The information-technology and business-process management is looking to “upskill” nearly three thirds of its labor force by 2022 through its proposal of a national strategy geared toward providing training grants to IT-BPM workers.
The IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP) is proposing a nationwide upskilling program that will provide learning tools for 1 million workers over a five- year duration. The initiative will offer near-hire trainings, upskilling vouchers, scholarships and immersions, as well as student grants and tertiary education subsidies for individuals.
With this, the IBPAP is hoping 73 percent, or 1.15 million, of full-time IT-BPM workers will take mid to high skill level jobs by 2022, from just 54 percent of the labor force in 2016.
IBPAP Executive Director for Talent Development Frankie Antolin said the industry should work on making employees adapt to the new technologies. This way, they would not be prone to elimination in the age of automation.
“The adoption of next generation technologies will inevitably overhaul the current state of work. However, the transformation will be centered on the redefinition and augmentation of human work rather than elimination,” Antolin said.
“The argument should not be about whether technological disruption will create, or remove jobs. It should be more about finding ways to help humans wield these new tools and one way to accomplish this is to enable the movement of the existing work force up the value chain through upskilling, reskilling and promoting lifelong learning,” she added.
This year the IBPAP is targeting to launch a scaled pilot project with the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP). The IBPAP, DICT and the DAP are working on a framework for implementation and monitoring of the proposed program.
Priority skill areas have been identified as well for all six subsectors based on what can be efficiently deployed through digital platforms, support countryside development and improve work from home capacity of the present and future labor force.
The objective for this year is to upskill 1,000 full-time employees and provide a proof of concept for the nationwide program that will try to emulate the success of SkillsFuture in Singapore, TalentCorp in Malaysia and the National Skills Development Corp. in India.
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