EVERY EMPLOYEE, EVERY COMMUNITY
Workshops upskill for employment readiness By Jean Estuesta Niva and Kristelle are senior high school students at Sisters of Mary School, in the Philippines. Both aim to join the workforce immediately after graduation so they can help their families. They participated in bookkeeping and customer service workshops that Cummins Philippines’ CIT and WERG jointly arranged, in partnership with the finance and customer service teams, and the school. The business process outsourcing (BPO) industry is a pillar of the Philippines economy. Accounting back-office support continues to grow, despite the pandemic, and demand for talent is high. More people are doing short courses in accounting, bookkeeping and customer service because job opportunities await people with those skills. The forecasted headcount growth rate in contact centres and BPO ranges from 2.8% to 6.7%. The finance team developed the bookkeeping workshop to strengthen students’ knowledge on recording and ledgering work. The workshop includes basic information on invoices, official receipts, value added tax and journal entries, among others. Hands-on experience The customer service team adopted a module available in the Cummins Learning Centre, with some add-ons to include their own experiences in training. Both workshops aim to give students hands-on experience by working on business case situations that resemble real-life scenarios. The overwhelming number of participants speaks for the workshops’ success. There were 348 students registered for bookkeeping and 342 for customer service. The workshops were delivered virtually, enabling all those who registered to participate. While virtual delivery was challenging, the workshops were made more engaging by including business cases for students to work on. The bookkeeping workshop ran for 1.5 hours over three days and customer service was two hours. Sisters of Mary School provides free high school education and lodging to students from low-income families in different parts of the country. The school curriculum includes vocational and technical education to equip students with skills they can use to earn a living. Sister Mylene, the school administrator, said 70% of students immediately join the workforce after graduation.
Currently there are about 3,600 students. The upskilling workshops leverage on the knowledge and skills of Cummins employees. The customer service and finance teams did an excellent job developing and delivering the training, as seen by the positive feedback. Customer service Niva said: “The course on customer service taught me a great deal: to always value customer loyalty. The primary reason for the existence of a company or business is its customers. The training on customer service has taught me the customers are always right, but that is no reason to allow irate customers to pay no respect. Cummins’ guidance on proper customer service is remarkable because they taught us the need for promptness, friendliness, professionalism, empathy, conflict resolution and, most of all, integrity. “I learned the specifics of the critical components of customer service as they always provided sample situations with the wrong and right ways of handling them. I am certain that, when I’m confronted with such a situation, I can avoid the wrong way of handling customers [providing] I am equipped with the right manners, attitude and character. The overall takeaway I have is to always be polite and give customers the highest level of satisfaction while maintaining integrity.” Business process Kristelle said: “The bookkeeping webinar helps me a lot, especially in improving my bookkeeping and accounting skills that prepare me for a real job. Firstly, I have learned the importance of payables in the business process, that having debt is not always negative – debt or payables can be viewed as a way to control the flow of money and can bring some profit for the business. “Secondly, I see the importance of business documents that serve as proof of legality of a transaction between people. Thus, in every transaction we deal with, most especially in business, we must always seek legal business documents to ensure the legality of the transaction, to avoid scams or loss of money, and to have evidence or proof of purchase and indebtment.
18 DEC 2021
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