This is the typical night in a call centre in
Manila.
A Filipino service representative is patiently
giving advice to an American customer regarding car insurance.
She is one of the 1.2 million Filipinos employed
in the Information Technology-Business Process Outsourcing or IT-BPO.
For the last seven years, Maria Aguilar, has
been working for an American-owned firm.
“We have rotation schedules.
Sometimes I work in the night shift and sometimes I work in the mid-shift. That
would be from 1pm to 10pm," says Maria.
Since most clients are from the West, a regular
shift is from 9pm to 6am.
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| The names of multinational BPO companies are displayed outside an office building in Eastwood, Quezon City, Philippines. |
Jobs at the IT-BPO vary—from making and
receiving calls to making animation and accounting services.
Jaren Atrero works for a Canadian company.
“Basically our clients are some who
are dealing with engineering, electric, mechanical kind of thing like
automation equipments.”
The IT-BPO industry generated US$22 billion in
2015, second to remittances of Filipinos abroad, which was at US$25.8 billion.
Leian Marasigan is a research specialist at the
University of the Philippines. She is finishing her PhD at the University of
Amsterdam by looking into the career path of employees in the IT-BPO.
“It is still mainly voice-based
work that we’re providing. Sixty percent of the businesses that are coming in
are voice-based; meaning, call centre, contact centre jobs. And then you have health
management transcription services that are also becoming quite big in terms of
the numbers of firms doing that particular kind of function,” says Leian.
The Philippines is called the ‘call centre capital
of the world’, after overtaking India four years ago.
The Filipinos’ English language skills and
affinity to the Western culture makes it an attractive destination.
But working in a call centre can be stressful.
Joel Contrivida gets at least an angry customer
a week.
“Especially in our kind of
account, we have a lot of irate customers, angry customers. We are in order
releasing. When they receive the item, it’s defective; there is something
wrong, lost or missing. So usually the customer would call us and they’re so
angry about it. So mostly we try to listen to them at first.”
Despite working night shifts and encountering
abusive callers, Joel says it is outweighed by the salary and benefits he gets.
Call centre work can also be home-based.
Chini Decujos works from home doing phone
surveys for a Canadian company.
“I think it’s an answer to
unemployment especially to people, especially for mothers. I’m not a mother but
if I am to put it in a context where a mother had to work, and had to look
after her children, then this can be an answer to add up to their income.”
Chini is paid 5 US dollars per hour, comparable
to the daily minimum wage locally.
The average starting salary for IT-BPO work is
450 US dollars a month.
With more than million Filipinos who graduate
every year and unemployment rate hovers at 6.6 percent, the IT-BPO provides the
well-needed jobs.
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| Accenture is one of the biggest employee of call center workers in the Philippines. |
“There are many opportunities in
the BPO sector that are opening up for many workers in the Philippines, both
from those who are unemployed, or long unemployed and also from recent
graduates who are transitioning from school to work. And there are also a very
diverse group of workers that are able to find employment in the sector,” according to academic researcher Leian Marasigan.
The outsourcing industry has been criticised
for moving jobs to low-wage countries like the Philippines and India to save
costs.
But former employee and now insurance agent Ely
Valendez sees the bright side.
“It’s true that multinational
companies for example in the US, Canada or Switzerland go the Philippines to
employ the local workforce because it is cheaper than the Americans. But it you
compare it to the local setting wherein they give higher salary than local
counterparts then it’s not exploitation at all. In fact it is beneficial to the
workforce because they’re paid higher, they get more benefits.”
IT-BPO firms that set up offices in
the Philippines are given tax incentives.
Dr. Jana Kleibert, who also did her
PhD research on the sector at the University of Amsterdam, says clearly the
benefits of having the IT-BPO are there.
“The salaries are above
average compared to other jobs within the Philippines. Also the
government is capturing some revenue through the taxes of employees’ salaries.
But if you look beyond that, there’s not much value capturing happening because
most firms in the offshore service sector in the Philippines are foreign-owned
firms so a lot of the profits were not necessarily reinvested in the
Philippines but will be transferred abroad.”
Dr. Kleibert suggests that the
Philippines should do more.
“I would think one
important thing is to strengthen domestic entrepreneurs who have been existing
in the industry but lots of Filipino-owned firms were bought by foreign
firms…Also support small and medium but also large Filipino companies that try
to export services to global markets and make them more competitive. The second
important part and related to that is to strengthen the education system, to
have more Filipino workers being able to take on management functions, to have
run their own businesses and firms,” she ends emphatically.
It is interesting to watch how the new administration in the Philippines will treat this sunshine industry in the coming years. Will it allow the current industry players to thrive or will give more support for homegrown companies to take charge?
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