Guest: Martin Conboy
Presenter: Henry Acosta
Overview: This episode features Martin Conboy, the Director of FooBoo BPO and also one of the most influential people in the outsourcing industry today. In this segment, we talk about the future of work and how we are currently going through the fourth industrial revolution. Give this episode a listen and learn about what you’re supposed to know about outsourcing and the changes that are currently happening in today’s global workforce.
Address: P.O. Box 1138, Crows Nest, NSW, 1585, Australia
Contact: INTL- (61) 2 8404 5988 || [email protected]
Website: www.foobooonline.com
To learn more about the future of work, please listen to our talk below:
Henry Acosta: Hi, this is the Outsourcing and Offshoring Podcast. I’m Henry Acosta, the host of the podcast. Our guest today is Martin Conboy. Martin is an outsourcing expert and he is currently the Director of Front Office Outsourcing and Back Office Outsourcing. He is joining us today to talk about his expertise which is outsourcing and we’re going to talk about the landscape of the BPO industry right now and the Future of Work. Welcome to the show Martin and thanks for coming on.
Martin Conboy: Thanks Henry and good morning.
Henry: Good morning to you too. So just for our listeners, can you give us a little bit more background about yourself and tell us about what you do?
Martin: Sure. Well look, I believe it would be fair to say that I’ve been recognized as one of the leading voices in the global outsourcing industry and its role in facilitating outsourcing success around the Asia Pacific. And in fact in November 2014, I was voted into the top five most influential and respected people in the global call center outsourcing industry. And I’ve developed over the years some expertise in outsourcing and shared services, call centers, what-have-you and I have delivered keynote addresses at conferences and so forth and in Australia, Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, India, Korea, Malaysia, Mauritius, Middle East, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and the USA. So in fact, I had a role in the early days of the Philippines BPO industry in helping it to get established and of course it ended up being a major player on the world stage. And more recently, I was a founding member of the Standards Australia Subcommittee IT 03007 which had a remit to create global standards and best practices from Global ICT BPO industry and that standard was published in 2017. And just to finalize, I was the former President of the Australian BPO Association and I’m a Director of a number of outsourcing related companies you mentioned FOOBOO which stands for Front Office Outsourcing Back Office Outsourcing and also I’m currently Director of Pacific Accounting and Business Services, an Indian based outsource accounting and bookkeeping company that services the U.S. and Australia and I’m also Director of Financial Property Management which is a specialist outsourcing facilitation company with a virtual assistant workforce in the Philippines that services the rental property market in Australia. And finally, I’m associated with a company called “VidCruiter” which is a specialist software recruitment company that’s a global leader in robotic process automation. So that’s my background.
Henry: That’s a lot. It sounds like a long list and it’s great to have you on.
Martin: Yes, both a pleasure.
Henry: Since you just mentioned that you’ve been in the outsourcing industry for a very long time, can you tell us more about how you found the Philippines as an outsourcing destination and how it’s been like the past decade? How’s the evolution been like?
Martin: Sure. Well look, I first started studying the Philippines call center industry when it had less than 25,000 people. And I’ve seen it develop over the years into the world champion player that it is and as I understand, it currently provides at work for over 1 million people in the Philippines. What happened was I owned a company that used to conduct market research into the Philippines call center space back in 1997. And the industry in the Philippines has produced some brilliant individuals who championed the sector. They’ve developed a strong industry association called “IT and Business Process Association,” they call it IBPAP. And then that of course made it easier to attract companies to come to the Philippines to set up their operations. Of course, one of the main attractions in the early days and still even today is that the Philippines, not many people know this, but the Philippines is the third largest English-speaking country in the world. I’ll leave it to your listeners to try and figure out who’s number one and two. The industry association produced lots of relevant research, including the stuff that we were producing, they facilitated introductions to the government for people coming in from other countries and the industry officials to ensure seamless development and progress. So people like me in the early days were around but once the Filipino and industry got its act together and they created their own industry associations such as IBPAP, then the rest is sort of history, they took care of it from there.
