Unfazed by pandemic, 3M expands services hub in PH

Despite the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, American industrial giant 3M has expanded its global shared services hub in the Philippines and is targeting to further expand its operations here by 30 to 35 percent this year.

During the pandemic, 3M Global Service Center (GSC) has grown its local headcount by about 300 to reach about 800 employees to date, Reggie Pulumbarit, 3M Philippines director and country leader, said in a recent interview with Inquirer.

Pulumbarit set up 3M GSC in 2016, when Minnesota-based 3M decided to create a global shared services hub in Asia-Pacific. This offshore hub, located in Bonifacio Global City, marked 3M’s third offshore services hub after earlier setting up similar operations in San Jose in Costa Rica and Wroclaw, Poland.

“We cater to 3M global operations. Half of it is catering to 3M Asia-Pacific and rest for global [operations] and this spans activities like finance, sourcing, procurement, HR (human resources), employee services, data management, security, IT, enterprise and tax,” he said.

When 3M was looking for a country to set up its offshoring operations in Asia-Pacific years ago, Pulumbarit said the group ended up picking the Philippines.

“There is tremendous talent in the Philippines, so in that evaluation, corporate (head office) saw that the best location for the Asia-Pacific hub would be the Philippines,” he said.

Two years into the pandemic, Pulimbarit said 3M GSC continued to expand in the Philippines even as it transitioned into work-from-home operations almost overnight when hard lockdowns were imposed in Metro Manila.

More employment

“Right now, the plan for us in the future at least this year, is to grow by another 30 to 35 percent, which is good news. It means more employment and more jobs for the Philippine market,” he said.

The GSC operations in Costa Rica caters to the United States, Canada and Latin America, while the one in Poland serves Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Because the Philippine GSC is a younger entity, it is not yet as big as the first two units but it is fast catching up, Pulumbarit said.

During the pandemic, at least 90 percent of the local GSC employees have been working from home, in line with the guidelines allowed by the government.

Moving forward, he said the group was moving to enhance flexibility options based on a global “work your way” approach.

“It’s a trust-based approach to employees where employees and their direct supervisors will have a conversation and that conversation is anchored on: where do you want to work?” he said.

While 3M was currently enabling a hybrid work setup, he said the new approach would recognize the unique needs of each and every employee, without compromising safety. That means giving them several options on how they want to work. INQ