Entrepreneurs intently listening to a guest speaker during the MSME Development Week
Photo file/THEPHILBIZNEWS
By Alithea De Jesus
Entrepreneurs are advised to innovate proactively by adopting new business and operating models and processes attuned to the coronavirus situation, 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 (SEC)-registered companies and employs 32 million workers or 80 percent of the country’s total workforce.
Ortiz-Luis Jr., also 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 until to the advanced training that we can provide,” he said in the same webinar. “Because of the pandemic, we are using the webinar, zoom online platform.”
Lagcao said a two-hour productivity training through the 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.
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 (GP) 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.
“We are also offering a module on work-life balance in time of COVID pandemic and another module on guide to starting and growing your online business. Hope you can avail (these trainings), we will be updating you particularly as most of us experienced losses. Some of us are into the recovery stage so paano tayo makabangon (how can we recover) probably, we can assist you on how to make you resilient during this time of pandemic,” Lagcao added.
Read related story:
https://thephilbiznews.com/msme-development-week-2018-successfully-kicks-off/
