By Madelaine B. Miraflor

A New York Stock Exchange listed professional services firm is seeing an improvement on how Filipino companies are treating their employees despite the huge number of local firms still practicing contractualization or endo (end of contract).

On Tuesday, Aon plc, a global professional services firm headquartered in London that provides risk, retirement and health consulting, has named four organizations as ‘Best Employers in Philippines for 2018’ as part of the Aon Best Employers Programme.

However, all these firms — namely American Express International, Inc., DHL Express Philippines Corporation, TeleTech Customer Care Management Philippines, Inc., TELUS International Philippines, Inc. — are just the local arms of multinational companies.

The study said these ‘Best Employers in the Philippines’ achieved employee engagement scores of 88 percent, compared to a market average of 72 percent.

AON Managing Director for Talent, Rewards, and Performance Prashant Chadha said that for a company to make it to the list, they must first excel in four critical areas, which are high employee engagement, compelling employee brand, effective leadership, and high performance culture.

Chadha said in a briefing held in Makati on Tuesday that while no local companies were hailed in this year’s Aon’s “Best Employers in the Philippines” list, he said “Philippines [companies] have improved in the last two years” and that there are actually Filipinos firms that almost made it into the list.

When asked if the endo system in most Filipino companies could be the reason why local firms can’t excel as employers, AON Managing Director Andrew Minitt basically said no.

“Contractualization has been here for a long time. I don’t think contractualization necessarily means you can’t have an engaged workers,” Minitt said.

Last year, there was also no local companies on the ‘Best Employers’ list of Aon but some firms like NutriAsia, Inc. received special recognition.