Dear Filipino BPO Worker,

This morning I received a call from a customer service agent and fought my usual impulse to abruptly end the call. I saw you in her voice, and it made me anxious and sad. I thought to myself, Here is a Filipino, trying to make an honest living and soon it will get harder to stay employed or find employment.

What I have uncovered in the last six months studying your Information Technology-Business Process Management (IT-BPM) industry and the looming threat of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has bothered me deeply, but does not seem relatively bleak yet.

I am hopeful that I can put forward a substantial provocation to elucidate the blissfully unaware and empower the adequately curious. Unfortunately, I have neither the time nor the energy to engage those in vicious denial, so you may stop reading now should you so choose.

If you have chosen to read on for another 8 minutes, please know there were many times when I wanted to throw my hands up in desperation. I’ve kicked myself repeatedly for not choosing a less emotionally-demanding subject like archery for ADHD or micro-insurance for geo-hazard communities.

Why, oh why?

What made me stay the course was knowing that the IT-BPM industry, alongside the Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), has helped drive authentic and inclusive growth over the last 20 years — lifting those at the bottom of the pyramid and thereby growing the middle class. It was clear to me that the cost of not giving a damn about the clear and present AI threat, could be devastating.

I am sharing what I have unlocked, and what it means for you, to give you a choice and a chance to act.

As early as July 2016, Philippine Finance Secretary Dominguez had discounted the BPO industry as a driver of the Philippine economy, and in January 2018 categorically declared that the industry has plateaued. He points squarely at AI as the cause but didn’t articulate any semblance of support. Adding insult to injury, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) rescinds the tax incentives accorded the industry a few days later.

In the peripheries, LeeChui Property Consultants, a leader in the Philippine real estate sector recorded a 28% attrition rate in 2017 BPO occupancy but feels more confident that in 2018, BPO occupancy “could reach a new record high of … 850,000 square meters.”

Their positive outlook is due to their read on ‘improved’ US-PH relations and could also be attributed to the effort of the IT-BPM industry movers and shakers, who have in 2016, commissioned Frost and Sullivan to help them frame a five-year growth strategy you can read about here: ACCELERATE PH Future Ready Roadmap 2022. It is a comprehensive roadmap towards securing the relevance and competitiveness of the Philippine IT-BPM offering.

Impact in T-minus…

Let me emphasize though, the growth strategy’s success is heavily contingent on the assumption that the industry can upskill and reskill you along with 1.4 million others in five years’ time. A time horizon I’d like your industry to revisit. The plan is intellectually sound, but what I’ve discovered suggests erring on the side of courage.

Because time, like the BIR, is evidently not on your side.

Take AI development velocity. AI is terraforming the world’s skillscape as I write this. To get a sense of how much time you have to prepare, I followed the money and reviewed the first ever AI Index — a study that tracks AI development similar to tracking economic growth If you find these TLDR, pay particular attention to the chapters of Technical Performance and Towards Human Performance that details current and developing AI competencies:

What will happen to all the call center voice services? (AI Index, 2017)

On precisely when AI will hit the proverbial fan, there is so much debate, and even less action. And there you are, lying on the tracks of that oncoming train. That said, how might we effectively upskill BPO workers en masse, before the small window of opportunity closes?

To design a human-centered solution, I studied multiple contexts — a worker’s choices, the upskilling challenges, and technology-driven chances — for a rounded appreciation of the problem.

Your choices.

BPO workers are not homogenous. I discovered three distinct archetypes who share a common denominator of ‘work to earn’ but have motivations to work that are markedly different. I focused on the job-oriented as opposed to the career-oriented, particularly low-skilled workers who are at most risk of being replaced by machines.

From interviews I learn that, as a low-skilled worker, you generally have a highly-transactional relationship with your industry. You navigate happiness on your on your terms therefore appreciate being given autonomy to make choices. This manifests in you seeing further training as optional and unnecessary because you’re quite content with low-complexity, low-responsibility work.

Your challenges.

Why are you unenthused by additional training that will provide advancement and consequently more opportunities? Pierre Bourdieu’s Forms of Capital provided clues and I also investigated the broader learning and upskilling culture. Upskilling challenges in Australia and the UK clued me into a worker’s unwillingness to invest their immaterial capital — sleep, game time, socializing, coolness quotient — in upskilling. You are not lazy or irresponsible. But there’s a time to work, a time to consume, and you draw that line hard and deep.

Aggravating your disinterest are the current non-scalable training methods. Direct, front-loaded instruction no longer engages you. Just-In-Time Learning, being given a lesson when and where you need it, and Micro-Learning, short 5 to 20 minute but high-engagement content, are proving to deliver higher completion and comprehension scores.

Your chances.

