Employee Development Programs in the Philippine IT-BPM Sector and Their Contribution to SDG 8: The Role of Upskilling in Career Progression and Retention

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1. Introduction

Sustainable Development Goal 8 calls for sustained, inclusive economic growth, higher productivity through diversification and technological upgrading (target 8.2), full and productive employment and decent work for all (target 8.5), and a lower share of young people not in employment, education or training (target 8.6) (United Nations, 2015) [15]. In the Philippines, few industries touch these targets as directly as information technology and business process management. The sector closed 2025 with about 1.9 million workers and more than US$40 billion in revenue (Philstar, 2026) [13], and by 2022 nearly a third of its workforce was already located outside Metro Manila (BusinessWorld, 2023) [5]. The sector’s contribution to decent work has, however, long been contested. Early research questioned whether offshore service jobs offer genuine upward mobility or function as dead-end employment for educated young workers (Beerepoot & Hendriks, 2013) [2], and the International Labour Organization identified night work, stress, limited representation and high turnover as persistent decent-work concerns (Errighi et al., 2016) [7]. Contact-centre attrition has historically been among the highest of any Philippine industry (Daily Tribune, 2024) [6]. Employee development programs are commonly proposed as the bridge between these positions. Human capital theory holds that training raises productivity and earnings (Becker, 1993) [1], while job embeddedness theory suggests that development opportunities bind employees to their organisations and reduce voluntary exit (Mitchell et al., 2001) [10]. Yet training that raises general, portable skills can also make workers more attractive to competing employers unless it is linked to internal promotion (Benson et al., 2004) [3]. In Philippine BPO firms specifically, the retention effect of HRM practices has been shown to depend partly on employee–organisation value fit (Presbitero et al., 2016) [14].

The question has become urgent. In mid-2026, the industry association IBPAP revised its 2028 roadmap downward and reframed its goal around two million “AI-enabled” workers rather than headcount alone (GMA News Online, 2026) [8]. This study therefore asks three questions: (1) how far has sector growth been driven by productivity rather than headcount; (2) what productivity gain do the 2028 scenarios implicitly require of the workforce; and (3) how do current development investment and attrition levels compare with that requirement? Figure 1 presents the conceptual framework guiding the analysis.

Fig 1: Conceptual framework linking employee development programs to career progression, retention and SDG 8 targets.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Research Design and Data Sources

The study uses a quantitative secondary-data design. Annual industry revenue and full-time employee (FTE) counts for 2018–2025 were compiled from IBPAP figures as reported in national business media (Manila Bulletin, 2020; BusinessMirror, 2022; BusinessWorld, 2023; Philstar, 2024, 2025, 2026) [4, 5, 11, 12, 13]. Values for 2018 and 2020 were back-calculated from the reported growth rates of the following year. The 2028 scenario targets were taken from the original and revised roadmaps (GMA News Online, 2026) [8]. Attrition data come from the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) annual Attrition and Retention Survey (Daily Tribune, 2024) [6], and reported industry talent-development spending of about PHP 1.4 billion a year from Philstar (2026) [13].

2.2. Analytical Procedures

Four procedures were applied. First, year-on-year and compound annual growth rates (CAGR) were calculated for revenue, FTEs and revenue per FTE, the last serving as a nominal labour-productivity proxy relevant to SDG target

8.2. Second, the employment–revenue elasticity was

estimated by ordinary least squares on the log-linear model ln(FTE) = α + β ln(Revenue) for 2018–2025 (n = 8). Third, the revenue per FTE implied by each 2028 scenario was computed, along with the annual productivity growth needed to reach it from 2025. Fourth, reported development spending was divided by the 2025 workforce to obtain spending per worker and set against attrition indicators. All figures are nominal US dollars; calculations were carried out in Python.

3. Results

3.1. Revenue, Employment and Productivity Trends

Table 1 and Figure 2 show steady expansion in both revenue and employment. Revenue rose from US$24.5 billion in 2018 to US$40.3 billion in 2025, and FTEs from 1.23 to 1.90 million. The only interruption was 2020, when growth in both series fell to about 1.5%.

Fig 2: Industry revenue and full-time employment, 2018–2025.

Revenue per FTE, by contrast, rose only from US$19,919 to US$21,211 over seven years (Figure 3). Table 2 shows that productivity grew at 0.9% a year across the full period and did not accelerate after the pandemic. The estimated employment–revenue elasticity was 0.89 (SE = 0.008; R² = 0.999): each 1% increase in revenue was accompanied by an almost equal 0.89% increase in headcount. Growth has thus remained predominantly labour-extensive.

