Strategic education partnerships = sustained industry growth

At the recent 1st International Research Conference on Higher Education, Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) chair Patricia Licuanan declared that “higher education plays two strategic roles at this stage of the country’s development: It develops students into competent individuals sought by the labor market and hones their technical and life skills to negotiate a complex and globalized world.”

Dan Reyes, who chairs the Information Technology and Business Process Association of the Philippines (Ibpap), recalled that since its inception in 2004, a recurring agenda revolved around addressing the dwindling availability of job applicants with industry-grade competencies to fill the IT-BPM industry’s burgeoning demand.

Licuanan and Reyes personify the key components of our country’s sustained and inclusive growth. The former’s leadership exerts direct impact on human resource capital, and the latter’s IT-BPM industry has been exhibiting exponential growth relatively quickly.

Some two years ago, CHEd and Ibpap convened an expert panel of industry professionals and academics to outline the course content for the Service Management Program (SMP) for the business administration and IT degree programs. The SMP is a set of electives designed to bring up the college graduate’s competencies to acceptable industry standards.

In 2012, CHEd issued prescriptions on how the SMP may be implemented by both public and private higher-education institutions.

Last May, Joel Bawica, College of Science dean of the Laguna State Polytechnic University (LSPU), led 41 instructors to the first SMP Teachers Camp, where they joined their peers from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines and Cavite State University. Bawica said he and his instructors could not help but feel overwhelmed.

But in his send-off message, LSPU president Nestor de Vera told them that the SMP training was important: for them as teachers, for the university, and most of all for the students in their care. De Vera’s words fueled their determination to complete the training even if some of them had to wake up at 3 a.m. just to get to the training venue at Asia Pacific College. Bawica promised De Vera that he and the others would give it their best. When the sessions ended, the entire LSPU contingent kept its promise: All of the delegates became certified SMP instructors.

Dan Reyes, this time as country manager for Genpact, felt that something good was about to happen. Genpact is an IT-BPM company with over 60,000 employees worldwide, more than 100 Fortune Global 500 clients, and a heritage of process science and operational excellence. It is known for “igniting the global business process outsourcing services industry.”

Aaron Key II, managing director of the Pricing Administration Center of American President Lines (PAC-APL), also felt the same way. APL is a world leader in its field bar none. The complexity of its operation is mind-boggling, to put it mildly. According to Key, today’s technology allows APL to efficiently choreograph this intercontinental  rigodon  to the most minute detail. “Somebody taps something on a keyboard and something happens thousands of miles away: Cargo stops, cargo moves,” Key said. But he said it’s the people factor that makes it all work: The more competent they are, the more efficient the organization will be.

Genpact and PAC-APL both knew that forging strategic alliances with the academe was the way to go.

By this time, the LSPU had Ibpap-certified SMP instructors. It was offering some of the SMP electives and the BEST and AdEPT language tracks in campuses at Siniloan, San Pablo, Santa Cruz and Los Baños. Over 1,000 students had signed up.

Genpact VP for hiring Cynthia Maslian and recruitment sourcing specialist Xerlynn Caparas went to see Bawica to broach the idea of a partnership that revolved around SMP. Shortly, Kathleen Rose Ang, PAC-APL’s human resources manager also visited the LSPU for the same purpose.

Last Thursday, Genpact and PAC-APL invited De Vera, Bawica and the LSPU faculty to the signing of a memorandum of agreement. Reyes had wonderful news: At the job fair that Genpact conducted at the LSPU, 19 out of 23 applicants were hired—far better than the industry norm of five hires out of 100 jobseekers. Associate Dean Enrico Rivano was of course delighted: Most of the 19 new hires came from his campus in Santa Cruz.

Over at PAC-APL, there was more good news. After the signing ceremony, Key presided over the symbolic turnover of the center’s donation of computers to De Vera.

Penny Bongato and Susan Vidal, Ibpap executive director for talent development and senior HR consultant, respectively, both said that these industry-academe partnerships go far beyond talent recruitment or corporate social responsibility. Bongato said executive sponsors like Reyes and  Key are the IT-BPM industry’s way of showing that it understands that such partnerships foster inclusive growth.

Reyes sees the agreement with the LSPU as the beginning of an exciting journey. “I enjoin all Ibpap members and the IT-BPM industry to take this journey with us to make sure that together we can develop the talent that we all need,” he said.

Butch Hernandez (butchernandez@gmail.com) is the executive director of the Eggie Apostol Foundation and education lead for talent development at Ibpap.