Security, a non-issue with BPO locators

SECURITY, or peace and order, is no longer a concern among domestic and foreign investors intending to locate their business ventures in Davao. This is particularly true with business process outsourcing (BPO) companies thinking of putting up call or contact centers here.
This was bared by Andre Joseph T. Fournier, consultant to several call centers and a member of ICT Davao, Inc., umbrella organization of IT groups in the city.
“Security is no longer an issue among locators since a year ago,” because they (investors)  now know how ideal Davao City’s peace and order condition is compared with the other parts of Mindanao, Fournier told media practitioners attending the weekly Club 888 Business and Tourism Forum of The Marco Polo Davao last Wednesday.
However,  Fournier said call center operations in the city are facing one major challenge:  lack of middle managers.
Some call centers have found it difficult to expand because of  the dearth of middle managers, he said.
Middle managers are leaders of a team of 15 to 20 agents who direct their teams in their tasks.
In most cases, Fournier explained, a middle manager is someone who has the experience as well as the drive that the management is looking for among its agents. In terms of salary, middle managers receive at least 30% higher than the experienced agents, but sometimes lose some of the benefits that they used to receive as agents.
The lack of middle managers has prompted some call center companies in the city to come up with a training center for them, he said. Other companies, on the other hand, have been luring Dabawenyos who have been working in call centers in Manila, Cebu and other areas of the country to return to the city of their origin.
When the call center business in the city was just starting, some companies took their recruits to Manila and Cebu. Fournier said many of these employees may yet opt to return home considering that the call center industry here has become competitive.
The availability of a good pool of human resources is necessary to develop the industry, particularly in luring big companies to locate to the city. He said some companies are cautious about their plans to come to the city because their demand for good human resources cannot be met.
Last year, Lizabel G. Holganza, president of ICT Davao, admitted the lack of a deep pool of human resources considering that some of the best graduates of schools in the city are quickly recruited to work in Cebu and Manila.
Ms Holganza, who runs MTC Academy, a school for medical transcriptionists, said some companies even signed a memorandum of agreement with her school so that graduates could go to these companies, many of them operating outside the city.
At the time, big companies in the city even decided to recruit from other neighboring areas as the city’s human resources pool had thinned.
A call center agent who did not want to be identified said that she also has been contemplating on working outside the city because the salary she is getting from a call center here is a little over the minimum wage. “I only get about P9,000 a month,” she lamented, adding that based on information from her friends working outside the city, salaries can go as high as P20,000 a month.
However, Fournier explained that the discrepancy in salary is justified, considering that the cost of living in Davao is a lot lower compared with Cebu and Manila. “The fact that you are staying with your family is already a plus factor,” he said. [AD]