Henry: I see. So you mentioned it was I guess you can say the call center was big here. When did you go here or when exactly did you arrive here and how do you see the BPO industry morphing now in 2018 and moving forward from this?
Martin: Sure. Look in the early days, there was some call centers in Manila Electric and the telephone companies and so forth. And they were just basically servicing their local customers and it wasn’t until the late 90s when the outsourcing industry started to take off and then companies started to bubble up in the Philippines that serviced mainly America to start with and then other countries and that’s where it started from. So I don’t think that it’s any secret that the industry is in a state of change. So obviously in the early days and up until recently, it was all around transactional opportunities and so forth, what you would expect call centers to be built for. It could be customer service, it could be customer queries, that type of thing. But these days, machines are doing a lot of that transactional type of work. So look, the thing is that I don’t think that there’s any secret as I said that jobs in the future and the currently revolve around humans handling transactions are in decline. This is a universal issue around the world. It costs a fraction of what a human costs to provide a better customer service or experience by leaving computers do a lot of that work. The jobs of the future will have very little to do with processing words or numbers as we mentioned the internet can do that now nor we need many people as we do at the moment to act as call center agents, errand runners or researchers. Instead, there’s going to be a huge focus on finding the essential people needed in an organization and then outsourcing everything that’s not core to an organization’s remit. Most of the best jobs will be for people who manage customers, who organize social media plans and who do digital content management. We will of course continue to need brilliant designers, energetic and rigorous lab technicians where people actually have to touch things to get a result but more and more the need to actually show up at an office that consists of a farm of cubicles is just going to fade away – it’s too expensive, it’s too slow and it’s too cumbersome. So 15 years ago, Facebook didn’t exist. Ten years before that, we didn’t have the web. S who knows what jobs will be born a decade from now. One thing for sure is that we will definitely not look the same as now. So no one is going to pay people just to show up. We will see in the future a more flexible, more freelance, more outsourced, more flat structured and collaborative organizations with a far less secure work world. It’ll be run by a generation with new values and women will increasingly be at the controls.
Henry: I’ll be with you on the part where women will be more relevant and I guess what you’re talking about creates equal job opportunity since you’ve mentioned that you’re hiring work on skill rather than more on I guess mundane tasks.
Martin: Right.
Henry: Well since you talked about jobs and shift I guess we had a talk before about you mentioned how we’re going through new industrial revolution. So can you tell us about where the industrial revolution, we did lose jobs and we created more jobs? So let’s talk about that, can you tell us about the jobs that are going to be more relevant and what do you think since we’re not sure I guess we’ll talk about what kind of jobs are going to be created in the future?
Martin: Yes. Well what we’re referring to is what they call the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” and it’s probably more appropriate if people want to understand what that is to simply Google it and they’ll get a very detailed Wikipedia type of explanation. But assuming that we know what the Fourth Industrial Revolution is which includes developments in previously disjointed fields such as artificial intelligence, and machine learning, robotics, nanotechnology, 3D printing, genetics and biotechnology. This industrial revolution will cause widespread disruption not only to business models but also to labor markets in the future with enormous change predicted in the skill sets needed to thrive in this new landscape. Education delivery in the future will be a quantum leap from the traditional reading, writing and arithmetic known as the “Three Rs.” And today, it’s becoming clear that we’re teaching our children skills that will not position them to get the jobs of the future. The future workforce must expand their minds to envision what can be done when technology and nature are no longer separate and whole new categories of diversity become commonplace. So I’m talking about STEM which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. STEM is important because it pervades every part of our lives. Science is everywhere in the world around us. Technology is continuously expanding into every aspect of our lives. So people who send their children to universities to become a lawyer, well guess what, we don’t need anymore lawyers. And in countries like Australia and people who’ve graduated with a law degree now are basically working as administration assistants. It’s just a skill that is not really sought after. So we need to encourage not only the government to design programs to get children into the science and mathematics and so forth areas, but we also need in our universities and also in our workplaces, we need to be encouraging people to upskill and so forth. So most people think that STEM means technology and coding. This is one part of the larger picture obviously with science encompasses our world and includes environmental science, marine science, chemical, physical and earth and space sciences as well. For example in a traditional classroom, students might be asked to research ways to stop litter going down the stormwater drain. They present a poster, infographic, whatever to the class explaining what they consider to be the best solution. In a STEM classroom, students will be asked to design, build, test and redesign if necessary solution to the problem of litter going down the stormwater drain. STEM learning requires triple thinking, engaging and relevant learning experiences and perseverance. This is the way the world is heading and if the Philippines wants to stay ahead of the curve, then that’s a matter of urgency it needs to change the curriculum away from the three Rs to STEM subjects.
