Entrepreneurs are being advised to innovate proactively by adopting new business and operating models and processes attuned to the pandemic, as productivity improvement training programs are available for them.
In a webinar, Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) president Sergio Ortiz-Luis, Jr. said revenue loss, permanent and temporary business closures, and employee layoffs are among the struggles of the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) due to the pandemic.
He said MSMEs represent 99.6 percent of all Securities and Exchange Commission-registered companies and employs 32 million workers or 80 percent of the country’s total workforce.
Ortiz-Luis Jr., also the president of Philippine Exporters Confederation Inc., urged firms to take advantage of the opportunities to develop and transform themselves amid the pandemic.
“With the collective efforts of the government and various social partners, MSMEs can look at the pandemic not only as a life-changing phenomenon but as an occasion to seize new opportunities at the same time,” he said.
Kim Lagcao, board secretary at the Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board-National Capital Region, said they provide a series of productivity training even during the lockdown through the productivity toolbox for the MSMEs.
“We started our training from the most basic training, intermediate up to advanced training that we can provide. Because of the pandemic, we are using the webinar, zoom online platform,” he said in the same webinar.
Lagcao said a two-hour productivity training through zoom app has been started for the MSMEs for free.
These are training on 7S of good housekeeping, service quality, Green My Enterprise, and ISTIV values, he said.
The 7S of good housekeeping is the most basic and fundamental approach for productivity and quality improvement in all types of business; while Green My Enterprise is a basic program on green productivity, which offers low cost, simple and easy to understand green concepts and practices.
ISTIV, on the other hand, is a values-driven human resource intervention for quality and productivity improvement that is rooted in the five ideal attributes of a productive individual. – Press release
April 25, 2024
