Filipino Call Center managers, agents migrate
By Juan Dela Cruz

In the past decade, Philippines has been recognized worldwide as one of the top countries that produces and exports skilled professionals to other countries due to their talents and peaceful integration into local communities. Engineers, IT Professionals, seafarers, doctors and most especially nurses that have helped first world countries like the United States, England, Japan and Australia fill their vacancies in these fields.

Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of semi-skilled Filipinos working as domestic helpers and tradesmen. In essence, Philippines has become a country of migrants because even its economy is kept afloat by billions of dollars sent to the country by Filipinos working overseas.

In the past few years, the boom of the Business Process Outsourcing industry in the Philippines may have slowed down the “brain drain” of the country because a considerable number of recent graduates have found working in BPO a better alternative. Yet even with the lucrative salaries offered and generally decent benefits the BPO offers its employees, the lure of migrating may have already crept even into the sunrise industry. Such was the revelation of Ms. Rosalie Montenegro, former Sr. Vice President of Philippine Call Center Ventus in a recent talk she gave to an audience of BPO professionals at the Asian Institute of Management. She revealed that a few years ago her company has trouble keeping agents and managers due to poaching by competitors in the Philippines. In the past year, they have learned that call center agents themselves are choosing to migrate to countries like Singapore where they are offered as much as three times the average salary (15,000 pesos) of a call center agent working in the Philippines.

HSBC Singapore has been constantly contracting local employment agencies to find top quality agents and managers to work for them. This I know from personal experience as I have spoken to close contacts at  HSBC Singapore who confirmed  that he was indeed offered a salary in the in the range of 90,000 to 130,000 pesos per month. This is more than 3 times what he was getting while working at HSBC Philippines as an Assistant Manager for Operations.

As a proud Filipino myself, it disappoints me that the stigma and “greener pasture” mentality has never waned in our countrymen’s minds. Even with above average salary, great benefits and high demand in call center jobs, Filipinos still can’t lose this migrant mentality that we’ve had for decades.

(For questions or comments, please email me at 1delacruise at gmail.com)

Techgoss note:  One Peso has roughly the same value as one Indian Rupee