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Outsourcing Contact Center in the Philippines
October 9, 2006


Brain Drain Effectively Reversed


Since the early seventies, the Philippines has been experiencing a “brain drain” phenomenon with the migration of highly skilled professionals from the country. In the eighties, the exodus of these professionals continued although the mid-level professionals like nurses, medical technicians, and paramedics increasingly dominated the flows. In the nineties, accelerated advances in information technology and the growth of the information-communication industry triggered new waves of skilled labor migration abroad consisting of electronic engineers, computer programmers, designers and allied skilled workers.

Meanwhile, business process outsourcing (BPO) industry sub-sector or outsourcing contact center in the Philippines started in the country in 2001 when American Online (AOL) set up an in-house call center at the Clark special economic zone in Pampanga (Aquino 2004). 

A call center is an office with many employees in cubicles answering incoming telephone calls. The calls range from people asking about their computers, to card holders inquiring about their credit card balances, to subscribers checking their phone bills, to travelers booking their flights. Business processes, projects, tasks and jobs were transferred to virtual workforces across the world.  Today, companies choose to farm out their call center jobs to countries where costs are lower.

Outsourcing contact center in the Philippines not only increases the velocity of an international business’ growth, it also effectively reverses the brain drain phenomenon in the country. English-speaking knowledgeable Filipino workers and college graduates are encouraged to stay on in the country. Filipino professionals are reported to feel that they now have a realistic chance to stay in their hometown instead of joining the exodus overseas to escape one of Asia’s highest unemployment rate of more than 10 percent.

Being the world’s third largest English-speaking country, outsourcing contact center in the Philippines attracted many college graduates to the new industry by offering higher salaries than most other jobs. In fact, the expansion of the BPO industry sub-sector has been described as moving at a blistering pace.

The Philippines has some advantages over competitor countries where the BPO industry is concerned. Among these is the large pool of 380,000 to 450,000 college graduates entering the labor force every year with American English communication skills and knowledge in Information Communication Technology (ICT).  The country also has a reliable and reasonably priced ICT infrastructure and, most importantly, relatively lower salaries for qualified personnel.  An added plus is the generally friendly and hospitable atmosphere and western-oriented values.

Aside from call center services, Filipinos are also very competitive in other BPO services. These include higher value added professional services such as that of writers, graphic designers, programmers, media managers, quality assurance representatives, data entry clerks, etc. But right now, the contact center industry is still the biggest component of the BPO industry in the country. According to the Philippine Call Center Industry study of 2003, it is projected to grow by 100% annually. This positive growth outlook is higher than that of other Asian competitor countries led by India at 65%, China at 41% and Thailand and Malaysia at 15%.  The country aims to serve 50% of the global demand in the next 4-5 years (cantres.net 2004).

Offshoring, Inc, an American owned staff leasing company based in the Philippines, allows international businesses to achieve significant bottom-line savings by providing a sound business case with a full understanding of the effort and planning it takes for clients to be a success. It is also an outsourcing contact center in the Philippines that aims to help clients steer clear of the potholes along the way, measure the clients' staff’s performance, and fine-tune strategies.

Offshoring, Inc has a surplus of high skilled, qualified professionals who have undergone rigorous recruitment processes. After an initial consultation with the clients concerning their needs, the company recruits, hires, and maintains highly skilled staff dedicated exclusively to their business operations. The clients exercise remote control over the development of the product and/or service from start to finish while Offshoring, Inc defines and confirms compliance to regulations and best practices of all employees. Offshoring, Inc puts in topmost priority the security of the clients' intellectual property and trade secrets so that IP theft or fraud should never be a problem.

It is worth remembering that, while brain drain may aggravate the shortage of skilled workers in some sectors in some countries, emigration may not be the fundamental reason for actual or anticipated shortages in the first place. Thus, increasing wages, improving working conditions, and providing employment opportunities may be a far better approach than restricting mobility — and it is in supporting these efforts, through outsourcing contact center in the Philippines, that developing countries might find to be most effective.

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