BUSINESS PROCESS outsourcing firm Convergys Corp. is expanding five of its 12 sites in the Philippines, driving the need to add at least 3,600 new employees to its 21,000-strong workforce.

In a briefing Friday, Convergys Philippines country manager Marife Zamora said the expansion covered the company?s sites at the University of the Philippines-Ayala Land TechnoHub in Quezon City, Nuvali in Laguna, San Lazaro in Manila, i3 in Cebu, and the facility in Bacolod City.

The expansion involved the addition of 2,300 workstations, prompting the need to hire at least 3,600 more people. Of the total, an estimated 350 were for the Bacolod site, 600 for Cebu, and 2,800 for Metro Manila.

The addition of the new employees, Zamora said, would further cement the company?s status as the biggest private employer in the country.

Convergys Philippines business development director Jomari Mercado said the expansion was driven by increased client demand across all industries that the company was servicing.

?Clients are demanding more seats, more capacity,? he said.

Zamora added that Philippine agents were among the best, if not the best, in Convergys? global employee pool?fueling client demand for more business to be outsourced here.

?We?re expanding mainly because of the outstanding performance of our employees here and the overall demand for the high-quality service that the Philippine operations are delivering,? she said.

While many of Convergys? 12 existing facilities were already filled to capacity, she said there were still other sites that had room for expansion.

However, the company was already looking at several locations nationwide to house possible new sites.

?We?re constantly looking at facilities in new areas, particularly in the Next Wave Cities, as identified by the [Business Processing Association of the Philippines and the Commission on Information and Communications Technology],? she said.

?We don?t have a short list yet, although we?re eyeing either totally new areas, or areas near where we already have existing facilities. But we?ll definitely still expand,? she added.