The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) is anticipating a boost to the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in the Philippines, noting a trend where the major industry players have begun posting announcements to fill up their manpower requirements.
In a press statement released Sunday, the labor department expressed confidence after a meeting with IT-BPO industry leaders where officials noted that the industry continues to provide employment opportunities amid the pandemic.
“We received information that some big companies have already given notice for their requirements, one of which needing at least 4,000 seats to be filled up before September,” labor department chief Silvestre H. Bello III said.
Bello said that the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent global recession will force the West to offshore more jobs in the industry, good size of which will go to the Philippines, particularly Clark, Cebu and Metro Manila.
IT Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP) president and chief executive officer Rey Untal said companies continue to hire to fill the demand of the BPO industry.
“The industry indeed continues to hire (despite the pandemic),” Untal said.
The meeting was prompted by a recent online survey of a BPO employees’ group which reported that four out of 10 BPO workers are either in floating or ‘no-work-no-pay’ status during the lockdown.
Untal added that IBPAP is taking the initiative to intervene and discuss the issues raised by the workers with the country heads of concerned BPO companies.
IBPAP, which counts the biggest players in the country among its more than 300 members, is the enabling association for the industry in the Philippines which employs over 1.3 million employees, according to the statement.
Meanwhile, the labor department is also appealing to the employees, who are still on a leave of absence, to return to work to help the industry continuously provide services in these difficult times.
DOLE has initially issued several guidelines for employers to protect jobs and prevent layoffs and retrenchments.
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