to the city to find work: “So this would also help maintain the family relationship.”

The company partnered with schools in the province to teach the residents on outsourcing skills and professional services, emphasizing the importance of “thinking out of the box and continuing public-private partnerships and linking with educational institutions to deliver what is required in the industry today.”

Currently, Accenture has four rural BPO locations, three in India and the one in Tanjay City is its fourth. It has a workforce of more than 32,000 employees in the Philippines. — (FREEMAN)