Servicio Filipino, US-based organization launches workforce development solution in the Philippines

Servicio Filipino, Inc., a leading workforce provider in the Philippines and its subsidiary, SFI Career Center, launches a partnership today with ACT, Inc., one of the world’s leading assessment and workforce development organizations based in Iowa City, Iowa, USA.

The partnership hopes to take the lead when it comes to workforce development with regard to job and skills matching, improving the skills of students in the academe and trainees entering the workforce, and the existing labor force itself to help build the country’s human capital and make it globally competitive in line with 21st Century skills.

According to the results of the annual survey of the Swiss-based business school International Institute for Management Development (IMD) World Competitiveness Center’s “World Talent Ranking 2018,” the country ranked 55th out of 63 economies, down by 10 from last year’s 45th ranking. The drop was attributed to the country’s ability to develop, attract and retain highly skilled professionals, which worsened because of a “persistent job-skills mismatch.” The study also noted the sharp drop in terms of readiness to No. 37 from the previous year’s No. 11. The center revealed that Philippine labor force “is not as equipped with skills that firms are looking for.”

“We entered into this partnership precisely because we noticed already the alarming skills mismatch, based on the efficacy study we conducted in Bataan. Through this partnership, and together with the government, we hope to implement this on a nationwide scale,” declares Luis “Lloyd” Anastacio II, President and Chief Executive Officer of SFI Group of Companies, the parent company of Servicio Filipino, Inc.

Aside from the ACT® WorkKeys® Assessments, ACT’s KeyTrain Curriculum and Career Ready 101 Courses, and the International Career Readiness Certification in the Philippines, will also be introduced.

The ACT® WorkKeys® Assessments, the cornerstone of the ACT workforce solutions, is a skills assessment system that helps employers select, hire, train, develop, and retain quality workforce. Target users for the system include employers, individuals, educators, workforce developers, industry associations and advocacy organizations. It has been in use for more than two decades already, using real-life situations in the daily working world to help measure essential workplace skills and help people build career pathways.

It also helps measure foundational and soft skills, and can be used to learn more about the strengths and weaknesses of employees and gain a valid way to demonstrate abilities to employers, and take the guesswork out of determining student, applicant, and employee qualifications.

Leveraging on the power of technology, ACT® WorkKeys® Assessments can be taken online or on paper. A successful completion of WorkKeys Assessments can result in the ACT® WorkKeys® National Career Readiness Certificate® or NCRC®, which is issued at four levels, namely Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze, and measures and certifies the essential work skills needed for success in jobs across industries and occupations.

In the United States, more than 16,000 employers have already accepted the ACT® WorkKeys® NCRC® as a reliable way to verify individuals’ work readiness, with more than 3.8 million WorkKeys® NCRC®‘s issued across the US, while 30 states issue the WorkKeys® NCRC® in statewide or regional programs.

For more about the SFI Group of Companies, Servicio Filipino Inc., visit https://serviciofilipino.com. For programs of the SFI Career Center, go to https://sficareercenter.com. For more about ACT, Inc., visit www.act.org.

Shown in photo are (from left) Gina Jusay, Managing Director and Career Coach at SFI Career Center; Luis “Lloyd”Anastacio II, President and Chief Executive Officer of the SFI Group; Simmy Ziv-el, Vice President, Global Business Development of ACT, Inc.; and Pawan Adhikari, Regional Business Development Director for Asia of ACT, Inc.