The Philippines should keep on promoting its outsourcing industry as this could serve as its “gateway” to First World status, according to an author of the outsourcing industry.
“The outsourcing is hiding in plain sight as Filipinos are not realizing it is the golden goose just like oil to the Arabs,” said Derek Gallimore, author of the book Inside Outsourcing: How Remote Work, Offshoring & Global Employment is Changing the World in a news briefing on Wednesday in Pasig City.
He stressed that the future of employment is headed towards outsourcing as the massive resignation in Western countries enabled outsourcing companies to access an almost limitless talent pool of around 88 million registered professionals across the world.
The Philippine business-process outsourcing industry is worth $24 billion. Along with the remittances of 10 million overseas Filipinos, outsourcing is one of the legs of the Philippine economy.
While this “seismic shift” in employment is profitable for foreign firms, Gallimore said this development offers great opportunities for leading outsourcing destinations like the Philippines.
Gallimore pointed out that the Philippines is in a very good position to be the “global hot spot” for outsourcing. With a great majority of its population being English-speaking professionals and whose median age is within 23 years, he stressed the Philippines’s outsourcing industry is “ripe.”
He believes that the Philippines could be heading towards the apex of providing this service to the rest of the world. To walk the talk, Gallimore recently opened a Philippine office of Outsource Accelerator’s office to local and global clients to serve as an “outsourcing showroom.”
He said Outsource Accelerator’s office is going to debunk misconceptions alleging outsourcing firms of “poor working conditions” and “sweatshop-like facilities.”
“Your team’s need for proper employment and facilities is often an overlooked and undervalued aspect of running a business. Yet, it is a basic constitutional part of building a work force. It is possible to get by without these things, but I would argue that if you are focused on building a reliable, repeatable, scalable, and productive team—then ensuring that they have proper employment and facilities is a baseline requirement,” he notes in his book, which reflects the importance of having a head office during these times.
Gallimore acknowledged the competition in the outsourcing industry is escalating as more and more countries like Jordan and South Africa are stepping up in improving their capabilities. For the Philippines, Gallimore said, the country needs to raise the bar to become the “Swiss banking” of the outsourcing industry.