EDI STAFFBUILDERS: The Benchmark in Good Recruitment Practices
by Paul Catiang

Cesar A. Averia, Jr., EDI-Staffbuilders International, Inc. President and CEO (right, front row)
poses with International Labor Organization (ILO) officials and delegates
during the recently conducted worldwide policy dialogue held in Geneva, Switzerland.

Overseas Filipino Workers brave many difficulties in working abroad: exorbitant placement fees, arbitrary termination, and even physical or psychological abuse. Still, this doesn’t stop Filipinos from taking a chance; as of June 2004, almost half a million OFWs were deployed, according to the POEA. With this rising tide of migrant workers, new issues come to light and current recruitment practices need to be assessed.

How are the rights of Overseas Contract Workers being safeguarded? Is their employment guaranteed? Were they recruited by duly licensed recruitment agencies? Are their placement fees fair?

To answer these questions, the International Labour Organization (ILO) held such a meeting in Geneva, in April 2005. The meeting was titled Merchants of Labour: Policy Dialogue on the Agents of International Labour Migration, and was attended by representatives from countries that send and receive migrant workers.

Representing the Philippines was Cesar A. Averia, President and CEO of EDI Staffbuilders International, Inc., chosen from a dozen other candidates. “I was surprised when they sent me an invitation last March,” Averia says. Still, the ILO needed practices that have been tested and refined over the course of many years, and for that, EDI-SBII was chosen.

The company’s contribution to the dialog in Geneva was a discussion of their best practices as a recruitment company in a country that sends workers abroad. As far as their best recruitment practices are concerned, EDI-SBII has at the top of their list the practice of not charging placement fees to candidates. Because recruitment agencies are allowed to charge their applicants one month’s salary as a placement fee, almost all migrant workers who apply through EDI-SBII have a hard time believing that they do not have to pay anything. The reasoning behind this is simple enough: Averia believes that “there is always at least one client out there who knows that the best candidate doesn’t have to pay in order to get employed. This is the kind of client who would be willing to pay the recruitment companies for this service.”

Another good practice is the constant search for prospective employers who not only need executives, managers and skilled workers, but also share EDI-SBII’s vision and principles. The company spends six months out of every year in this search.

While searching for employers in existing markets, EDI-SBII also conducts market research and development to find new niches in for the Filipino talent, and includes this in their good practices list. They have pioneered several markets abroad through this; “during the IT boom,” Averia says, “we were marketing in the US tremendously. We were going to the US at least 5 times per year, between 1997 and 2001, to market the Philippine talent.”

Recruitment companies also need to be adaptable. In the case of EDI-SBII, Averia recounts that “when the IT market in the US shrank, we went to Europe to market Filipino programmers and professionals.” This practice began with the shrinking of the Saudi Arabia market. “Our effort is to continually market our services because the market in Saudi Arabia has shrunk. Before 2001, 65% of our dispatches goes to the Middle East, and a lot of them go to Saudi Arabia. So Saudi Arabia, in reality, is the biggest market of all recruitment companies in the Philippines. Right now, I think there are more than 500 recruitment companies, and a lot of these companies already closed down, because there’s no market anymore.” To adapt to this, EDI-SBII has discovered markets in Qatar, New Zealand, Libya, Algeria and the Sudan.

Sometimes, a recruitment company needs to take risks to protect the industry. To quell the rise of bad recruitment practices in the hotel and restaurant market in Qatar, EDI-SBII got involved even with very minimal profit. The OFWs employed here were not charged any placement fee, which made it difficult to find clients willing to pay for their travel. Still, EDI-SBII was able to find employment for their candidates there.

When asked if any other placement agencies share his company’s practices, Averia states that while there are some companies that can afford to not charge placement fees, these are only a minority. Still, these companies encourage others to adopt their practices and to adhere to the policies of the POEA, which Averia strongly supports.

The government agency’s regulations were also recognized at the dialogue in Geneva, Mr. Averia reports, saying “the Philippines, through the POEA, is recognized as the forerunner in protecting the interests of the Filipino talent. With the other sending countries, they don’t have policies as sophisticated regarding migrant workers. Our POEA is the standard bearer, and I am so proud that that is recognized by the ILO.”

As the benchmark in protecting migrant workers’ rights, other countries are soon to follow EDI’s example: Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India, to name a few. With this, Mr. Averia can’t help but feel proud. “I am honored to represent the Philippines and our industry as having the best practices in this field.”

The ILO will publish a collection of the best recruitment practices discussed in this meeting, and the volume will be released by the end of 2005. These practices will also be encouraged in the countries in which the ILO operates, in the hopes of easing the hardships faced by Overseas Filipino Workers and other migrant workers worldwide.