The Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) and the government agency responsible for technical education have teamed up to develop a program aimed at improving the skills of trainers in the business process outsourcing industry.
In a statement, BPAP said that its partner, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda), had allotted P25.2 million to implement the so-called “Train the Trainers” program aimed at addressing the personnel supply needs of the information technology and BPO businesses.
The program also seeks to support the industry’s plan to employ some 1.3 million Filipinos by 2016, representing a projected 68-percent increase from the 772,000 full time workers it currently has.
“We partnered with Tesda because we are adopting global standards for our trainers,” BPAP president and CEO Benedict Hernandez said in a statement.
“By the end of [the training program], all the trainers will be assessed according to global standards. This is part of our ongoing effort in terms of adding to the talent supply of our industry and making sure that our employees are world-class,” he added.
The program will be oriented toward developing potential employees and improving the skill sets of “near hires” to allow them to become “world-class professionals,” BPAP said.
For his part, Tesda Director General Joel Villanueva noted that the lack of qualifications and job mismatches posed major challenges for the industry.
“The more important factor in addressing these concerns is the partnership between industry and government,” he said in a statement, “We’re saying that we have the training regulations, but we need the industry to ensure that this training regulation really works. We’re delighted with the exponential growth in IT-BPO but still very mindful about the existing talent supply gap in the industry.”
The training program includes the Trainers Methodology Plus (TM Plus), which is a focused trainers’ training program, and Trainers Methodology 1 (TM 1), an existing Tesda course intended to enhance training skills.
Of the P25.2 million set aside by Tesda to implement the program, P18 million will be used for TM Plus while P7.2 million will be spent for TM 1.
“This funding is in line with our goal to incorporate technical vocational and skills development into the human resource program,” Villanueva said, adding that the trainers’ training program aims to produce more than 1,700 trainers who can teach the next batch of potential IT-BPO talents.
Future trainers will undergo courses on planning a training session; utilizing electronic media in training facilitation; facilitating skills that include presentation skills and classroom management; maintaining training facilities; conducting competency assessment; supervising work-based learning; and internship.
“With TM 1 and TM Plus, we can sustain the demand for a competent and skilled IT-BPO workforce, and raise industry competitiveness,” Villanueva said.