Henry: And the Philippines just went through a change recently. It went from a K10 program to a K12 program for those in high school and I guess you can say that that’s a stepping stone towards the change that you’re talking about.
Martin: That’s fantastic to hear, delighted.
Henry: You mentioned that with the rise of AI or artificial intelligence and how it’s going to disrupt everything with the current workforce and everything, do you think outsourcing will still be relevant in the Philippines and everywhere else since computers work well everywhere in the world? So will it still be relevant?
Martin: Well look, earlier this year, Google which I’m sure most listeners would be familiar with unveiled their program called “Duplex” which is an artificial intelligence personal assistant with convincingly human speech patterns, capable of calling shops and restaurants on behalf of its users. While the tech companies focus has been on how Duplex can make life easier for customers, recent reports suggest that Google is also looking into ways so that the system can be leveraged on the other side of the phone line. It would appear that Google has taken an interest in using Duplex to replace human workers at call centers. Google is in conversation with an unnamed large insurance company to integrate the controversial artificial intelligence into handling customer service calls. And on that same note just in terms of the sort of jobs that as you touched on will be lost saved or created. People per hour, the online freelance market estimates a self-employment in the UK and the U.S. is currently growing at an average rate of more than 3% per annum. So based on a virtual labor market statistics, people per hour predicts self-employment will grow at an annual rate at 3.5% over the next 5 years in the UK and 3.2% in the U.S. This would mean that 1 in 2 people in both countries would be working as freelancers by 2020. In Australia, that numbers predicted to be 5 million people out of the population of 25 million by 2020. In the U.S. The Freelancers Union suggested that as many as a third of those working are already self-employed. That’s around 56 million people already working as freelancers. So these people will compete in the global market against the people in the Philippines, in India and all of these other developing nations that are thinking about being in the BPO space. And so we’re already seeing freelance work in organizations like Uber or in the Philippines Grab, the taxi people. And there’s platforms like Elance and freelancer.com that are fostering and encouraging people to work for themselves. This is more than people just having a side hustle, it’s a complete paradigm shift from the way we think about work today. So that’s another competitive stressor that’s going to impact on the Philippines. So if work was going to the Philippines because it was less expensive but yes, they would speak in English and they were university trained people, they’re now having to compete against freelancers from all over the world, not only from third world countries but also from first world countries. So that’s why it’s even more imperative to stay ahead of the curve that the Philippines organizes itself and its education programs around STEM products and services.
Henry: Well with all these changes that are bound to happen around the world, how do you think that will affect the Western countries? I mean do you think that not only the Philippines will be affected by AI and how I guess globalization or how everything is becoming smaller or the world is becoming smaller with technology? What are the effects on it with Australia, U.S. and the UK?
