Manila Trip - learnings from a passionate and energised culture

I am currenthly involve in a global project to improve the Shared HR Services operations in my company. The team comprises of representatives from several regional service centres. We had been sharing on good practice from each service centres during our teleconference meetings and I was interested to learn how Manila is doing as the service centre over there operates at night as they had to serve the Americas. I was there on 23-24 July.

I flew out of KLIA mid morning of 23rd and arrived in Manila in the afternoon. To start the day (or rather night), I arrived at the Manila office at about 8 pm. The scene at the office was just like an early morning rush in KL. I could see a lot of workers rushing through checkpoints at the entrance(these are very common in Manila).

I had a preliminary meeting for an hour with the Facilities and Infrastrure Manager. I was informed that there were close to 25 different entities of Business Processing Outsource (BPO) companies in the building itself (apparently BPO is an industry in the Phillippines).

Then I joined the Shared HR Services 15 minutes briefing. Eventhough they were working at night I could sense the excitement, energy and passion from the team. They were listening attentively throughout the session.

Right after that, it was a marathon meeting with the Operational Leadership team. The first session was a sharing of the work which had been done in KL. This took about close to an hour and a half, then it was Manila's team which was similarly lengthly. The session was an open discussion in exploring opportunities to cooperate and improve the Shared HR Services operations. Though we were suppose to have our lunch (at 12 midnight, mind you), we ended up having a working lunch. By the time we finished the meeting, it was close to 2 am.

We took a break by going on a walk round the office. I saw the staff were hard at work. After half an hour, we continued with plenary sessions which were equally exciting and full of passionate discussion. We ended our day (or rather night) at 4 am and I then headed back to the hotel.

I reached the hotel at about 4.15 am. By this time my eyes were closing as I have been awake for the past 20 hours. I took a hot shower, performed my prayer (fajr prayer starts at 4.21 am in Manila) and went to sleep. I skipped breakfast and woke up at about 11 am to get ready to check out and attend a business lunch with one of the Phillippines business Human Resources General Manager. The lunch ended at 2 pm and then it was a rush to the airport.

My airport check-in was not as effiecient as my itenarary at the Manila office. The airport IT system was down and the whole rows at the check-in counters were stuck. It was a very long wait. After close to 45 minutes, only then I was checked in manually. Obviously the Manila airport did not have a proper Business Continuity Plan (BCP). What is BCP, well, it has to be a separate posting as this one is already long. If anyone of you are interested to know, write me an email.

I arrived at KLIA at 9 pm, performed my prayers, took the ERL at about 9.45 pm, arrived at KL Central at 10.15 pm, my wife picked me up at 10.20 pm and arrived home safely at 10.45 p.m. It was a very long day and night.