Survey shows another ‘Great Resignation’ coming in Cebu; Business heads question data
CEBU, Philippines – The latest data from a job market survey conducted by online job portal Mynimo showed that 43% of 4,500 Cebu-based workers, or a total of 1,935 employees are planning to leave their jobs in the next 90 days.
In a press release sent to Rappler on Thursday, May 4, Mynimo said that the call center or business process outsourcing (BPO) sector, which had the highest average salary rate, ended up with the highest resignation rate, with more than 40% of the personnel planning to leave their jobs.
“During the height of the pandemic, the BPO sector emerged as the only employment option for many workers. However, now that other industries have regained stability, many employees are looking into the option of returning to their previous professions, leaving potential vacancies in the BPO industry,” Mynimo CEO Wesley Chiongbian said.
In response to the survey data, heads of the Cebu IT-BPM Organization (CIB.O), which includes BPO industry pioneers, said they disagreed with the idea that another “great resignation” was about to happen in the local job market.
“We disown such survey. We are in a flourishing industry…in fact, we are absorbing a lot of people from displaced industries,” CIB.O executive director Buddy Villasis said during a press conference on Thursday, May 4.
The Great Resignation or the Big Quit of 2021 was a phenomenon that affected multiple nations globally and is described as a huge wave of people deciding to leave their jobs in the current year.
Why are workers leaving?
For Francis Terrado, an operations specialist for a private BPO firm in Cebu, general discontentment with the company has always been a primary indicator that a long-time employee wants to file for resignation.
“Either they don’t like the way the company is going or doing, or they realize they don’t want to be doing this for the rest of the foreseeable future and want to make a change,” Terrado said.
Terrado has been working in the BPO industry since the early parts of 2021 or when resignations were at a massive high. It was during this period that employers began offering work-from-home arrangements.
For Mynimo’s end, survey data showed that lack of a fair salary, lack of company benefits, employees feeling undervalued, limited growth opportunities, and the absence of a work-life balance were leading factors in causes for employee resignations.
“Cebu’s “Great Resignation” shows no signs of slowing down unless companies make drastic changes to address their employees’ concerns…employers risk losing more of their top talent to competitors, ultimately hurting their competitiveness and profitability,” Mynimo’s statement read.
On the flip side
“In spite of the challenges that we had in 2020, that’s the first year of the pandemic, the industry actually grew by over 1%, that’s both headcount and revenue,” CIB.O trustee DJ Moises said during the press conference.
Based on data from the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP), the national headcount of full-time employees (FTEs) in the IT-BPM market grew from 1.29 million in 2019 to 1.57 million in 2022.
IT-BPM market revenue growth was also seen at $32.5 billion or around P1.8 trillion for 2022 from $26.1 billion or around P1.44 trillion in 2019.
The IBPAP also forecast a headcount growth of up to 1.7 million FTEs and a market revenue growth of up to $35.9 billion or around P1.99 trillion in 2028. – Rappler.com