Martin: Okay. We’re just looking at not one specific country but looking at how organizations will operate within those types of environments. So achieving the diversity required to employ organizations means tapping into multiple intelligences – work styles, skills, media choices and geographies. The products of collective intelligent are successful because each person makes contributions in the area actually where he chooses and in the manner that suits them best. For an organization to amplify itself, it must tap into the external network of non-employees and entice them to contribute in areas of their expertise, the “crowdsourcing” which I think a lot of your listeners would be familiar with. But it also means that the Philippines will be part of project teams that may exist in another country but they may be a part of even though they’re still in the Philippines. So beyond hiring, the goal must be to attract, engage and connect amplified individuals into an organization. So when I’m talking amplified, I’m talking people who’ve got social media networks, and fans, and joiners, and so forth and connections. And so these amplified individuals will come into organization so that they can view it as the most important and powerful node in their highly networked and distributed career paths. Organizations need to think of ways that suit these individuals rather than traditional promotions and compensation packages. Increased freedom, ability to choose particular projects, ability to publish outside of the framework that they’re working in is going to be important to individuals. So we when we chatted the other day about the future, currently people go to where the work is but in our future, the very near future, work will go to where the skills are and these people will be sitting outside of a traditional organization. But look, one of the other things that we’re going to need to develop is skills and training in visual literacy. Organizations and individuals will have to use new types of highly sensory rich interfaces. Artistic visualization, simulations and the ambient and another interfaces is utilizing sound movement, colors, etc. to take advantage of the massive amounts of data flood in the workplace. The next generation of workers will need to process visual literacy and have the ability to present, analyze and interact with digital information. Visual acumen is a survival skill for the future workplace. Younger workers who have grown up in the world of video games and virtual reality will naturally be more adept to this. But just because someone is younger, it doesn’t mean they will automatically possess such skills. We will need to think about how to promote visual literacy standards for our organizations, how to identify those with the best visual skills and how to train employees to become proficient in dynamic image moderated collaborative explorations of data.
Henry: That’s actually a lot to take in. It sounds very intimidating since I guess you can say the generational shift or jump with how work is sounds very interesting too and I’m really glad we’re talking about it. So you mentioned today we go to where the work is and then tomorrow work goes to where the skills are. What do you think are the skills that are going to stay relevant?
Martin: If the Philippines can create a super STEM based workforce, it could lead the world in providing the right type of workers. Access to the internet means that skills can be accessed wherever they are on the planet. As we’ve just mentioned that work will go to where the skills are. Look, the evolution of technologies for ubiquitous detail, real-time reporting on everything means that almost every aspect of organizational life can be exquisitely documented and tracked. Organizations should plan for transparency from the outset in order to stay ahead. Concealing anything will become increasingly difficult. Avoiding accountability will also get harder and moving operations somewhere else in the world in order to avoid accountability will not be a viable long-term solution. Companies that have tried to hide pollution for example by outsourcing, polluting activities to subcontractors are likely to have to account for them ultimately. Organizations should err on the side of transparency, resorting to secrecy only when absolutely necessary as a last resort. Now is the time to examine all aspects of the companies’ organisations from human resources to manufacturing and distribution through the lens of transparency. Going on from that, hiring practices, training management will draw from a deeper understanding of neuroscience and complex behavioral algorithms. Already startups have emerged that promised to train individuals to increase their mental capacity focus and efficiency based on brain science. Company specific algorithms will be developed for software that gets new applicants based on detail questionnaires. Recruitment process automation and the company I’m associated with, the Canadian company vidcruiter.com is also one of the leading players in this space. As science comes to work, human resource managers will need to become versatile in all these new sciences while most HR personnel will likely not be scientists, they will need to be able to understand the language of these disciplines and collaborate with scientists in order to assess and implement some of these new tools. A manager may not know how to sign what they call “Monte Carlo Simulations” and if anybody is interested, they could just Google “Monte Carlo Simulations” to understand what that means. To optimize workflow, you must be able to speak the language of mathematicians to understand the theory behind suggested methods. One huge area of opportunities data analysts which companies expect will help them to make sense of and derive insights from the oceans of data generated by technology and the disruptions. Now that’s an area of huge opportunity for the Philippines in terms of big data.
