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How’s the industry doing these days?
The contract staffing services industry has never experienced such tremendous growth for the past 3 to 5 years. While we lack comprehensive and reliable research data specific to the industry that measure overall growth in terms of increase/decrease in business activities and revenues of industry players, the prevailing mood among us in the industry is characterized by optimism that our business only gets better. In the private sector market, the phenomenal growth experienced by BPOs has fuelled the need for third-party contract staffing and project employment requirements while the public sector market has been spurred by the ongoing re-organization of government agencies and corporations.
What is like handling and organizing people?
People no doubt are the most challenging and complicated resource to manage and organize simply because they have unique attributes which are not found in any other resources, these are: expectations, hopes and aspirations. These are variables that need to be carefully managed and, to some extent, controlled if we are to seriously consider that we live in a humane and just social order.
What are the challenges facing your industry right now?
I think the most significant challenge is for us to effectively respond to a steadily growing market demand for highly skilled and globally competitive contracted workforce. Another is the need to convince government to adopt definitive labor and employment policies that allow flexibility in labor or workforce management in the private sector. Still another is the need to have a fresh united and organized front of all industry players and stakeholders in order to advance the industry’s interests and welfare as well as to promote best-practices and self-regulation.
How do you respond to the challenge?
We try to acquire the latest selection tools and keep ourselves abreast with current competency and skill level standards and benchmarks for different job classes. Of course the key factor is increased investments in the latest sourcing techniques and innovations. By constantly inter-phasing with competitors and other industry stakeholders we develop a sort of familiarization and a comfort-level with one another that we hope would eventually lead us to a more formal and organized interactions like, say, in an organization.
What is your main concern right now?
Our main concern is to protect and improve our gains in terms of market leadership in the government or public sector and to leverage them to expand our share in the private sector market for contract and temporary staffing services. You can not simply stop and rest on your laurels otherwise competition can get the better of you and find yourself scraping the bottom almost overnight.
How did it all start? Please tell us about your career path
I literally grew up with the industry when I started working in early 1989 with one of the top contract staffing services companies back then. Fresh from college with a degree in Psychology from PLM, my first job was as a personnel benefits clerk then moved to recruitment and after about 4 years I became head of the Recruitment Division. In 1996 I joined the Operations and Marketing Group of the company as a junior officer and manager until in late 1999 when I decided to make a crucial career decision to move to LBP Service Corporation as a Marketing Manager. In 2002 I was promoted to VP Marketing, and in 2004 as SVP for Business Operations Group of LBPSC.
What is your most fulfilling experience so far?
The official data are not yet with us but we’re expecting to be in the elite list of Top 1000 Corporations in the Philippines for 2007. Whether we make it in the list or not (it’s just a matter of time, though), it’s still an awesome experience for all of us in LBPSC, specially for the management team, to become one of the top companies in the industry in terms of revenues and resources. But I guess the most fulfilling for me is the respect and the trust and confidence I enjoy from my superiors and peers as well as from the staff for my contributions to the success of the company.
How do you describe your management style?
I strongly believe in the power of inspiration and shared vision to influence people to do the right thing. People feel empowered if they know they are taking part in the realization of a vision, say, making the company no. 1 or achieving a lofty goal. After communicating clearly to them their value in the organization and their specific contribution towards its success or failure they learn to become managers of themselves; over their own resources such as time, money and skills. Thus, management becomes a shared responsibility with the staff. The images of a strict boss or a stern plantation owner-manager barking orders to his workers have become anachronistic as today’s well-informed, tech savvy and better educated employees have expanded choices in terms of career and companies to work with at any given time. Keeping them attached or ‘shared’ to the vision is therefore for me is a key management objective.
What are your plans for the foreseeable future?
Develop and expand LBPSC as a choice brand not only in the government sector market but in the private sector most specially.
How do you remain competitive, as a leader in the industry?
Understanding market behavior and preferences and shifting your operational strategies and pricing schemes to respond to them are key elements to remain competitive. Closely keeping an eye on our competitors and understanding their strengths and weaknesses in relation to ours enables us to adjust our strategies in competing for a market share. Being a leader creates expectations towards us in the market; therefore, there is pressure exerted on us to develop best practices in the area of labor standards compliance and sourcing efficiency. It’s like setting a sort of gold standard for the industry.
What is like coming to work everyday?
The morning ‘rituals’ (bathing, clothing, breakfast, etc.) is the only thing that I can consider predictable in each workday not to mention the morning traffic going to my Makati office. There is a lot of human inter-phasing in my work so there’s a great deal of variety in every transaction. I particularly enjoy the feeling of accomplishment whenever I make a client feel that they are taken care off and that I personally attend to their concerns how small or minor they are sometimes.
What advice can you give to the young professionals who want to be entrepreneurs themselves?
Get employed first. There’s a wealth of entrepreneurial experience one can get from getting employed in whatever position in some private business. It gives a soon-to-be-entrepreneur another dimensional perspective of how a business works specially the dynamics of an employer-employee relationship. Another advice is not to get hitched on a get-rich-quick mindset common to people who set up their own businesses. Entrepreneurship is pretty much like a vocation, or some say a ‘calling’, one should feel a sense of satisfaction doing it outside the material rewards that it brings in terms of profit. To a lot of people it may sound ironic or downright naive not to consider profit as the be-all of business.
Can you give us an idea of a day in a life of Mr. Joseph V. Angeles?
I am a sanguinely optimistic person, I see the bright side, the silver lining, a half-full glass. Hence, my day is always sunny even though the sky foreboding. Each time I pick up a phone or see my clients in person it’s the positive mood that they immediately sense and it catches on. I don’t consider myself the stereotypical busy executive who doesn’t have time to spend for worship, family getaways, nurturing friendships and community service. Life has so much to give than just spend it in your job or career
Who is Mr. Joseph V. Angeles outside the office?
I don’t exactly have an outside-the-office persona like Bruce Wayne when he is not Batman. On weekends I usually get to spend most of my time with my wife and 5 kids going out to eat, see a new movie or simply bum around. I’m also active in our community as the village president which somehow fulfills my sense of civic duty. I’m a voracious reader and I enjoy watching National Geographic Channel and Discovery Channel on cable TV.
Who or what keeps you going? What inspires you to do all these?
My family, I can’t do without them.
What for you is success and contentment?
Sometimes being asked this question you can not help to be philosophical about your answer, but this time I’d say success for me is simply empowerment to realize your humanity and then perhaps you achieve contentment. Wealth, power and fame are trappings rather than indicators of success.
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