IT firms tie up with academe to solve middle manager woes

Companies and organizations in the information technology (IT) and business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in Cebu are developing programs, training and linking with the academe to address the dearth of experienced middle managers for their operations.

Greg Gabison, Cebu Education Development Foundation for Information Technology (CEDF-IT) president, said the issue of the difficulty of IT and BPO firms in hiring experienced middle managers have long been felt in Cebu and are currently being addressed.

Gabison’s reaction came after an official of the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPAP) recently cited the problem of hiring middle managers in the industry.

Gabison, who is also the dean of the College of Information, Computer and Communications Technology (CICCT) of the University of San Jose-Recoletos (USJR), said there are two local universities offering courses for middle managers.

“Currently the University of San Jose Recoletos and the University of San Carlos both offer courses for middle management which has been very effective so far. This is the kind of engagement that we have been doing in the past decade specifically with companies based in the Mactan Export Processing Zone,” Gabison told Cebu Daily News in an interview yesterday.

The program, which is developed in tandem with the specific companies they collaborated with, works like a typical MBA (Masters in Business Administration) program wherein they get people who have experience in middle management to teach.

According to Gabison, the need really is not on the technical skills but on the ability of a manager to handle technical people in a team.

Gabison said that they have been encouraging more academic institutions to start addressing this gap by working with companies and offering programs in their institutions.

The issue is real, said Jerry Rapes, Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry chairman for ICT.

Rapes said he is encouraging the companies themselves to be more proactive in identifying these people and sending them off for training to become middle managers.

“Middle managers are people whom you do not just hire fresh from school. They are most preferably developed from within the organization or hired from other companies which is also another problem (pirating and poaching). I think the companies should be more proactive,” said Rapes.

Rapes said that the training can be done in formal or non-formal training institutions that will help transform these individuals from a purely technical person to someone on the management side of the operations.

Recently, IT-BPAP president Jose Mari Mercado said that the industry is currently experiencing “growing pains” as it faces another challenge in hiring skilled middle managers.

According to Mercado, the industry has been growing at an average 20 percent annually since 2007 and the shortage of middle managers could present problems to this growth.

This year, the projection is that there will be 960,000 direct hires in the industry with revenues to reach $16 billion this year. This is a huge increase from only 777,000 last year and $13 billion revenue.

“The industry makes up for 8 percent of the total economy of the country and is poised to contribute $25 billion and 1.3 million employment by 2016. That `said, it is only reasonable to really look for solutions to the issues that poses real threat to its growth,” said Gabison.

He added that CEDF-IT is now working on to strengthen the collaboration among stakeholders to ensure continued growth in the industry that has been fueling growth in other sectors and industries as well like construction and retail.

As of last year, there are already 98 outsourcing companies operating in Cebu with 17 new companies that opened last year based on figures from the Cebu Investment Promotions Center (CIPC) employing at least 90,000 people in their operations.

CIPC managing director Joel Mari Yu said they expect the same growth rate this year of at least 17 new companies and at least 11,000 new jobs.