Henry: This is really a lot to take in especially with the changes. How far away are we thinking that these things will be applied? When do you think these changes will happen and do you think it’s going to happen suddenly or there’s going to be a gradual change in the industry?
Martin: We’re talking about big data so it refers simply to the use of predictive analytics user behavior or certain other advanced data analyst methods that extract value from data and sell them to a particular size of a data set. So when you’re asking about the future, where it will be, it’s already here, it’s not in the future, it’s today. The future is already here and there’s intense competition from around the world. So for example in Bangladesh which is a third world developing nation and they’ve seen that opportunity too because their population is very menta-intelligent and they’re very clever in terms of mathematics. So they see that as an opportunity for them because people are talking about big data as the new oil. And look, it’s all about looking at data sets that are so large or complex that traditional data processing applications are inadequate to deal with them. And so, the opportunity in terms of Filipinos working these sorts of jobs in the future, they include analytics and data curation, search sharing, storage transfer, visualization, query, updating and proof of being a back office or an outsourced type of facility supplying this type of analyzed information back to the companies that are generating it. But look, global connectivity in terms of it’s now or the future, smart machines and new media are some of the drivers reshaping how we think about work, what constitutes work and the skills that we will need to be productive contributors in the future. The future is looming up very quickly and the old command and control way of running our organizations is passing. For most of us, it’s a work in progress. Some will still want to hang on to the old ways and resist change but these people will likely be passed over and unfortunately forgotten. There’s only one constant in business and that is change. If you’re not going forward, then you’re going backward. So these tremendous forces were to radically reshaping the world work as we know it and disruptive innovations are creating new industries and business models and destroying the old ones. New technologies, data analytics and social media networks are already having a huge impact on how we communicate. And as I mentioned, there’s only a few short years ago, Facebook and so forth didn’t exist, that they’re mainstream now. And many of the roles and job titles of tomorrow will be the ones we have not even thought of yet. So in order to understand what your workplace is going to look like in 5, or 10 years or 30 years out, you need to think about what your work is going to be like and it’s not going to be like it is today. It just simply is madness to think that it will be. So it will be disruptive and that’s why they’re calling it the Fourth Industrial Revolution so the revolution suggests change and disruption.
Henry: That’s amazing stuff. And have you ever thought about making a documentary about the changes that are happening today and I guess informing other people with your knowledge is? I think it’s a very important information.
Martin: It is important but there’s lots of people out there who are thinking, “futurists” as they call them, who are thinking about the future and trying to predict what the world will look like. I am just one of many, many people who think about things in the future and so forth. And in my own situation, I’ve tried to invest in companies that have got one eye on the future so I can take advantage of that and stay ahead of the curve. But if the Philippines’ industry thinks that it’s going to survive on a million people in the outsourcing industry, I’ve got news for them, it’s not going to happen. They need to change, they need to change their education systems, they need to change the way they run their businesses. Just in terms of the business owners and have a future-proof themselves, there’s going to be a convergence of all these IT and computer tools and the physical workplace. And organizations will need to think about how they use physical space as part of the information tool kit along with laptops, mobile phones, printers, etc. because we’re moving also into this age of 3D printers and what-have-you. The need to manage large volumes of complex visual information will lead to workplace design needs to expand the size and scope of digital displays while also spreading access to vignettes or windows on data into non-traditional spaces and computing hallways and social spaces built around water coolers and outdoors and having greenery around the work environment so people can touch nature and so forth. They need to plan for workplaces that will enable progressive disclosure, that’s the ability to reveal higher-level functionality as users get ready for them. They can’t just build it because it doesn’t exist, so they’re going to have to plan to be progressively changing the environment in the future. But look, there’s going to be other opportunities in the Philippines of course and with healthcare and educationally, the half-a-million nursing people that come out of the universities. There’s going to be opportunities in the future in healthcare and education, that type of thing we mentioned big data and we mentioned mathematics and neuroscientists, obviously how manufacturing will be done with 3D printing, they won’t have to do big long runs of thousands of items, you can personalize it right down to a short run of one or what have you. But obviously, areas of artificial intelligence so that type of science and so forth and even things like the “Internet of Things” – how physical devices, vehicles and so forth, smart devices, buildings, etc. are all connected together. So there are amazing opportunities coming up in the future and just because it doesn’t look like the present, there’s no reason to be afraid of it. But the Philippines has to organize itself in such a way so as to take advantage of future developments and there’s no reason why the Philippines cannot be a world leader in these areas because the internet has just leveled the playing field and being in America, or Australia or England is no advantage now like it used to be in the old days.
