BPO & CALL CENTER TRAINERS SHARE LEARNINGS
Focus on the next decade’s industry growth and challenges, was one of the main thrusts of TeleDevelopment’s 4th Annual BPO and Call Center Training Convention. Although, there were a number of other concerns for the industry touched during this gathering of minds, there were more topics to be learned from each other in the two days of this convention.
Celebrating its 10th year, the BPO industry has grown remarkably and is expected to grow bigger and bring in higher revenue in billions of US dollars for the coming years. On the first day as a keynote address speaker, Mr. Oscar Sañez, President and CEO of the Business Processing Association of the Philippines, shared his views on the hurdles and roadblocks that are to come with the growth of the BPO industry in the country. With surges of business from Canada, Australia and Europe, the opportunities of the Philippines’ BPO & Call Center industry are vast even amid the global financial crisis in the past years. But opportunities must be protected and nurtured properly so that the industry can flourish and keep on developing.
The couch discussion on Academic Evolution Towards 2020 Vision centered on how the academe is addressing the constant evolution of talent from their pad to the hub of the BPO & call center world. A very avid discussion on how the various institutions for higher learning address the issue on supporting the need for talent development for future employment in the industry was moderated by TeleDevelopment’s President Jon Kaplan. Several hours later, the first day rounded off with an Executive Forum moderated by Team Asia’s Managing Director Michael Alan Hamlin. In this discussion, top executives shared their best practices on how to maximize investments in training to produce fresh talents or rejuvenate senior employees to keep their companies in the competitive marketplace. And instead of reacting to trends, the industry players and contributors have eventually set the world pace in terms of outsourcing development, planning ahead and shifting the industry perspective.
The second day of the convention showcased the learning sessions in three tracks – Transform, Diversify and Synergize tagging along TeleDevelopment’s acronym TDS. The different sessions were created with knowledge shared from speakers of different industries not only from the BPO/CC community but with one goal of unifying the benefits for the continuous development of the BPO industry.
The Transform track was designed to promote advancements in training and maximization of skills in training, like E-learning Design for Dummies where one can gain tools to capitalize the benefits of e-learning initiatives through faster transfer and application of new knowledge and skill in the workplace. While the Diversify track concentrated on the various branches of training that is implemented in the different organizations, like the session on The Anatomy of Experiential Learning, where the real meaning of experiential learning is discussed, opening minds to the strategies and tools to incorporate it in training designs. And the Synergize track focused on leveraging the use of training as the fulcrum for all departments in an organization to work together for a common goal, as the session on Synergy that Sells pointed out that aligning processes – recruiting, training, coaching, mentoring – with the training program translate to business growth.
At the end of the second day, participants could not wait to go back to their respective organizations to share what each had learned from the convention. TeleDevelopment has once again put a feather on its cap with the success of the 4th Annual BPO and Call Center Training Convention held at the Makati Shangri-La with 300 participants eagerly looking towards next year’s event. As TDS President Jon Kaplan said, “Our annual conventions provide a venue for networking and education, and we have successfully established these meetings as the “go to” event for trainers. Like many companies today, TeleDevelopment is changing with the industry. We are maturing as the industry is maturing, but we continue to be thankful for being here to support the industry.” The next Annual Convention will be another occasion to look forward to for more shared training-knowledge.