Table 2: Compound annual growth rates and roadmap-implied productivity requirements Period / scenario Revenue CAGR (%)

Implied revenue per FTE, 2028 (US$)

2028 original roadmap (US$59.0 bn; 2.50 m) – – 3.6 required 23,600 2028 accelerated (US$50.5 bn; 2.14 m) – – 3.6 required 23,598 2028 downside (US$43.3 bn; 1.85 m) – – 3.3 required 23,405 Note: Required rates are the annual productivity growth needed from the 2025 level (US$21,211) to reach each scenario’s implied value. 3.2. Productivity Requirement of the 2028 Scenarios Although the three 2028 scenarios differ widely in revenue and headcount, they converge on almost the same revenue per worker, between US$23,405 and US$23,600 (Table 2; Figure 3). Reaching this level requires productivity growth of 3.3– 3.6% a year from 2025, about four times the rate observed since 2018. In effect, whatever the headcount outcome, the roadmap assumes that each worker will generate around 10– 11% more value by 2028.

Fig 3: Observed revenue per FTE (2018–2025) and the values implied by the 2028 roadmap scenarios.

3.3. Development Investment and Attrition

Table 3 sets development investment against retention outcomes. Reported industry spending of PHP 1.4 billion a year equals about PHP 737 per worker annually. Among CCAP member firms, voluntary attrition declined from 36% in 2021 to 31% in 2022, but total attrition, including involuntary exits, was 45% in 2022, and a further 9.9% of agents abandoned their jobs without leave (Figure 4).

Table 3: Talent-development and retention indicators Indicator Value Reference year Source Industry talent-development spending ≈ PHP 1.4 bn per year 2025 Philstar (2026) [13] Development spending per FTE (computed) ≈ PHP 737 per year 2025 Author’s calculation Voluntary attrition, contact centres 36% → 31% 2021 → 2022 Daily Tribune (2024) [6] Involuntary attrition, contact centres 14.1% 2022 Daily Tribune (2024) [6] Total attrition, contact centres 45% 2022 Daily Tribune (2024) [6] Absence without leave (AWOL) 9.9% 2022 Daily Tribune (2024) [6] Share of FTEs outside Metro Manila 31% (486,000) 2022 BusinessWorld (2023) [5]

Fig 4: Attrition components among CCAP member contact centres, 2021–2022.

4. Discussion

The results reveal a gap between the sector’s stated strategy and its recent record. The industry has described itself as a pathway to the middle class built on skills development (Philstar, 2024) [11], but productivity has risen by less than 1% a year and growth has depended almost entirely on adding workers. This is consistent with the concern raised by Beerepoot and Hendriks (2013) [2] that many roles offer limited task upgrading. For SDG target 8.2, the sector has so far contributed through scale more than through technological upgrading.

The 2028 scenarios make the role of upskilling explicit. Because every scenario implies roughly the same revenue per worker, the roadmap’s realism rests less on hiring and more on raising the value of each role. From a human capital perspective (Becker, 1993) [1], this requires sustained investment in general and firm-specific skills, notably in AI-assisted processes, analytics, cloud and cybersecurity. Set against this requirement, reported spending of about PHP 737 per worker a year appears modest, although firm-level training not captured in the industry figure is likely to be substantial.

Attrition sharpens the problem. When close to half of contact-centre workers leave in a year, the return on training is lost before it accrues, which discourages employers from investing. The research on tuition reimbursement shows a way out: training reduces turnover when it is followed by promotion, and increases it when it is not (Benson et al., 2004) [3]. Development programs are therefore most likely to support both retention and SDG target 8.5 when they are tied to visible internal career ladders, from agent to team lead, analyst or technical specialist. Such ladders also strengthen the links and fit that anchor employees to their firms (Mitchell et al., 2001; Presbitero et al., 2016) [10, 14]. The fall in voluntary attrition from 36% to 31% and the growing share of jobs outside Metro Manila are encouraging signs for decent work and regional inclusion. Upskilling that enables young provincial graduates to progress within the industry, rather than cycle between entry-level jobs, would directly support SDG target 8.6.

4.1. Limitations

The analysis relies on industry-reported aggregates relayed through media sources, uses nominal values, and cannot observe firm-level training, wages or promotion rates. The attrition data cover CCAP member contact centres only. The elasticity estimate is based on eight observations and describes association, not causation. Future studies should use employee-level panel data to test directly whether participation in development programs predicts promotion and tenure.

5. Conclusion

This study shows that the Philippine IT-BPM sector has grown rapidly in scale but only marginally in value per worker between 2018 and 2025. Its revised 2028 roadmap, whichever scenario materialises, depends on raising productivity about four times faster than in the recent past, which makes employee development the sector’s central growth lever rather than a supporting HR function. Current reported development spending and high contact-centre attrition indicate that this lever is under-used. To strengthen its contribution to SDG 8, the sector should (1) scale structured upskilling in AI-enabled and technical competencies, (2) link completed training to transparent promotion pathways so that investment translates into retention, and (3) report training hours, internal promotion rates and attrition by segment so that progress on productivity and decent work can be tracked. Upskilling linked to career progression can turn the industry’s employment scale into durable, higher-value and more decent work.

Conflict of Interest

The author(s) declare no conflict of interest.

Data Availability All data used are publicly reported and cited in the reference list; the compiled dataset is available from the corresponding author on request.