Henry: Well do you think let’s say the companies in the Philippines and the outsourcing companies, do you think they’re already seeing these changes happening and they’re aware of it? From your point of view, do you think they’re getting ready for these changes? Like our offices here, I can actually see the changes happening just bit by bit but it’s not like a complete overhaul.
Martin: Partially. But I think what happens a lot is that organizations when they see change and competition, their first lever that they push is to lower their prices. And you see that in the Philippines and whatever the rate per hour the charge out rate, it comes down because they’ve been involved in a transactional market, they’re just selling transactions. Then the cost per transaction comes down, eventually obviously they’ll price themselves out of business because they won’t make a profit. So that’s one challenge but they’ve got to think, so I often say this when I go to the Philippines – if you’re fishing in a pond and everybody is fishing in that pond, eventually the fish will run out. So you need to find another pond where no one’s fishing and the the fish are biting and that is in the areas that we have been talking about jobs of the future. And the other challenge for the Philippines’ industry is that the society is inherently by nature conservative. They don’t change quickly but through their industry associations who have got some really clever people working in them, they need to coalesce around the ideas but they also need to engage more deeply with the universities. I know that they do it, I know that because I’ve seen it in action. But I said to when I met with the President GMA in 2003, she asked me “What was the single most important thing that they could do as a society to take advantage of this BPO industry?” And I said to her at the time, “The most important thing was to get the English teachers back from wherever they were as overseas farm workers back to the Philippines because you will run out English-speaking people.” We already know that you have and we know that for every hundred people that get interviewed in the outsourcing industry in the Philippines, between three to five percent of them get hired. The rest of them just don’t have the business skills. So therefore, that’s a retardant on the industry because if the main thing is talking to people in business rating which on the telephone, you’ve already absorbed all the people that are available. So they never did that all those years ago. The government introduced programs to try and encourage people to train people in English but that money just came and went. So now, if I’m saying that in the future, there’s all these different types of works and all things that you must do as a society is create educational programs around science, technology, engineering and mathematics. That will be the thing that holds up the opportunity for the Philippines. It’s not something that they can plan for in the future, they need to do it today because the other countries where I visit and I see, they are already doing these things, they’re already seeing where the industry is going and they’re already putting in place programs that allow them to take advantage of this type of thing. So it’s not something that we can have a think-tank about, we need to do it and we need to do it today.
Henry: Can you mention these countries that are already doing it or that already seeing the future?
Martin: Yes. Well I can tell you that I see it in India, I see it in Malaysia, I see in countries interestingly enough like Mauritius but coming from a long way back but because they have to and be cleverer than the world has given the opportunities to be. I see Bangladesh as being a player in big data. So these people have got no resources, they’ve got no money – I’m talking about the people in Bangladesh – but still, they can do it because they are clever and they’re playing to their strengths which is they’ve got a population that is menta-intelligent. And whereas the Philippines, big opportunity came because they’ve got an English-speaking population that has got fantastic soft skills that can be delivered via the telephone. But that opportunity is going away because machines, and computers and automated responses and artificial intelligence and robotics is taking that market away. So yes, there’ll always be a need for call center people humans at a higher level but the Philippines has got to do is to try and figure out where these opportunities are coming from and then training and upskilling their workforce to be available and the most important area that they need to think about is big data.
