Healthcare-focused contact center to add 1,000 more seats next year
HEALTHCARE contact center and nurse services provider Carelon Solutions Global Philippines is seeking to add a thousand more seats to its Philippine operation by next year, breaching its 10,000-worker staffing target.
In a briefing on Thursday, Carelon Philippines Chief Country Executive Nicolai S. Agcaoili said the company will continue expanding in the Philippines.
“As we speak, we have more than a thousand jobs in the pipeline. So, with that, my fervent hope is to get us to breach the 10,000 mark,” Mr. Agcaoili said.
The company has more than 9,000 full-time employees across its four sites in the Philippines: GLAS Building in Ortigas, Alliance Global Tower in Taguig, and One Fintech and SM Strata in Iloilo City.
Mr. Agcaoili added: “We are looking at establishing another recruitment hub … and we are also looking at different locations outside of Manila and Iloilo, which I think is testament to our intent to continue to grow.”
He said that the company is looking at tier one and two cities in the various regions and is assessing the talent availability and infrastructure in those areas.
“We’d love to put (the fifth site) up this year, but the thing is, of course, you have to go through proper due diligence. We really are making sure that we’re making the right decision on the next location,” he added.
To house the 1,000 new employees, the company may have to build a new site as its current offices are nearly at capacity. However, office space will not need to correspond to staffing numbers because of work-from-home arrangements.
“Based on the current vacant seats we have, it will not be enough because there’s still going to be growth next year,” Mr. Agcaoili said.
“By October, we’ll already be discussing the pipeline for 2025 and 2026. So it really is just preparing for growth in the coming years,” he added.
Though talent serves as the country’s competitive edge, he said that the healthcare information and management services industry faces challenges in finding qualified candidates.
“Talent will always be at the top of the list of challenges. There’s demand, so part of how we are solving it is that we need to go outside of our own silos,” he said.
“We partner with different universities and extend needed training that is customized and tailor-fit not just for healthcare but overall for business process outsourcing … because that is the only surefire way for us to be able to help solve this,” he added. — Justine Irish D. Tabile