Widespread appreciation for upskilling and reskilling has stoked numerous tech-enabled solutions in the continuing education space. You don’t need to know all of them so I’m highlighting those that put your learning needs front and center of their design: autonomy and choice, real-time feedback, simultaneous affective and cognitive engagement, fair value exchange for your immaterial capital —

AI-Based coaching networks that “learn workers’ best habits and practice”

Transmedia Storytelling creates immersive choice-propelled scenarios

Augmented Reality wearables which enables scalable uses of AR across varied fields

Virtual Reality leveraging its gaming engagement capacity to teach real skills in virtual environments

Insideables are at the very bleeding edge of cognitive interventions that signal the birth of human 3.0. Nice to know it’s there, but isn’t broadly applied. Yet.

Below is a synthesis of the three contexts and the reframed challenge:

A Reframed Human-Centered Design Challenge

You do. Not say.

I ran a series of a series of experiments to learn more by doing. I asked for 120 respondents to a free AI 101 webinar and 11 showed up. All 11 said they want to be upskilled. That gave me the confidence to design and experiment on three upskilling modalities with different choice dimensions:

Choose Your Adventure Upskilling App: Choice of Outcome On-Call Upskilling Chatbot: Choice of Time A Moodle Course: Choice of Content

If I content myself with a reductive analysis of the results, I can jump up and down celebrate Moodle’s delivery on the success criteria. But that’s not my big Aha! A general pattern emerges as I synthesize the one-on-one interviews, the theory and state-of-the-art literature, my own experiments’ data:

A low-skilled BPO worker has very little, if any at all, impetus to be upskilled. There are several indicators as to why. But to make an authoritative claim, it must be studied further. However, of this I am sure:

The resistance to scalable upskilling isn’t merely a problem of infrastructure or technology ; it is equally a challenge in sociology.

The Hows and Whats of upskilling are relatively easy to design IF — and only if — we resolve the low-skilled workers’ Why. I strongly believe, that is the greatest barrier to the success of the IT-BPM’s 5-year growth agenda, and is painfully missing from the exhaustive plan.

The most dangerous assumption is to believe the promise of more money or career advancement is enough to get 70% of total BPO population (that’s about 600,000 human beings) to upskill or reskill. I recommend that this assumption be investigated in earnest by a transdisciplinary team of experts, using a systems thinking lens. Do it STAT to head-off a mass casualty.

How low can you go?

Contrary to what you may be thinking I am realistically optimistic. Now, I feel it is also my responsibility to tell you how dark your future can be.

IMO, when ABS-CBN celebrates and a BPO operator rationalizes having their workers moderate the most perverted, deplorable and inhumane content as the saving grace of the BPO industry, we have hit the lowest and darkest manifestation of Digital Taylorism. A deliberate deskilling of workers, where your human potential is no longer recognized, reducing you to a machine of flesh.

Claiming they have “psychologists on standby” only reinforces the validated damage this kind of sub-human work does to a human being’s emotional, mental and consequently physical health.

IMO, this “it’s a dirty job but…” argument can be settled by answering the question: Would you wish this kind of work on your, or anyone’s child?

The news article and this podcast tells you this is happening today. I personally believe you are just a casualty of capitalism’s race to the ‘infinite bottom’ — extracting the highest profit from the lowest cost. So it won’t stop until policy that protects the BPO workers are written, as well as penalties imposed on operators who sell these dehumanizing services.

Now choose.

Get this. You are not alone. You are going to feel the burn the soonest but that doesn’t mean other industries won’t. The impact of AI is going to be widely pervasive and no worker — from advertising to zoo keeping — will be spared the challenge and opportunity of upskilling.

Everyone can do something about it today. Start informing yourself about what is and what is not true. There are many views and mine is but one. You owe it to yourself to be fully informed because no one will feed you and your family but yourself.

Ultimately, you need to act. Talk to your manager and HR about your future. Ask to be trained for higher-skilled jobs. If they respond, fantastic! You’re on your way to securing your job. If they don’t, their silence speaks volumes on the priorities of your company and how they value you. Perhaps it is time to find a company where upskilling is integral to their business strategy.

At this point you must realize, it really is about taking matters into your own hands. You can choose to take advantage of free online courses. No such thing as a free course though. You don’t pay tuition but you have to pay in time and attention if you want it to be valuable.

Even basic Excel has value, but more importantly, is a start. The courses themselves are of lesser significance; the point is to learn how to learn and develop a life-long yearning for learning. Because you might eventually find the BPO industry isn’t your one true love, and your new skills have opened up the world to you.

I placed before your eyes a future you can’t unsee. Now lend your ears to Be Beta and hear Chuck’s inspiring upskilling story. You can find the podcast and other upskilling resources and related articles on the Be Beta Facebook page.

This open letter and Be Beta’s intention is to provoke you. So you may be encouraged, be empowered to take the first step in becoming a better version of yourself.

The best of luck to you, and to us all.

Sincerely,

Peachy Pacquing

Chief Connector and Mission Controller, The Just League

P.S.

This is in lieu of the Executive Summary of my Masters in Digital Management Advance Work-Based Project at Hyper Island. If you are interested to read an editorial version of my AWBP, send me an email at thejustleague@gmail.com or leave a message at www.thejustleague.com. Thank you for your invaluable time, your attention and, most of all, for reading this far.