A young Filipino gentleman started his career as a call center agent in a multinational bank several years ago despite the lack of a college degree.
Hired and managed by Q2 HR Solutions, a local human resources company, he worked at night and studied during the day. Once he obtained his baccalaureate degree, the bank absorbed him as a full-time employee and he was promoted as a team leader within two years.
Four years later, he applied for the position of assistant manager through the executive search by Q2 HR Solutions. He got the job and today, he is an assistant vice president at the multinational bank.
He is one of the more than 50,000 professionals placed by Q2 HR Solutions to different positions, including CEOs, CFOs, and CTOs across more than 1,000 companies in the Philippines over the past 20 years.
Such story is what inspires Trixie Whyte to continue and expand the operations of Q2 HR Solutions which she established with her late Irish husband Brendan in their spare room in San Lorenzo Village, Makati City in September 2000. Trixie, who has three children, was born and raised in the Philippines and remains a Filipino citizen.
“I am very grateful to be given this opportunity to be in a business that is of service to people and at the same time make money,” says Trixie, the co-founder, chairperson and president of the 20-year-old human resources company. “What we want is to uplift the lives of Filipinos. It is profit with honor.”
Q2 started with six employees, a single desk, a PC and a golden retriever in the Whyte family’s home in 2000. “We started in such a small room that if someone had a cough, everyone would catch the virus. That’s how small we were,” Trixie says.
Q2 services
Q2 became a full-service HR company whose services include sourcing and recruitment, HR outsourcing, managed services, background investigation, organizational consultation and development, assessments and other bespoke HR solutions.
Its portfolio includes Recruitment by Design, a business unit handling executive search, permanent placement and recruitment process outsourcing. It also provides People4People managed services, build-operate-transfer model and background verification. Its affiliates now deploy healthcare Filipino professionals to different countries.
It started with three multinational clients in the banking and pharmaceutical industry sectors and subsequently added top corporations in telecommunications, transportation, business process outsourcing, e-commerce, retail and manufacturing industries to its list.
Today, the company manages more than 4,000 employees and is expanding its services and network to serve more companies here and abroad. Q2, short for Quaerito Qualitas Inc. which means “to seek quality”, has also grown to be the most-recognized HR solutions provider in the Philippines.
Brendan died in 2007, leaving the business to Trixie who earned her Philosophy degree from the De La Salle University and completed the Executive Program at the Asian Institute of Management. Before establishing the business, Trixie worked as a benefits assistant in Coca-Cola Bottlers Philippines and later for Mandarin Oriental Hotel where she was awarded a grant for a Master’s in Hotel Management at SHATEC Singapore.
She joined her mother’s HR company, Linkstaff International Services, before establishing Q2 HR Solutions with her late husband who loved Latin and the band U2, which became the inspiration for their company’s name.
Q2’s first executive search project was for a multinational pharmaceutical firm’s Canlubang, Laguna plant. It also assisted in creating a productivity-based employment program for its warehouse personnel.
Loyal customers
Its original clients remain loyal customers to this day. In 2003 and 2004, the business grew exponentially with the growth of the business process outsourcing industry. The company’s outsourcing business/managed service started with a company that needed help with project employment for its IT and accounting departments. A client in the banking industry was also a significant account because it was the first company to convince Trixie to try her hand in ‘volume recruitment’ with the aim of delivering more than a hundred call center agents in the BPO sector. She thus created the template for call center agent training still being used by BPOs to this day.
As the team expanded, they moved to a 121-square-meter office space at the 88 Corporate Center in Salcedo Village. In their 12th year in 2012, they moved to their own 1,000-sqm space in the same building. As the company turns 20 next year, Q2 HR Solutions has become the country’s preferred one-stop HR firm, providing world-class bespoke services for local and multinational clients.
The company expects gross revenues north of P600 million in 2019, up 25 percent from the previous year. “Next year is gonna be higher. My aim is to grow no less than 25 percent,” says Trixie who plans to introduce payroll outsourcing and benefits administration in 2020.
Q2 has existing 250 clients, of which 70 percent are multinationals, 20 percent big local conglomerates and 10 percent entrepreneurs.
Trixie wants to replicate the success of Q2 in the Philippines in other countries. She is exploring Australia, Japan, the UK, Canada and Sweden for Q2 HR Solutions’ managed services and build-operate-transfer model. She established People Expert in Australia early this year, to be followed by expansion in Japan and the UK.
Overseas expansion
Through Orange International Recruitment, an affiliate company she recently established, Trixie wants to help Filipinos work abroad in the healthcare, engineering, construction, retail and hospitality industries, providing them opportunities in these countries.
“We have a very young population in the Philippines and we have great work ethics, we speak English, we are flexible and adaptable. These are Filipino traits that many countries would like to have,” she says.
“I equally encourage foreign companies that are growing and expanding to consider investing, partnering or outsourcing in the Philippines. My company can provide various resources in human capital and help in creating capabilities and bespoke solutions,” Trixie says.
Q2 teamed up with Randstad—a global leader in recruitment process outsourcing based in the Netherlands to bring in big multinational accounts. Two multinational companies endorsed by Randstad recently tapped Q2’s BOT service. This means that Q2 will source, hire, train, onboard and deploy their staff for them. “When they are ready to manage the workforce, we transfer the employees to them,” Trixie says.
“We facilitated their setup here because I, for one, believe that the Philippines has so much to offer having such a huge pool of talent. In turn, the economy would benefit from these investors. It has always been my passion to uplift lives by helping companies build their HR capabilities,” she says.
Core values
Trixie says the company sticks to its five core values of positive impact, care and commitment, grit, gratitude and innovation.
Aside from the success of the business which honors the legacy of Brendan, Trixie says her children are her pride and joy. Her eldest son recently graduated from the University of Bath in the UK and currently works in a highly successful talent technology start-up in London. Her daughter is looking to earn her university degree in the UK while her youngest daughter is completing her studies at the British School Manila.
She loves traveling with her family. “We love exploring different cultures and we’re passionate about food. I like wine and whisky—those are my newest indulgences—and cheese. I love to dance and do yoga to center myself,” she says.
Fulfillment
“I tell my children about what I learn at work or from life in general. I tell them that in order to succeed—whether it’s in business, career or personal life – one has to have the right perspective and a heart of gratitude; these go a long way. Life teaches us about ourselves. I am strong not because I haven’t experienced tough times but because I have come through many and learnt along the way,” she says.
Beyond the success of her company, she loves the fact that she can help companies and individuals grow to their full potential.
“My feelings of fulfillment lie in being part of a system where I feel I have made a meaningful contribution by enriching the lives of the Filipino people through my company. I feel grateful and blessed that I’m given this opportunity to help others and uplift lives and businesses,” she says.
She says the true measure of success is not in how much wealth or power one has gained. “It should be measured by the number of lives we’ve touched, the people we’ve inspired, the families whose lives we’ve enriched and the communities we’ve built,” she says.
The People Management Association of the Philippines awarded Q2 as Employer of the Year for the SME category in 2011. Q2 also became the first Filipino company to receive platinum accreditation in 2016 from Investors in People outside the UK. The United Kingdom Commission for Employment and Skills governs Investors in People based in London, recognizing that Q2 is aligned with global people management standards.
Trixie says Q2 is investing in the future to assure “our clients we are here to stay”. Together with Orange International, Q2 bought a property in Fort Bonifacio for future development.
“What we really want is to uplift the lives of Filipinos through the jobs that we provide and through the companies they are deployed to. We uplift the companies as well,” she says.