K-12 grads unready for BPO industry — group

An official of the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) revealed that fresh graduates of the senior high school program may find contact center/business process outsourcing (BPO) jobs unfit for them, stating that these new graduates are not ready for the meticulous jobs that have been providing billion-dollar revenues to the coffers.

“I’ll be very direct. Not enough, they are not yet ready,” said Haidee Enriquez, president of CCAP and CEO of MicroSourcing BPO firm, in a media roundtable in Makati City on Wednesday.

She said the government, particularly the Education Department, should amend the current Senior High School curriculum to adapt to the ever-changing business landscape, particularly with the emergence of artificial intelligence.

“The senior HS curriculum needs to be enhanced or revised to incorporate more industry immersion/OJT and industry-relevant content. We have published the Philippine Skills Framework for the IT-BPM industry, so the competencies outlined there should be incorporated in the design of the senior high school tracks,” she told the DAILY TRIBUNE in a separate Viber message.

She said currently, the attrition rate within the contact center industry is at 43 percent; however, most of the employees are just transferring to companies within the industry.

Enriquez stated that the primary headwind faced by the contact center industry is the talent and skills gap, which they are trying to resolve with the help of their partners, the academe, and the government.

“The other challenge is that there are more and more locations that want to be like the Philippines, or the other competing markets, in other words, which makes our members have a hard time generating and attracting new clients,” Enriquez told reporters.

For her part, Tonichi Achurra Parekh, CCAP’s board director and vice president for Service Delivery at Concentrix, said senior high school graduates’ learnability is key to securing a contact center job.

“We have a (really) different generation of workers and students going into a different generation of workers. Their levels may be different from what we truly assess because of the technology available to them. It is indeed about their ability to learn,” she said.

In a Senate hearing last month, the Philippine Statistics Authority exposed that roughly 18.96 million Filipino junior and senior high school graduates cannot even read and understand a simple story in 2024, adding that 79 percent of senior high school graduates are functionally literate, while 21 percent are considered illiterate despite graduating from high school.

With this, the Department of Education, during a public hearing last 19 May at the House of Representatives, presented its revised K to 12 curriculum, geared to “decongest” the current program and “empower” senior high school graduates for employment.

The revised version stipulated that core subjects will be reduced to five for each grade, or Grade 11 and Grade 12, from the old 15 core subjects.

Phl remains No. 1

Meanwhile, Enriquez said the Philippines maintained its position as the number 1 destination when it comes to digital consumer experience and in healthcare services, in which the country’s market share is continuing to grow.

“We are number 1 when it comes to customer service satisfaction among the global capability centers. We are number 2 when it comes to digital IT services and the creative industry, however, we are continuously growing,” Enriquez said.

Contact centers accounted for 83 percent or generated $31.6 billion of the IT-BPM industry’s total $38 billion in revenue last year.

Employment also rose, reaching 1.62 million workers in 2024, an 11 percent jump from 1.51 million in 2023. The contact center workforce represents 89 percent of the total IT-BPM jobs.

Enriquez remains optimistic about reaching the industry's ambitious $49 billion revenue target by 2028, eyeing an 8.5 percent growth rate until 2028.

In terms of revenue growth for this year, she said the industry is projected to grow between 5 to 7 percent, or another $1.58 billion in revenue.

“In a pulse survey conducted a month ago on the Philippine competitiveness, the majority of our members believe that we will continue our leadership as the number one contact center destination in the world and will continue to grow,” she said.

CCAP, to date, has 167 BPO firm members.