ONBOARD TRAINING AND PRODUCTIVITY OF EMPLOYEES IN SELECTED BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING COMPANIES IN QUEZON CITY: BASIS FOR STRATEGIC PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT PLAN
Keywords:
onboard training, employee productivity, Business Process Outsourcing, Quezon City, perceptual gap, training evaluationAbstract
Persistently high attrition and uneven ramp-up performance remain defining challenges for the Philippine Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry. This study examined how onboard training was assessed by management and rank-and-file employees in selected BPO companies in Quezon City, evaluated its relationship with employee productivity, and used the findings to inform an evidence-based training manual. A descriptive-correlational, quantitative design was employed with 150 respondents (75 management, 75 rank-and-file) from three major BPO companies in Quezon City who had completed onboarding within the preceding twelve months. Data were gathered through a validated, pilot-tested Likert-scale questionnaire (Cronbach's alpha 0.847–0.912) covering four onboard-training dimensions (Orientation and Company Culture, Job Clarity and Job Knowledge, Mentorship and Support, and Feedback and Evaluation) and four productivity dimensions (Work Efficiency, Quality of Output, Timeliness, and Work Engagement), supplemented by an open-ended item analyzed thematically, with weighted means, independent-samples t-tests, and Pearson r used for analysis. Respondents rated onboard training (grand weighted mean = 3.51) and employee productivity (3.47) as “Strongly Agree” overall; management consistently rated both constructs higher than rank-and-file employees, and this gap reached statistical significance for Quality of Output (t = 2.450, p = 0.025) and for several individual indicators spanning all four training and productivity dimensions, even though the aggregate dimension-level differences in training were not significant, while the correlation between the two groups' assessments of training and productivity was very weak and non-significant (r = 0.0642, p = 0.880). Thematic analysis of 71 open-ended responses identified mentorship and support, hands-on practice, and feedback quality as the most requested improvements, and these findings informed a proposed Enhanced Strategic Performance Plan addressing feedback continuity, tiered mentorship, hands-on systems practice, and quality-recognition mechanisms, together with calibration routines to close the perception gap between management and frontline staff. The study contributes context-specific, dual-perspective evidence on onboarding effectiveness in the Philippine BPO sector, integrating Kirkpatrick's Four-Level Training Evaluation Model, Human Capital Theory, and Organizational Socialization Theory to explain why perceptual alignment on training coexists with divergence on productivity outcomes.
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