Talent hunter boosts PH jobs

Luis Alberto Anastacio II runs a conglomerate that has supplied thousands of Filipino manpower to companies around the world.

“We find people for our clients. From simply providing manpower, we have grown into a full-scale, fully integrated human resource company with training capability and connections all over the world,” says Anastacio, president and chief executive of SFI Group of Companies.

Servicio Filipino Inc., the flagship company of SFI Group established by Anastacio’s father in 1961, is a pioneer in providing human resource services in the Philippines.

The company provides skilled and talented personnel for engineering, construction, property, management, building management, facilities maintenance and technical services sectors that include general custodial services, staffing services, construction, industrial plant and hospitality services.

From filling positions mostly in custodial and security services back in the early 1960s, SFI grew into a holding company with many subsidiaries engaged in serving the human resource requirement of many companies from down the line to top levels such as managerial positions and even presidents or company heads for local units of multi-national companies.

It is also engaged in providing services even for government agencies and government-owned corporations.

SFI has recently signed a franchise agreement with Kelly Services Philippines, the local unit of staffing giant Kelly Services Inc., to run and manage BusinessTrends and provide staffing assistance in the business process outsourcing industry, banking and finance, engineering, scientific and healthcare sectors.

It also provides workforce management services to the information technology as well as professional support. Kelly Services is the world’s sixth biggest cross-border recruitment company based in the US.

Among the recent achievements of SFI Group is the supply of nearly 1,500 people for the plant expansion project of Petron Corp. in Limay Bataan.

Anastacio recalls that Petron was hunting for some 16,000 workers for the plant. Fully-staffed, about 55 percent of the Petron’s workforce came from other provinces while 45 percent were Bataan natives.

SFI is a purely Filipino company. It is a family-run company, with family matriarch Estrellita Anastacio still at its helm as chairman.

“As you know my background is recruitment, human resource management and lately strategic planning. I have devoted most of my time and effort to growing the family business to help people who have problems find jobs,” says Luis Anastacio.

Anastacio engaged the company to forge strategic alliances with international partners such as Kelly Services, HireLabs, Success Partners Ltd., ACT of America, Auralog (a Rosetta Stone company) and Serebra Corp.

A strong advocate of continuing education, Anastacio also led the company’s corporate social responsibility thrust and endeavors on education and workforce development.

In 2015, the SFI Group conducted a K to 12 efficacy study covering the entire 12 municipalities in the province of Bataan.

“We aligned our CSR, which is our advocacy for education and workforce development to what we do in our company. While doing the study, we identified a skills gap, that was very instrumental for our study,” Anastacio says.

Among his observations is that workforce development will be one of the biggest businesses of the future.

“With the K to 12 program of the government, we have a good tool to position ourselves in the global economy. According to a global institute, there will be shortage in college graduates of around 40 to 50 million and a shortage of around 80 million technical traits by 2020,” he says, citing international studies.

With the aging population of Japan and European countries, there would be a need for at least 600 million workforce four to five years from now, he says.

“Economies will turn to us for human resource support given our relatively young population with median age of 24. India will be the top source of manpower, followed by China, Indonesia and the Philippines,” says Anastacio.

SFI also teamed up with the Labor Department to establish the Philippine Talent Map Initiative, which aims to create the most comprehensive skills and competencies profile of the Philippine workforce.

“Apart from grant, we were able to do the first ever talent map in Bataan which was, as we reckon it, the beginning of the Philippine talent map initiative with the Labor Department. We assess the 21st century skills of the workforce. We started in Bataan and showed it to the Labor Department and they liked it. So we based the 21st century skills on how Apec [Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation] defined it. We presented that framework to Apec,” he says.

The purpose of the grant, he says, is to identify the lack of working people in an area when a steady supply of manpower is needed. He says that in Bataan, there is a dearth of talents as most technical training facilities are shutting down due to a few supply of people.

One observation, he says, is that people tend to leave their present jobs once they get a few months of job experience. “We’ve conducted assessments within National Capital Region and patterns identified show that skills seemed to be the biggest problem. After profiling, governments will know where investment should be put,” he says.

The talent mapping, which is evidence-based, is envisioned to be the most comprehensive profile of the Philippine workforce. It is a research to be submitted to the government.

SFI plans to run the Philippine talent map initiative on a wider scale, a scoping study that will involve the whole country of about 18 regions, 81 provinces and 144 cities.

Anastacio, studied at Ateneo de Manila University and obtained a degree in Management in 1991.  He also went to Tokyo for further studies.

Anastacio is also the current chairman of the Global Initiative for Education and Workforce Development, a non-profit foundation.