Month: July 2014

Teaching A Person To Fish – The BPO Way

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” This in one of the most famous quotes used when it comes to empowering others to become independent and self-sufficient.

The primary reason why I left my career at Wells Fargo and moved to the Philippines to set up a business was the opportunity I saw to be a once in a lifetime kind of thing. My goal to empower Filipinos with basic analytics and decision-making skills that they could use in careers in the BPO Industry plays to both my strengths and my passions.

I see the BPO Industry as the biggest pool to fish in for fresh graduates. They are young and healthy enough to survive the working at night lifestyle, they are fresh out of very structured work environments which most BPOs are and in general they have a least a basic level of English.

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I see analytics and decision-making methodology as the pole they use to fish. By learning some basic terms, getting their hands dirty with some entry-level BI tools and by having an introduction to things like process improvement, they have head start over many other fresh grads and undergrads.

They can improve their fishing pole by mastering certain software and programming languages, but improving their English and by being mentored to look at a BPO job as the first step in a career not just a job they do for a while.

As time goes by, I hope more of my brethren in the BPO Industry took more time to think about how to teach their employees to fish and not just throw them on the phones and hope they sink or swim. Our recruitment and retention would be so much better if we were seen as a place to learn how to fish for a lifetime and not just feed their family for the day.

The Dark Side of BPOs… It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way

Let me start by saying I am a big proponent of the BPO Industry in the Philippines.

I’ve worked in the industry for over 10 years and have spent countless hours involved in sharing information about the growth and success we have enjoyed.

I speak at schools on a regular basis explaining to student the huge opportunities a call center career can have.
Overall, I think the positives far outweigh the negatives in the industries impact on the economy of my adopted home country.

However, some days I just shake my head. One of my former employees was just telling me about her recent experience with her new employer and the challenges she is facing really leaves me feeling blue about the BPO Industry in the Philippines.

Still under a new hire training period she, she is not technically entitled to any paid time off even when she is sick or there is an emergency. So when she recently had an illness and had a doctor’s note prescribing time off, she expected that her employer would allow her at least unpaid off until she recovered from a pretty nasty infection. Because it’s the right thing to do.

However, her request was denied and on top of not being allowed even unpaid time off she was instructed to work an 11 hour shift because of business needs. Wow.

Being the top of her training batch and having zero absences to date have zero impact. The fact that she is one of the most dedicated and hardest working employees I have ever worked with has zero impact. She had to go to work sick and put in 11 hours.

The short sighted lack of compassion demonstrated by the low level manager of the business unit of the huge multinational corporation that makes billions makes me sad.
But it also reminds me that this is why I set up my own company, because being part of something so big and so focused on profit is not something I want to be part of anymore.

So to all my friends and connections who are BPO executives, managers and leaders… lets not allow this to happen in our businesses. We have to change this mentality for the simple fact is that there are not enough qualified workers for our industry. The answer to being short staffed and metric driven cannot be just the bottom line when it makes us push our best workers to the point of making unhealthy life choices. We lose out of so many talented contributors to this industry because we treat them like a piece of machinery and just look to replace then when they breakdown.