Henry: Well that’s a really great message. For myself, it sounds very intimidating but at the same time, very exciting since the future sounds like it’s something that a lot of people can look forward to and I guess looking forward to seeing how work will be for a lot of people like for future generations. Not just for the people in the Philippines but all over the world since these changes are bound to happen.
Martin: Look, when your grandfather and what-have-you, people used to work in the business in a country basement because it wasn’t uncommon for someone to start as the office boy and end up as the CEO. I mean we both know those stories. These days, people work, sometimes they only work for 6 months in the company as a project, as a contractor for a year. So what we’re seeing is this whole idea of business colonies and that’s to say we’re in the same way that Hollywood creates a project and movie and it has everybody there – the filmmakers, the actors, the finances, the scriptwriters, the lighting people, the camera people, they’re all there, they all come together in a project and they make a movie and then after three months, they all move on and go into different projects. And that’s the way work will be because what will happen is we will have a few core managers inside an organization because an organization won’t want to carry the headcount. So they’ll have a few core managers and then they will outsource to project teams wherever they are – Philippines, India, Bangladesh, wherever it is – and these people will just work on a project until it’s finished. And there’s lots of companies looking to create new apps and new computer programs and so forth that will be outsourced and if you think of the entire venture capitalist industry, they want to get something up to what they call “Minimal Viable Product” MVP stage. And so they would outsource to a development team to create something so they’ve got something to show investors. So there’s opportunities there for the Philippines but once again, it’s going to be a function of the education and the skill sets that the Philippines’ government must put in place these education programs to develop the workforce.
Henry: The way you frame things and the way I understand things, it’s that you know how BPO firms right now they position themselves as solutions providers. So how I see it is work will be more solutions-based like what you mentioned how schools will be working with STEM or how are you going to solve this problem and what are you going to do since they’re applying science, technology, engineering and mathematics into the solution. So it’s been a great talk.
Martin: Alright Henry. Well thank you very much for your interest. I really appreciate it and God bless the Philippines as I like to say.
Henry: Awesome. And for our listeners who are interested in maybe getting in touch with you and talking more about FOOBOO and just knowing more about the outsourcing industry in general, what’s the best way that they can get in touch with you?
Martin: The best way is just to find me on LinkedIn and then just go into the message text there in LinkedIn and then when they ask questions and so forth, then everybody else can see the answers and share from there. So they’ll find everything they want about me on LinkedIn and they can easily communicate with me through the LinkedIn messaging platform.
Henry: Awesome. And do you have a takeaway message for our listeners right now?
Martin: Well only that the future is very bright. There’s lots of opportunity out there and the future should be embraced because obviously change is inevitable but the thing is for people whether they’re the workers in the outsourcing industry or whether they are the owners of the businesses and so forth, they’ve got to think about how they can position themselves to be ahead of the curve. So if I’ve said all of these things and this is what’s happening and I’ve given you and the listeners an indication of what to expect, out of these situations, people will find their own position. But amongst all other things, do not sit still. Look, explore, examine, think about and also probably the most important thing is engage with the educational sector, the universities and so forth. There’s some of the brightest minds in the Philippines that are sitting inside those universities. They need to be tapped into.
Henry: Awesome. And thank you so much for your time Martin and it’s been great having you on the show.
Martin: Alright Henry. Thanks very much for the opportunity.
Henry: Thank you. And you’ve been listening to the Outsourcing and Offshoring Podcast and I’m Henry Acosta, the host of the podcast. Our guest was Martin Conboy and we just finished talking about the BPO industry here in the Philippines and the future of work. And if you’d like to know more about us, please visit our website at offshoring.com.ph. We’re also on all major social media platforms so make sure to subscribe, follow and like our stuff.
