GAPS in job-placement networks and difficulties in transferring specialized skills from foreign workers to Filipinos remain hurdles to improving employment outcomes, according to two studies by the Department of Labor and Employment’s Institute for Labor Studies (DOLE-ILS).
Job placement offices (JPOs) remain largely constrained by limited personnel, funding and institutional support despite their role in helping students and graduates transition from school to work.
‘The data across all five clusters reveals one common theme,’ ILS Supervising Labor and Employment Officer Athena Marie Son said.
‘JPOs are being asked to solve a national problem, the educated jobless phenomenon, and improvement of PES, without the standardized mandate, resources, or structure to succeed,’ she added.
At the time of the research, 383 JPOs were accredited, with 61 percent operating in higher education institutions that represented only 11 percent of all HEIs.
The findings came from a study titled ‘The Role of Job Placement Offices in Public Employment Services: Five-Cluster Diagnostics,’ which examined governance and strategy, organization and management, labor market services, partnerships, and performance management.
Researchers surveyed 83 JPOs nationwide and supplemented the survey with focus group discussions, key informant interviews, document analysis of 82 memorandums of agreement and site visits in Regions 5, 11, 9, 8 and the National Capital Region.
Limited resources
Around 30 percent of the JPOs surveyed were classified as high-performing in governance, while 45 percent were still developing their governance systems.
Only half had a standard manual of operations, while just six had reporting systems for their activities.
Staffing was another major constraint, with 86 percent of JPO personnel performing placement functions as an additional responsibility and 51 percent of offices having only one to two staff members.
More than half also had annual budgets below P100,000 or no dedicated budget, while only 34 percent rated their office space as fully sufficient.
‘JPOs should be completely institutionalized for them to effectively provide quality public employment service,’ Son said.
JPOs provide services such as job fairs, career development assistance, job matching and referrals, labor market information, employer engagement, alumni mentoring, livelihood and entrepreneurship support, and assistance for vulnerable youth.
Digital tools were used by 67 percent of the offices, although Son noted that online job postings can also expose students and graduates to unverified opportunities.
‘You can only apply for jobs you know about,’ Son said, stressing the importance of making employment opportunities more visible to young jobseekers.
The study recommended institutionalizing JPOs, creating a national manual of operations, establishing a development fund, strengthening capacity-building programs and developing better systems for tracking outcomes.
Son said stronger partnerships among JPOs, DOLE offices and other stakeholders could also help improve employment services and labor-market alignment.
Foreign skills hard to localize
A separate ILS study found that companies transferring specialized knowledge and technology from foreign nationals to Filipino workers face challenges involving language barriers, limited training time, advanced skills requirements and succession planning.
ILS Senior Labor and Employment Officer Chelsea Nicole Pineda presented the findings from ‘Technology and Skills Transfer through the Understudy Training Program and Skills Development Program: Good Practices and Lessons Learned.’
Under the Understudy Training Program, two Filipino workers next in rank are expected to eventually assume the foreign national’s position and disseminate the knowledge acquired, while the Skills Development Program does not impose the same next-in-rank requirement.
Only 39 percent of the 140 enterprises surveyed had implemented a UTP or skills development program, with nearly 70 percent of those implementers coming from the manufacturing sector.
Language emerged as one of the more difficult areas of skills transfer, particularly for BPO positions requiring Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, French or German.
‘Imagine for you to have a native level proficiency, it would take you more than 5 to 10 years and you need exposure to practice this language,’ Pineda said.
Some jobs also require cultural knowledge, including culinary positions where authenticity matters and casino roles involving VIP clients.
Coaching, succession key to skills transfer
Companies commonly use coaching and mentoring, job shadowing, practical application, peer-to-peer learning, simulations, product demonstrations and rotational assignments to transfer specialized skills.
‘The most effective way of transferring knowledge, skills, or technology is through a coaching and mentoring approach,’ Pineda said.
About 48 percent of respondents reported having transition frameworks for localizing positions previously held by foreign nationals, including succession planning, job-readiness assessments, transition timelines and formal turnover documents.
Turnover among understudies, insufficient training periods, enterprise-specific skills, staffing requirements and regulatory compliance were among the difficulties reported by participating companies.
Pineda said human-resource personnel also need to incorporate skills transfer into workforce planning to ensure that Filipino workers are prepared to assume positions eventually vacated by foreign nationals.
‘It is very important for these Human Resource personnel to really have a workforce planning and to plan how to train the other workers and at the same time how to facilitate the training to achieve their key performance indicators within the company,’ she said.
The study recommended creating a subcommittee under the Interagency Task Force on Employment of Foreign Nationals to identify specialized skills lacking in the local workforce and determine appropriate transfer methods and training periods.
Researchers also proposed a standardized UTP template identifying the skills, technology or knowledge to be transferred, proficiency levels, training methods, assessment mechanisms and target evaluation periods.
Both studies underscored the need to better connect employment services, education, employer demand and skills development to address labor-market mismatches.